las vegas 2025 impressions

Here in Las Vegas sense can jump out of you the berry of your cigarette burning your lip brings you back feel around your pockets for your wallet (if you even) find it it's empty ... play Keno with the same numbers until you win. you cannot survive fascism if money is everything. if you do not speak up you lose. you cannot see if you are lost on your phone. do something for anyone ... after the rains the desert air is good on the lungs and one holiday morning we are walking between casinos so alive hunting for coffee when an old man in a yellow tracksuit on a scooter slices a path between a man and two women on the sidewalk to a chorus of fuck yous ... hey sky and trace clouds! hey sun! come on up this final Friday of the year played out ... you don't need to struggle anymore. if you can, just be with someone you love and who loves you. have breakfast in bed... take the longest drive home.  

#katyamills

12.26.24 diary

 We walk several miles north to Elvis Presley Boulevard and the Westgate Hotel. I have a heavy backpack on with water and bananas and clothes. My basic black dress over jeans and white Nikes with maroon swoops. Your knees are sleeved and cannot take too much but you don't complain. It feels right to arrive a little road weary. Like our little pilgrimage to the King. Along the way a Buddhist came up to us and pushed a jade bracelet around my wrist before I knew what was happening. She flashed us a generous smile. You dug out twenty bucks and she placed two necklaces around our necks with emerald seated Buddhas hanging off of beaded chains. She did not speak any English and it didn't matter. We offered thanks and loving embraces. 

"It's going to be the longest drive from your house to mine tonight," he tells me. "I'm going to hate it." It's 5am and your thoughts already have you twelve hours ahead. We haven't even checked out of Room #2342 in the Horseshoe Hotel. You watch the morning news while I swallow my vitamins and meds with coffee and perform my rituals. 

The Westgate still has the original clamshell billboard where they used to post lettering announcing his residency. That was back when it was the Las Vegas Hilton and the International. The first thing you see coming in the lobby is memorabilia. His first ever pistol alongside his favorite gun, a .357 which he kept holstered and brought with him, on and off stage. A menu of all the groceries he ordered two weeks at a time. Lots of porterhouse steaks and pot roasts and filets. Five whole chickens. Tomatoes and veggies and onions and bread. A pair of his black boots and photos of him, on and off stage. The sheriff badge he got when he was deputized. A gold watch and his stripes from the Army. A few of his favorite belt buckles. 

We only had one major fight the whole five days and it was the day we lost one another on the Strip for two hours. "It was because we were apart," you say. I love the way you frame it and name it. I love you so much. Who knows how many more years we can travel here together on holiday. I have faith it will be many more but life can be unpredictable and you never know. Bunny and Mousey are almost twelve years old. 

The hotel holds the old world charm. The lobby ceiling is low with recessed lighting and there are chandeliers by the bar and lots of frosted glass and redwood. Big black and white prints of Tom Jones and Bobby Darrin and Wayne Newton and Elvis, and many others who performed here years ago. There is an inscription that shows how many shows Elvis performed in a decade, and every show was sold out. He gave his all to this place and the people who came to see their beloved hero. We walk around looking at all the images carefully like we are in a museum. A lady approaches me and warns me not to go into that room. They are selling timeshares.

You could call something tragic but you don't have to see it that way. All of us are born to expire. Our lives and bodies are like land leases or timeshares, too. The King lived the most spectacular life! Just like the Buddha before him. It doesn't have to be tragic. I offer you something, too, after all you have given me. Not just a hundred dollars of the seven hundred I won this week betting on the NFL ... I also give you faith over fear. The nine miles distance between our two homes is nothing! Distance cannot stand between us. We are always together, like magic. 

Katya Mills, 12.26.2024

23,000 steps

we are inside a pyramid, light show on the wall. a solo horn feels its way into our hearts. the kids all look spaced. we are in our hotel room on the 15th floor and i slide the curtains open. sky meets mountain in a ragged line becoming more defined. pulled up to perpendiculars by the various hotels. the Westin, MGM Grand, the Hilton, the Platinum. our time here is ending after 23,000 steps. what will 2024 be like? i promise to be the same. someone who you can rely on.  #katyamills

Vegas = love

a planet hit the ground just off the Strip this morning and still spinning. we are gambling within moderation and - go figure - not winning. made a friend from Miami who swears they won't go back to Florida. i get it. kids in euphoria circle the tired parents. we wait for the shift change outside the AMPM at the cross of Flamingo and Formula 1. need coffee making love and the sun. a woman from Indiana with her daughter celebrating turning twenty-one.   #katyamills

down in it

summer is ending. the farmers harvest the grapes. the hawk wings tipped to the side observes the changes from above. i am down in it. in the city they live in tents on the avenues with blue-nosed pits to protect them. a simple walk on a cool fall morning is my high. 

  #katyamills

at the pinball hall of fame

two hours

on the same and single quarter

she was generous she had us
in the twilight zone

finally we introduced to her
a disheartened boy
taken by gravity
pockets empty

the silver ball

pushed on the pin

he pulled back on the coil

fired her into play

we watched them fall
in love

#katyamills

whip

the barista and i have a moment. Lavazza café. hotel lobby. she can see i can see she's not thrilled to be working over the holidays and i feel for her. all around us people are playing. a few of them winning a lot of them drinking some of them smoking. most of them losing. she asks me again. changes my heart on it. push the valve. soft top my mocha with whip

#katyamills

of the sun

across from the Bellagio

we watched the street performers

and the fountains a script of dances

night mistaken for day

the Cirque De Soleil

#katyamills

the land of anything possible

a mile off the Strip past the Crazy Horse III to find a bank because you don't use plastic. i don't care. i could walk for days. behind us the Luxor. streets named after rat pack. guy in a pickup pulls over to proposition. things quickly go awry in the land of anything possible

#katyamills

lights. camera. action

Paris hotel and casino. a replica of the Eiffel Tower steps one giant welded leg into a generous lounge. statue of a man mopping the street outside a piano bar and crêperie. you grab the handle to help him. i take your photo. the action here never ends. brave faces under the lights. the work is never done.

#katyamills

Vegas 12.26.2022

Vegas. 5am. i take the elevator 20 floors down to the lobby. slot machines. whoever on the last dime. an old man smoking a cigar. a young woman with a pained expression. a dog under her arm. pulling for 7 bars on 5 lines. the dog licks foam off the lid of her coffee.

#katyamills

desert

plotting

we pressed the paper map into the table 

compelled to the north through the mountains 

i gave in easy because i love you

south. through the desert

my imagination can fill in 

any vast expanse of

nothing

#katyamills

star lost in space

Vegas was nothing like advertised

a stitch in the fabric and rather small

like a star lost in space

the desert itself was bold

the canyons made the silence 

loud

#katyamills

lost ina video

He was an older man, single and retired and replete with cash, dating a woman he knew through her employment at a casino he frequented. He was forever dysconnected to a timeless place of artificial light and sound. He committed an atrocity, an even several hundred yards detached from the crime scene. He was once flesh and blood but got lost ina video poker game that never ended, and whatever connect he had to reality if any, was severed. Nobody can understand how this can happen to a man, and few will ever forgive him. His father was a known criminal and he was born into a family on the run. This cannot account for his psychotic break. He left behind him a timeless place of artificial light and sound. And thousands upon hundred thousands of broken hearts.