Something else is here.

God Bless your life. Good Morning. Good Evening. Sonya is in the living room “cooking” with her Toy Kitchen set and I’m in my room gearing up to go clean my bathroom before making lunch before packing up for my two week trip to the Mid West. The apprehension is almost staggering. I’m in a different place in so many ways that I can’t wait to see the reaction of anyone that notices. And let’s just say they will notice...

The thing is, life isn’t logical for me right now, hasn’t been for a while. The Midwest, Minneapolis to Chicago to Champaign, is logically one of the most peaceful homely parts of this whole country. Car Pools, Tail Gates , College Towns, Community Colleges, Parks, Minivans, Mom and Pops, Century Old buildings and businesses, lots of country brush and landscape, Festivals, Waves and Handshakes, the list goes on. And I’m coming in from Las Vegas. This part of the country is the exact opposite. Sin City, Paper palaces, Disney Land on acid, Swingers clubs, Bunny Ranches, Porn Mansions, Orgy parties, half naked women dancing on the side of the street, a statue of a red lady devil complete with horns, a tail and no clothes on in front of a club called El Diablo, completely different unending list. I’m talking it would take a novel to cover the tip of THAT iceberg. Sex, Drugs, Gambling, Thousand dollar Toasts and Drive Through Weddings, Marriages and Divorces abound.

If I tell I have always found peace, love, sense of self and family, self control, Months without useless sex, alcohol, Mary Jane or nicotine, Spiritual stability, evidence of God himself and just plain health on all levels in one of those towns. Then proceed to tell you I went through despair, emotional decay, wanton liquor and smoke abuse, sexual carelessness that could’ve cost me my very life, anger, depression, lack of genuine community, unreal affection and absolute darkness on every side in the other town, the answers as to which town was which should surprise you.

In addition to this, all the other factors remain constant. I have a lot of cool real genuine friends and family in the Mid West. There is obviously little to none of that in my life in Vegas. Nevada is desert, things have to be artificially built or grown here, houses to parks to plants to the big old Hoover dam. People don’t talk to you much, leave alone greet you. Disparity and despair run this town along with the snakes, pimps, loose women, prostitutes and slim fast drug addicts that barter life and death in it. And I don’t have the time to get into the church situation here so I’ll be brief. It’s the same as everywhere else, if not alarmingly worse if that’s possible.

My apprehension for the Midwest springs from nearly losing it there two years ago, moving at the request of a family member to Vegas at the beginning of last year to find peace, and leaving to return to the Midwest for the first six months of this year to find myself in a worse place than I was when I left, running back to Vegas only to find more peace and personal growth there than when I left. It honestly freaked me out.

I don’t know what else that means or how it might help you in your struggle with constructing your own half built empire except for this; Something I couldn’t see in the nicest homeliest part of this country nearly fully and completely destroyed me, and something I could not see in the most desolate heartless sinful lawless dangerous part of this country not only saved me but let me grow.

I believe without seeing, because whatever those things I can’t see are, they not only believe in me, I’m pretty sure they can see me. And they’re going to do or try to do what they intend to do to me.

And I learned the hard way that this will happen whether I believe or not.