Mathias B. Freese

Jane is in a giddy or happy mood today as she is finishing off packing last minute items before we move next week. We will load her van with the necessaries of a vital trip — cpu, monitor, printer, essential files, cameras, lighting fixtures taken down only to be put up again, the GPS, “Trixie,” my meds and a sling brief case in which resides my next book in rough draft, “Working Through the Holocaust.” We don’t have much furniture but only critical pieces and art work and boxes of Jane’s books, for I am beginning to realize more and more as I dwell deeper in love with her that she is extremely intelligent and very good natured. I am fortunate to have found her late in life. She complements the jagged sides of me with softer clouds of her nature for she is a rarity, a kind individual.

I just finished taking lab tests to check for cholesterol and whether or not my hyperlycemia has evolved into diabetes — it has not and I have 128 for a cholesterol count which is terrific. So, I have escaped the guillotine once more. Medically I am sound but I do have to watch my diet and exercise, so what else is new at 68? Am I 68? Where was I? I live each day as if it were my last without screaming or shouting or thumping upon the floor. I have thought that living one’s life with vigilance and attention does not mean that Pluto veers off course. I just have the intent to enjoy doing whatever humdrum things that come my way. On the horizon is a new edition of the Tetralogy and a new book of short stories which may very well be the best I have done. I continue to write for in writing I determine who I am as I chanel and canalize my interior selves into a stirring and roiling Mississippi. I am feeling joyous about curbing my enthusiasm which is a Jewish characteristic, I feel. I “Larry David” my existence. I engage existence in dialogue and question, for I have been so conditioned. Only last night as I examined the lint of the day within my mind I realized that I speak to myself in the same tones I do when I verbalize. But it is more than that. I wondered, perhaps you do, what is that voice that goes over things in mind, that perseverates, that feels outrage, or mutters curses. What a curious phenomenon to talk to one self in dialogue, in association, choosing, opting, making choices, deciding, reflecting, musing and self-muttering. This ability we all have, some exercising it more or less than others, is something to behold — or feel — or experience, is it not, reader? We talk internally to ourselves. Is there a creature on this planet who operates in such a way other than homo sapiens? We may never know. And can we, or I, take this process and make it go further, improve upon it, or grasp it better so that it evolves into other ways of thingking or consciousness. While in bed last night I conversed with myself and the whole operation of it was quite splendid. I will observe and attend to it more and report back to you at a later time. Don’t dismiss it as naivete or a cliche, for there is not a human being alive who has seen his heart or brain and yet we know these organs run for us? We are in many instances controlled organically so that consciousness may exist yet we have no control over so many things in our lives? And what should we learn from that?

The mist is clearing as I write. The moving transition to Nevada is being organized by Jane and I down to Jane’s working on graph paper to locate what furniture goes into what room. It helps. The paint job is done yet unseen, the carpeting will be laid Monday and we will have to wait until mid-week to actually see all this, counting upon strangers to make our home pleasant. Appliances come later in the week, Cox cable, and the whole rigarmarole of making entry into a new adventure. We are ordering things, at least I am, on the internet –a fireplace screen, a standing bedroom mirror — to placate my anxiety and to give me comfort. I have always had a rich man’s taste and a poor man’s pockets, but that can lead to creative choosing, working delay to one’s end and the magnificence of immediate gratification. If I had to choose between barbecuing, going to a football game, riding a Harley or deep sea fishing, I would choose to buy  a print, an oil, a book, an antique or a fine piece of jewelry for Jane. I’ve always been attracted to art since I was mesmerized in art classes while in college,  learning the differences between Doric, Corinthian and Ionic columns. The Greeks said it first and said it best. When you look at a Doric capital you see the weight of the whole universe resting peacefully on that thrust of marble in eternal repose. No Ford Ranger for me. I have been smittened.

Give me the most precious thing of all — time, give me writing utensils — I adore fountain pens, give me time to think and reflect, give me Krishnamurti and Existential philosophy, give me art, or a beautiful hand made rug, give me a great movie, give me Conrad, Freud, and especially Kazantzakis, and I will not ask for much more in this world, other than bagels, bialies, a Charlotte Russe, Goldenberg’s Peanut Chews, a sleek Duncan Yo Yo, a Raleigh 3-speed English racer, circa 1953, a good mitt, good packing snow, an American Flyer sled, any Lionel trains from the 50s, cold seltzer from a glass decanter, and an old-fashioned soda jerked cherry lime rickey (real limes, please).

