SUFFER THE LITTLE EPIPHANIES

Dr. Omed suffers from numerous petit epiphanies. Some say I suffer from mental illness, but I say I don't, I enjoy every minute of it.

Once upon a time, Dr. Omed spent a day in March, driving alone through the great desolation of the basin and range terrain of Nevada. It felt like driving over the bones of God. The rental car was on autopilot back to Las Vegas, where I was staying with my wife, Elspeth. I was sleepily telling the beads of the car lights strung on the highway in the deep dark of desert night when I topped the last ridge. Suddenly the lights of the Strip appeared like a shake snow scene, a bauble plucked by a magician from the vast blackness laid over God's bare bones.

I felt a strange fond pride at the little lamp the gangsters, moguls, grifters, and marks had set in the darkness. Dr. Omed did not expect to become fond of Las Vegas; he is not much interested in gambling or glitz. But, Pilgrims, Dr. Omed had an epiphany in that moment. I realized that Las Vegas is a Holy City like Jerusalem or Mecca; a sacred place where true believers go to worship everything the America the commercial sells them. The Axis Mundi where people whose dreams are bigger than their imaginations come on pilgrimage, to tithe to Mother Luck, shake hands with the holy one armed bandits, and bow down to Mammon and mammaries. Las Vegas is one great, wholehearted, mass delusional neon fuck you to an uncaring Cosmos. It embodies the religious impulse in a pure and uncorrupted form.

That is, dear pilgrims, why Dr. Omed has a sneaking fondness for that seven-come-eleven wet dream to this very day. Be sure to visit the Shrine of St. Liberace when you make the Haj to the American Mecca. The relics of this Saint are very efficacious in provoking healing mirth.

(Originally published in Dr. Omed's Tent Show Revival 6.26.03)