What Lies Behind the Lights

Just a few blocks from the glitz and overpriced tourist nature of the strip is lo-fi residential urban wasteland where an slumped over hunchback elderly man in a blue trucker cap, polyester slacks, and industrial engineer work shirt initates a huanting melody of scraped soft metal walker against the well worn unmaintained sidewalk of Sands Ave. The sun has set he is most alone now with nothing but the constant flow of traffic to keep him company as he pushes on like the ant, motivated by something not readily apparant on this human beings face, in fact his face is hidden, possibly focused on the ground in front of him looking for any familiar signs which might indicate close proximity to his dwelling, whatever form it may take, trash dumpster, back alley, hallway, or undersized apartment in the concrete jungle. What propells him on his journey from convenience store to unknown destination. The old man does not look to be conscious of the surrounding reality as if frozen inside his body, his mind, trapped walking like a snail crawls along the sidewalk surface in the dew of the early morning sprinkler runoff. Soon enough he will disappear back into the biovac of working class abodes concentrated so close to the million dollars condos and billion dollar hotels of Las Vegas.

The cooling temperatures of late bring out more people, a group of men are helping a woman jump start her car, one of the guys happens to be an employee at the local dry cleaner/laundrymat, plenty of biovauc residents busy between shifts at the casinos or construction site cleaning clothes for a family of six, I feel like am shopping for towels as one lady stacks about thirty five of them in stacks of seven across a plastic emrald green table. The next generation of uncontrollable heathen kids run around unattended as their older sisters do their best to keep them under control while dad watches television, preoccupied by some other thoughts, the mother busily, frantically tries to keep up with ever increasing load of clothes from the wall of driers behind her, a battle she is sure to lose.