clothespin

From her essay “Fun City: Las Vegas, U.S.A.”:

Every aspect of the American fraud is accentuated in Las Vegas, in rubbery victuals and false bonhomie, in meaningless greeting and programmed response. “Well, hi, howya doin’?” say the waitresses in their sincerity voices, “ready for sump’n to putya on top of the world? Howzabout our Pecan-and-Broiled-Lobster-Tail Pizza?”: and when one day, just as an experiment, I rang the Secret Witness line, upon which you may give confidential evidence to the police, exactly the same voice answered me, with just the same computer brightness. (28)

I'm working on a paper on Jan Morris' travel writing. I've only been to the airport in Las Vegas, so I can't vouch for her description. But when I read her, I feel like I'm going to a place in her acerbic, witty mind, and I just love that. Gotta love the prose. Had to share.

"[. . .] poems are like dreams: in them you put when you don't know you know."

-Adrienne Rich, from "When We Dead Awaken: Writing as Re-Vision

I know this shouldn't be what I got out of this essay (and it wasn't), but this is, nonetheless, my favorite quote. Could I be more apologetic? When do I outgrow that?