Very little is needed to make a happy life; it is all within yourself, in your way of thinking.
-Marcus Aurelius
It really is all about the little things. Cigarette machines repurposed as little Art machines, for example. Art-O-Mat is part of The Cosmopolitan’s fabulous, changing Art Program. This is only one of the many wonderful things about this hotel–the only one on the strip (I believe) to have balconies. Las Vegas is opulent and ostentatious, welcoming and lonely.
The nighttime lights of this city laugh at the vast desert, but the mountains hush the neon into submission at sunrise. Oh, Duality.
Back to little things.
Here is a brief list of little but magnificent.
-campfire light in the backyard
-roses and daisies together in a vase
-watching your son live a life all his own, beautiful as his birth almost thirty-one years ago
–Halo Top ice cream
-landing on your feet again
-loving your tribe and feeling the love back
-Art
-romping dogs
-just…landing
There will be time; oh yes Mr. Eliot. This year there will be gorgeous amounts of time.
sabbatical (adj.) 1640s, “of or suitable for the Sabbath,” from Latin sabbaticus,
from Greek sabbatikos “of the Sabbath” (see Sabbath). Noun meaning “a year’s absence granted to researchers” (originally one year in seven, to university professors) is from 1934, short for sabbatical year, etc., first recorded 1886 (the thing itself is attested from 1880, at Harvard), related to sabbatical year (1590s) in Mosaic law, the seventh year, in which land was to remain untilled and debtors and slaves released.
And where is my metaphorical untilled land? Who are the debtors and slaves of my heart?
This too, I will explore. Adding to the little list: gratefulness.
I just landed. I’m a little rusty. It’s time to let the writing genie back in (or at least unlock the door).
You can buy my chapbook, 
’m not ready. Maybe I’m too ready. Maybe 
a