Vegas baby
So I'm in Vegas right now and it's crazy...and I wrote a letter to my friend and it pretty accurately explains how I feel in life right now. So the obvious thing to do was post it here :)

Hello my dear - well Vegas has been very strange for me. I'm compelled to write about it so I figured I'd just write about it to you. I'm sitting here right now on my friends laptop in my super fancy hotel room waiting for her and her brother to get here. She works for this marketing firm and one of their clients is opening their show tonight. It's this topless show called "Peep Show" and it stars freaking Scary Spice from the Spice Girls. What the hell? Where am I? Anyway - that's where they are and I'm hiding in my hotel room. I used to live here and love it here. I used to want my whole family to move here so I could have the best of both worlds. I used to feel so comfortable walking the strip, being amongst the tourists and the filth. But I drove in to town Friday and I was just...overwhelmed. Everything was so BIG and artificial and shit...just stupid, everything trying to sell something, everyone trying to be bigger & better than the next. I used to love the lights because I thought they were beautiful and whatever...but now it's just all so fake and I don't know, like those lights in those bug killers. The bugs flock to them but the light just kills them. Vegas is RIDICULOUS Jesse. Then I saw this GIANT structure and the next day when I saw it from the front I was literally scared. It was so big and steel and pointy and just the polar opposite of anything and everything natural and beautiful. Apparently it's the biggest structure currently being built in the entire world right now. I guess steel prices have gone up because this place is using so much steel to be built. It's disgusting and just way way way too big. I don't know,that's just how it makes me feel.

So one of the things I wanted to see while here was the Bellaggios conservatory, it's this (generally) beautiful area in the hotel that they change up every few months with different scuptures or art work or displays. So we go in and in the middle they have all of these butterflies in cages. Real butterflies all caged up. And they had these giant lights that these poor butterflies were trying to get to (like the moth to the flame again). They kept frantically flying into these giant fake lights and it just made me so sad. Butterflies are my favorite animals and to see them caged up like that and trying to fly towards the sun, but instead flying towards these stupid fake lights...it was terrible. I couldn't stop thinking about it all night. Then we're walking down the strip and there are thousands of little fliers for hookers litering the streets. The place is just disgusting......I don't know...I can't wait to leave.

And I got back to the hotel room and I was pretty drunk and Emily had gone to bed. So I wrote you a letter on the fancy Wynn stationary but I'm so not showing it to you because it was drunken and stupid. But I was trying to tell you about the caged butterflies. I was saying that I thought that people now are trying so frantically to get towards the light...but the light they are flying towards isn't real! "Go to college, get a good career because you need money!! get married, have children, buy a house, be rich, buy cars, have this have that...." but that isn't real, that isn't real light, having things isn't going to make you happy. What's real is family and love and friends and music and food....you don't need what people think you need to live a happy & fulfilled life. It made me want to more than ever get rid of everything I own and just defy everything that society tells me I need to do to be a successful person.

Anyway at the end of the letter I said: "Don't ever forget how real the light can seem. Everything I've seen tonight has been ridiculous and fake, but maybe tonight you really are real."

I just love you Jesse. I'm so glad I met you and the boys. You guys make me feel real and right. This place is lonely and sad to me and I'd much much much rather spend my time in that dirty van with you dirty boys talking about leprechans shitting weed than sitting in this fancy hotel eating expensive food looking out on this stupid fucking city any day of my life.

This may all sound stupid, I don't know, but being here has just really made me realize how I'm very much going in the right direction in my life. I mean because I used to live here & want this. And now I want out, I want to go. Whether I go on tour with you guys or not, I'm not talking about that, I'm just talking about me getting the hell out of Sac and moving to the country and all that.....that's what I need, that's where I need to be and you guys are the reason I made this decision. Something about you and the way you live inspired me to go and get out and get real. And I'll just love you forever for it.

Ok I'll stop now :) I feel chatty right now and could keep typing forever. Jesse what people pay big money for in this town is fucking crazy. I can't wait to be with you guys again.


So that's where I am in my life. I really don't mean to insult anyone that wants what I don't want...I hope what you are going for makes you happy, really I do, but for me, what I'm supposed to want doesn't make me happy. To me happiness is nothingness...music...family...I don't know..I don't feel like I know how to properly explain it.

I'm a little drunk now so I'm going to stop. Oh my god I just spent $8 on chocolate covered almonds. I need Emily to come back before I buy more things from the mini bar.........


P.S. Hey Tim - I have your candy bars plus some extra Vegasy stuff for you. But if you think you're getting some of my $8 almonds you're mistaken.