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In the dark, the view out of one side of the window was brilliant with the lights of the city. On the left side, however, it was pitch dark. Like a page was torn from the giant picture book. No forms at all to be seen. Not one shadow. Come the morning, I pressed myself up against the class and saw the reason: We were at the edge of swampland. Right there below us, marshes, largely untouched and then directly next to the wild greeness was the largely uninteresting banality of Atlantic City lit not by neon, but by daylight.
I squealed in wonder at my realization. I squealed even louder when I strained to look further into the wetlands and I saw wind turbines. Friggin windmills, yo! The girls chuckled at me. ZOMG the bed is sooo comfy! Oh and look! Robes! This place is sooo nice! The hotel was nice. The room was awesome. And the shower was totally sexy! And they chuckled and laughed at me, not only because I was genuinely so excited, but because I was expressing their excitement, they're just a bit more classier than me to not ZOMG at everything. I skipped past the Bobby Flay's and Emeril eateries to the regular folk foodcourt and swore that Fatburger was the best burger ever. ZOMG. And I was captivated over the now long-foreign concept of being able to smoke indoors. Oh this is so crazy!! The pings and chimes of the slot machines. The labrinthine floorplan of the casino that went on forever and the way the lighting never changed so we never knew what time it was. It wasn't new to me. I had seen brighter lights. More ostentacious forms of consumption and temptations. But I was in a different place...and it was all so fun. And hilarious. And exciting.
The girls giggled at my foolishness because they agreed it was all so nice. Incredibly nice. To get away for a couple of days. To be out with your friends. To be on a road trip and bop to the same song on loop over and over and never get sick of it for some reason. To be out of our element yet not feel exposed because we weren't alone. We had each other. To have something to look forward to, whether it be the John Legend concert or the gambling later or even the ride back home. We woooooo'ed at the traffic bumps in the parking garage as Safi zoomed over like we were in a mini-roller coaster. So silly, but what did it matter. It was all a really good time.
And the view from our window that morning answered all my questions from the night before. What looked pitch before was actually far more interesting than I had imagined. I liked being out of my element and finding fascination out of discarded swamps at the edge of excess which was silently finding a repurposing... friggin WINDMILLS, yo! Out of my familiar but I wasn't alone and exposed. And I appreciated what I had a bit more, though I didn't need the reminder.