Passively and aggressively as my nature is, I have flowed between both shores in my response to life. I dwell within and act out aggressively when that is disturbed. It is my nature and when I talk to myself late at night I examine it and all that I can observe, given the limited powers of my mind and the very idiosyncrasies of my existence. When I fantasize, I know that I would rather pass by an epiphany on the next street corner if I could enter a store and come to a philosophic understanding of my life, for meaning has always played a significant part in my existence. Call it a neurosis or characterological if you will, but meaning made me detest teaching and all that dreadful conditioning; it made me an enemy of all authority except that self-imposed upon one’s own self. Meaning gave me struggle and ardor and intent and ambition and all the qualities of the search; meaning gave me discontent which I rather cherish, for a contented person is a slob. And with that, I part.

Green Valley Ranch Hotel and Casino

I will need to sequester a small portion of my pension check for playing the slots as I enjoyed losing $20 here, $20 there. In fact, I found it kind of meditatively soothing as I won a little and then lost it, or bells went off and I hit a small “fortune” and then I lost it. Many a time I came close to winning a hundred or two hundred, but close is not good enough. I noticed that it was not the idea of winning so much that pleasantly placated me. It was something else. It was the chance that was alluring, not the winning necessarily. Around me, young and old, haggard and overweight, smoking cigars and cigarettes, focused intently, mesmerized by the designs on the spinning rollers. I just got the kick of spinning the top across the ground, having pulled the cord to give it momentum. It was the throw against fate and not the reward that appealed to me. I beamed at coming close at winning while others gyrated, spoke to the machine, moving their hands in demonstrable gestures to the gods of chance. 

Of course, what comes with playing is dreaming, of how money might be spent — on a dinner for one’s friends, on buying new carpeting, of decorating the new house, rarely of saving but of being a spendthrift. The dreaming compels the continuation of playing. The sirens of random chance, of good fortune, of winning are the susurrance within the casino. And as the 20 dollar bills are slipped into the serpent’s thin slot, as automatied sounds record its digestion and sounds cue you into beginning the game one has to mentally estimate how much one can avoid to lose. I noticed, obviously, that amount varies depending on how stimulated I felt — or how sparkling was the game with its ups and downs. So I managed to spend more than I needed to, leaving worrying about how much I could afford by the side. Ah, as the wit said, do not avoid temptation but enter it and be done with it. I concur. I felt rather free dipping into my money, believing in the illusion that I could replenish my wealth down the line. Well, yes and no, to that. What I can share is that I enjoyed myself without the stress to win but the excitement of cosmically watching as I lost money without a care in the world. Like sex, one should not struggle so hard in the giving but relent and allow oneself to take in.

I have made the environmental decision that I prefer trees and ornamentation to the hard surfaces of the desert lands.  The major highway (215) in Vegas strikes me as relatively new, but it is stark and barren. It has not been adorned with trees or shrubs. And in the saving of water, it is stark if not a stainless razor slash through the town, a Sweeney Todd cut. Yet the town is planning to make a man-made lake, so that on the one hand we have that old human attribute of rational duplicity, fooling ourselves on one hand and arguing with the other that this is a natural good to have. The split shows in the overbuilding of Vegas. After all, how many pedicure stores do you need or coffee shops? The jewels on the ring are the casino/hotels of the strip surrounded by cheaply cut smaller chips, of an inpure quality. It is a sad condemnation I feel, for this is what human beings do to their surroundings. We despoil and at the same time raise high great buildings and wonders. From a lousy bagel at a lousy Einstein’s to a great steak at Hanks, from a terrific giro at the Greek Bistro to a terrible omelet at the Sunset Casino hotel, from the beautifully manicured lawns and well-attended lanes and streets of Green Valley Ranch as well as the thoughfully planned out District, to the disarray of neighboring communities, chocked full of strip malls, perseverating the same stores over and over until one feels like throwing up at a curb.

