[Image: partial screen capture from a photo of Michael Heizer’s monumental artwork, City, as found via Google Maps.]

Even reliably non-sectarian whiskey river finds itself in a holiday spirit today… although, since it is whiskey river, after all, it carries a bit of a knowing twist:

The Christmas Letter

Wherever you are when you receive this letter
I write to say we are still ourselves
In the same place
And hope you are the same.

The dead have died as you know
And will never get better,
And the children are boys and girls
of their several ages and names.

So in closing I send you our love
And hope to hear from you soon.
There is never a time
Like the present. It lasts forever
Wherever you are. As ever I remain.

(John N. Morris [source])

The Missus and I have followed an annual tradition, every December 23rd for the almost 30 years we’ve been together: we go out for a nice dinner. It’s a tradition with twists of its own, of course; in our case, The Missus never knows where we’re going — I selected the venue, make the reservation, and drive us to the place. (When we lived in North Florida, as we did until this year, I generally took a roundabout route as well, just to keep her guessing as long as possible.)

This year, as I’ve mentioned, we’re in Las Vegas to spend some time with The Stepson. So this year, he generously offered to drive us to the restaurant and back. As we made our way from his home in the northern fringes of the city to the Las Vegas Strip (the restaurant is actually in a casino), I was struck by a sudden image of the place in, say, 500 years or so… something like the climactic conclusion of Planet of the Apes, say, or like Michael Heizer’s monumental sculpture, City, not far from here in the Nevada desert.

I imagined, see, not just how the landscape might be different, nearly buried. I imagined as well the remnants of human culture after some colossal catastrophe, probably climatic or geological. In the terms offered by John N. Morris’s poem, for instance: what might be the very last Christmas letter composed and distributed by a Las Vegas resident? Will its author know of the onrushing finality? What on earth might such a letter say, as Christmas letters are traditionally practically required to say, about the preceding year? To whom would the letter even be addressed? And so on.

Not exactly the sort of stuff one would expect to have in one’s head on a December 23rd Christmas date, eh? And yet Christmastime in Vegas worked the magic that could be expected of it: covering up the dark thoughts not in sand, but glitter and noise…