In the intellectually challenging film, Inception, extractors architect the target's dream in order for the target to divulge uncertain secrets. The team does not have certainty what may happen, but rather, engineer the environment and situation in which the dream would occur. Once the target is placed in this new conscious world, the extractors hope the target will fill the space with his desires and fears and ultimately secrets. Real time is compressed as the dream state expands time. A few hours in the dream could allow for events that happen over course of days in real lives.
While I'm certain that it is reality even without having to spin a totem, every time I visit the city of Las Vegas, Nevada USA, the city uncannily looks and feels like an universal dream, built cross section of the masses. We drive into the desert city in the absolute darkness of a Wednesday evening. Only the moonlight shines the roads for hundreds of miles while we follow the single stream of orange rear lights forward and search for intermittent music on the radio. Just as the mundane sentiments are threatening to swallow our late night spirits, the road expands into the oasis of light in the middle of the Nevada desert. As in the dream state, the labyrinth appears out of nowhere. We forget how we found ourselves in this city by the time the midnight hour has passed and we are suffocating in the fumes of alcohol, cigarettes and questionable quality of perfume.
I tried recalling the word for the most vivid shade of blue on Thursday. We finally step out of the room at four p.m. after nursing whisky hangovers and another scene of Inception is thrust upon me. Only rather than a corner cafe and cobble stone street of Paris, this is a complete mosaic. It is a mixture of glass and steel, of landmarks foreign and domestic, of brand new constructions and derelict structures that we only wonder when the expiration date may come. This is some architect's creation of grandeur and amusement, between coffee breaks and sarcastic ridicules. Somehow, this Legos city has been filled with occupants, those permanent and those looking for projections of themselves.
Four hours later, I count out six hundred dollar bills from my wallet and sit down at the blackjack table for the first time since I embarked on this dream. I sit on the last seat around the horseshoe, my perennial lucky position. Across from me, a twenty-one year old University of Texas junior, by the way of Seoul, Korea, is lamenting his inability to cash his $10,000 winning at the poker table. It is as the traditional wisdoms go: “two things you can’t escape in this life, death and taxes.” Vegas may be grand but no social security number posits the casino’s to withhold his loot in order to report taxes.
In our dreams, we could possess exotic skills, exhibit extreme behavior and act out, in this particular architecture, wildest fantasies. As I surrender my cash to the house of Harrah, I examined what my projections look like on the infamous Las Vegas Strip. The middle age woman flaunts her remaining assets by walking with a rousing bounce in clothing that need a few more inches of fabric, in all four directions, along the sidewalk. The college senior fraternity boys barely contain their own physical stimulation every time a driving billboard with phone numbers for call girls slowly roll down the road. The multi-general family enjoys wine, buffet meals and exhilarating but ultimately defeating lessons of chance. The foreign tourists indefatigably pour over every bag in the three-day-new Prada store and effortlessly pay in cash. If this wasn’t a dream universe, I would feel that every person I meet here in Vegas is doing his or her best to be a caricature of a stereotype.
For Thursday evening I succumb to the limbo of the caricature state. For over three hours, I sit at the end of the blackjack switch table, dangling chains of cigarettes, mindlessly putting forth two stacks of three red chips at each hand. The dealer, Peter, tries to engage me in conversation as a young male dealer would when he takes an interest. I smile but remain vacuous while systematically order one whisky and coke after another. Peter is emitting positive karma towards my seat position. This is why I picked this table, this seat, and this particular dealer. My projection absorbs luck from a dealer and wins without much effort despite the game’s name. If this was really a dream, I’m merely sitting here spending time and money. Perhaps my target is close by. Perhaps my target is even at this table. I’m particularly conspicuous but at the same time, detract all attention away from other extractors, away from the target.
As physical space can be altered and manipulated in the dream, so can the sense of time. The sun steams my Riesling at the base of the Eiffel Tower on Friday morning. I'm starting to crave escape from the projections around me. They do seem to turn and stare, wondering why I'm sitting at this verandah table alone, with my meal and my wine. At one p.m. Vegas time, why is a woman leisurely eating alone in a French bistro at the Paris casino? I choose to instantaneously escape to the night time and listen to the hundreds of thousands of whistles and ringers transmit a cacophonous chorus.
This trip isn’t for inception. Instead, I fully participate in roles and fantasies by observing our collective projections. On the 4.2 miles stretch of Las Vegas Boulevard, I watch the product of many dreams, from human beings of all types in a 3-D show for maximum audience pleasure. We finally initiate the kick; the totem will never fall here in the desolate tract full of concrete, light bulbs and electronics. It is a mirage after all, and we leave it far behind driving onto California.
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