I cannot make acute observations about the inhabitants for they strike me as polyglot, migrational, and in that is the hope that they may be more liberal in their views. The mix is appealing to my eye. It doesn’t take too long for my conditioned self to evaluate and record what kind of men and women are attractive to my social sense. We all, I know I do, eventually become automatic in our instantaneously sense of what we find pleasing and admirable and what we feel bigoted and prejudiced against. So  I will announce here that I find narrowness abhorrent, flip flops disgusting, Midwest hairdos bizarre bird nests, high heels a great invention for the male eye — it can save a woman’s appearance and restore her to some kind of attractiveness; mysteriously annoyed by elderly, very elderly, men and women with iv tubing under their noses because they have emphysema, with their little cannisters of oxygen affixed to their walkers, grotesquely playing at the slots; good-looking women slathering up their arms with tattoos as if the wives of Queeg-Queeg; the cheeky breasts of cocktail servers trying to cut out a living for themselves, these inflated mounds a  kind of sexual come on — ah, the species, for it still works. And there is more to add.

I like men and women of class, however you wish to determine that; eating outdoors in a warming breeze; elated by well designed furniture in an upscale store in The District; I dislike families or couples who eat their luxurious meals in upscale restaurants and rarely speak to one another or behave as if this is isn’t enjoyment of a kind. So utilitarian. I like to kibbitz and I do that with servers (waiters?), believing that joviality makes the meal taste better and that the waiter (!) does his work at a higher level if he is engaged. What was interesting to observe here in Vegas and elsewhere in my experience, is that the servers are not used to this. So after 15 to 20 served meals, here is this wise-cracking Jew making jest. However, it takes seconds and they are with me on the slope, especially when I insist that they give the check to the couple at the other table who strike me as cosmetically ugly and unpleasant individuals. Unpleasant people should pay all restaurant checks, a personal rule of thumb.

In Vegas I sensed the old Matt well up as I felt that the decision to move was more than right; it returned me to life, that I could engage other human beings of similar interests or better still, individuals who sensed or believed or simply knew that one must do more than live life, whatever that is, but to delight in the varieties of experience. I got it: you are a teenager, you shower in the late afternoon on a July day, throw on a clean shirt and jeans and smell how freshly laundered it is, slip into fresh socks, go down the elevator and that first cooling and caressing breeze of a late summer day arouses the cheap cologne you’ve put on, because you are going to the park to meet up with friends or to take another gander at that hottie that makes you have a woody.

When I look into the street across the way and the rest of this decrepit neighborhood, I realize the gross differences between the two realities I have experienced as of late — here I feel kind of dirty and beaten down by the “neighbors” and the shabbiness of the blocks. In Vegas I felt returned to life, and I cannot wait to leave this palpable lower class mentality behind me. I associate to teaching in a ghetto school about 45 years ago and how demoralizing it was for me, a kind of death in life. I knew that if I didn’t get out I would be eventually worn down to a nub. And I did move away and taught in a better school system. It is akin to knowing in your heart of hearts that you know better, deserve better.

In the three years I’ve been here I’ve watched the neighborhood become seedier and my house plummet grossly in value. Struggling, Jane and I have cashed in all our chips and charged our cards to manage a respectful down payment in order to sustain our mental well-being, and we have been successful at it and we are grateful to leave. I could not sell my house but I did rent it out to an elderly couple for a 5 year lease which in itself is remarkable. I dream of selling the house for it is a psychologogical drag on my mind, like resistant feces on one’s sole. I want to be rid of this home for it is a drag on me but I will get a depreciation write-off on taxes. I must give up control of a house I spent so lavishly on to bring it up to snuff. In New York one lives side by side with all kinds of differences, and one makes do with one’s apartment, condo or house, and one’s idiosyncratic neighbbors.  For some reason out here the decay, inner and outer, is vastly more apparent in the severe sunlight of the Southwest. In New York shadows conceal both wealth and misery, it is chiaroscuro. I will feel better when I am with my own kind, leaving that up to your conjecture. I may not have the money but I know class when I see it or when I exercise it. Tucson and its surrounding burbs has no class, it is a cow town forever. I am out of here! I accept the mistakes I have made but I have rectified them as well.

I was selling off furniture in my house for a few months to gather monies. On one occasion a local resident who had migrated to Green Valley purchased a water fountain I had. Asking about our reasons for leaving, she offered up that she could not grasp our departure because Green Valley was “paradise.” I ask you: who is the real schmuck? In her mind she came here, spending her savings to buy into “paradise,” and how could she accept that she ended up in a cow’s asshole. What is unimaginable to me is very imaginable to her! It takes time to decondition oneself and that never ends. Taste like beauty is in the eyes of the beholder. However, given all the the particulars, she is a deluded woman. Much like telling a religious individual that religion in itself has killed more human beings than in all the wars since recorded history. It cannot be taken in and so it is dispensed with. So, I slink away looking for a newer horizon, the game is gone, the sheep farmers are fencing in the land, the towns are bringing sin and vice.

I go to “hide out” in the land of Canaan. I will dwell among similar kinds, share similar values, conditioned as I am. Blind as we all are. In my blindness, I will write a little, live a little, make merry, make a whole lot of mistakes once again, and so on. I like the wisdom in that old adage that in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. Who needs two eyes? I see a better way, a better truth and I went for it and apparently I will live it out.

Leaving in our car, it took us 7 hours to arrive in Henderson which lies in a valley. Having not traveled extensively in the Southwest I was taken by the harsh yet menacingly beautiful scarps of land, the desolation, the mountainous maw of it all, quite breathtaking, quite severe in places. The flatness of the terrain combined with the mountains and the barrenness lend it an air of harshness and toughness, real pioneer country. For stretches we saw nothing except  one or two homes or a small ranch and passed through a park of Joshua Trees which I am sure have a biblical backstory, for one could crucify a human being on its thorns. It was an apt tree for the clime and one could almost hear Jehovah telling Abraham to go out from here. In commentaries it is the first instance in which a god tells his people to leave from whence they lived. Translated, Hebrew means “dusty ones.” I stray.

The land has its beauty and I appreciated its flintiness and steeliness.

I will ramble with impressions and associations from here on in, for we spent a week closing on our house, which involves mind-numbing rules and regulations because of the new Patriot Act; the lending whores are now admittedly anally-oriented, for one must give evidence, regardless of one’s credit standing, of the legitimacy of monies in one’s accounts — decidedly McCarthyesque; playing at a local casino and joyously losing my money; eating at really superior local restaurants, to wit, Hank’s was a remarkable steakhouse restaurant within the Green Valley Ranch Resort that serves terrific steaks (would you like it medium plus?) and splendid salads; this particular casino has a wonderful breakfast place that served its own cured bacon in long strips and went so far as to have on its menu kosher salami and eggs, a specialized New York taste that is cholesterol ridden but must be sampled at least once in a person’s life. Las Vegas equals food. Imagine a cuisine and it is there to be had.

As I just said, food is paramount and of a high order. Vegas is a city geared to pleasure as well as sin. It promises satiety and it achieves that. As you drive the avenues and streets, one sees store after store in repetition of the same products, to wit, nail stores and ice cream stores and coffee bistros; it is almost like traveling with Anthony Bourdain through one of his hedonistic trips through Singapore or Hong Kong. It is overbuilt and they are adding to that. Sadly, there is a visual glut as signs bombard the senses. The Sunset Station casino/hotel takes up a city block (reminiscent of the hotel in The Shining ) and its interior is vast, although beginning to reveal a seediness to it. The food within its bowels is not good, alas,  but what it gives is service compounded upon service; it is all a service economy in Vegas. If you want your sheets coated with aphrodisiac, just ask. At night, although we had no time to go to the Strip, this one casino’s neon sign, perhaps a 100 to 150 feet high, stood out like some Easter island monument. One can feel immobilized by its neon stare. I’ve been on the Strip and nightime is almost daytime. In New York City the streets hold the darkness and the neon flashes above; in Vegas the streets glow, at least in my imagination. Las Vegas is New York City in its appetites, its gluttony, its capacity to fulfill needs and arouse one’s senses, except the Southwest is much cleaner. One may argue that littering in Vegas may make you feel offended, deeply so.

Our middle class community is gated with no parking on the streets which are a pleasure to walk and ride through. It has a gated pool, small and intimate, just to our liking. What sold Jane on it, for she came out to look at the home without me, was what is called The District, an area within this amalgam of different priced planned communities. What I will describe now is hard to put in words but gave me a real sense of joy as I walked the shaded streets — pine, maple and the manicured lawns all paid for by HOA fees, a western phenomenon. The District is a block or two long capped on one end by the Green Valley Ranch Resort, a casino with premium restaurants and handsomely appointed within. The streets flowing from the casino in this Greenwich Village-like setting are cobbled and the street trees festively adorned with white bulbs, making night-time alive. Upscale stores are across the way from one another, and benches and trees are placed about to gather, for at night they run all kinds of events for young and old — it is a kind of daily Mardi Gras. Quite striking, quite delightful to my eyes, I felt I was mixing with sharp people who dressed sharply –flashily outlandish– but with flair and aplomb. The stores stay open very late to accommodate the strollers and Vegas is 24/7 in any case.

As you near the end of The District, it is capped with a carousel for young children and a park that shows films for kids of all ages under the stars and far out one can see the Strip all lit up and I saw a sign that announced that Hyatt will be putting up a new hotel nearby. I could live at my home, walk 3 miles or so and be in an adult fairy land. It is not a geriatric Disneyland; it has all types, all shapes, all kinds of wealth, but generally classy which I like. In short, I was quite taken with the concept, for it is a concept in terms of how people should conclave and gather in pleasurable ways. At first curious about the apartments (?) above the stores I soon realized they were lofts; one can only imagine the prices. So here you have a Southwest concept of what I experienced in New York. One leaves one’s apartment or loft and is pushed right into the merry delight and rush of what only an urban world can do for one’s psyche — in Nevada all this is sweetened by warming temperatures, alfresco dining and strolling. I am a pig in shit.

We found our way around Henderson with a GPS, a woman’s voice telling us to make a right or left, or ARRIVING AT YOUR DESTINATION. We called her Trixie and often overruled her “wisdom” when our eyeballs told us differently and when our human common sense said no, that is wrong, fuck you, Trixie. Yes, we could have done it with maps but the GPS is fun and helpful but like Windows not completely well thought out. Jane comes from a generation one or two decades after mine so she has a facility for some of this technology and I do not feel threatened as a man to have her navigate, a ridiculous position to take in any case. So we more than managed until we felt our way about the streets and imprinted this data into our noggins. How shall I say it? I can play stoopball, boxball, marbles, curveball, and “Chinese.” I am retro. And you? I played in the streets and you play within doors. I’ll live with what I know as long as I am not judged, he says defensively. I actually, for the first time, perhaps in a decade or two, saw two teenagers playing  “catch.” How rare! All this in the District.

In the week we had, Jane and I closed on the house and I signed over 60 documents or so to finish that (Dickens would have had a field day skewering the system); got a painter for the house, a carpet salesman for all 1920 feet, a handyman who had a lumbering, obtuse way to him (he worries me), encountering all kinds of service people that were either recommended to us or we picked out of thin air which is not comforting. Given my darkened sense of humanity, I had to work on being more trustful which I was while holding my nose expecting mistreatment or blunders. People come from all over– Mark, the carpet man, came from Brooklyn and had recovered from a cancerous lymphoma, grateful to have survived and enjoying each day; he was very competent at what he did and we spoke the argot of “Brooklynese” and the thinking process that involves. Debbie, the blinds person, came from Virginia and took a while to take in my rapid pace, odd sense of humor; Mark enjoyed the joke about Helen Keller who fell into a terrifying hole in her backyard, and while so frightened beyond reason she screamed her hands off — this is the pitter patter I offer. Some Midwest folk are put off by my perverted Talmudic skill of asking questions at a rapid pace as if this was a sign of rudeness or indifference to their more casual ways of thinking, as if fast is bad, or quick is threatening. Fuck them, I tell myself. Questions good. Midwest not good, thump thump.

Doubtless I will generate more associations down the line, but Vegas looks like a reasonably good fit – a rich cosmopolitan variety here, ethnic variety as well, young and old, decrepit and vigorous, there is life on Mars unlike here in Green Valley where bed check is called every 4 hours. Las Vegas has a major university, art galleries, often in the hotels themselves (The Bellagio, for one), theater and cinema, bookstores and bagels and the Times as well as the tawdriness of having cocktail waitresses from ages 20 to 40 in the casinos, wearing the same black sheath dresses with cleavage to show their puppies, all demanded, of course, by their bosses, for this is a city to tease and cocktease — even the whores are tarted up so they appear attractive — for a moment, sleazy ten seconds later.

I will not touch upon the siren call of the different slot machines and how I succumbed. Unlike Odysseus, no one tied me to the mast. To be continued. We move in about 24 June. And that little horror will take about 6 months to adjust to.

Adieu!