She held the cup of coffee like a fermented bow against the dark spaces of reason.  In the breach of the morning light, it was a dawn she would have like to repossess 2000 miles to the West.  But here she stood at the back window of a Duluth Heights group home, snow filled to the lower trunks of the pines with passing deer just as confused-- a swallowed up memory of timeless landscape that had lost it's gravity.  No movement or sound.  Just vacated rabbit tracks and an un-shoveled deck.  She had a hard time defining the American good life.  It was like a bad clown portrait won at a local carnival that needed touch ups in the basement.  Most likely the painting had clumped up acrylic laid across a velvet sheen intended to captivate magic.  There was no visible magic in her life, just matchstick counting of days as her bank account increased in relation to her 30 plus hours of overtime each week.  She was saving for the fate against time, the anti aging gene that would set her back 30 years into Mick Vrudny's arms.  The only jilted magic currently was John Nettles, a British actor, who captivated her consciousness.  She lived in his Netflix underbrush of green Midsomer meadows, stone walls and luscious English gardens.  It was in the transient, tranfererable state she could begin to imagine.

Death and Life were produced from the same definitive noun -- a non tangible conception to mark beginning and end, with the same flat line emotion.  A spooled consciousness that rotated poignant memories- her daughter that lie dead on a morgue table, the last words her hometown boyfriend spoke to her, the evasiveness of her father, a flicker of standing on the mountain in San Bernardino, the view of the Moreno Valley from the rim of the world.  It was in those high places, away from the City of Angels or those dense forests of Minnesota where she came to be, an infrared heat source to tranquility defined apart from humans.

I can only hear the faintness of your voice as you prescribe to me in your own predestined oral values contrived from a Melody Beattie book with Joel Olsteen innuendos....the advice you thought I should heed and what concrete silhouettes fully got me out of the casino. It was by my own doing with a divine, powerful hand.  My will gave into reason.  A shimmering voice against the glaze of my mind, a cultural restitution of conformity that sculptured my inner objectivity into a Jesus provoked denial of materialism.  It was all about separation- the separation of fleshly will to encounter divine will, the perpetuation of mortality and attempting to increase riches and multiply them from a post -mortem minimum wage.  Desire, conquest, the casino imagery and baseless nonsense that drove me into plummeting bank accounts, followed by false crescendos of excess.  The savage minimalism of my father who had 800,000 in the bank and wore his tattered light blue sweater 5 of 7 days a week.  All I need is a BLT or a Reuben and a bank balance over $100 to be content, but I was driven to drive 20 miles to Black Bear to expand paper dollars I could not eat.   (to be continued)

There was a point when....

Climatic change is an awful thing. I am speaking of the climatic change of my own doing by moving to a frigid climate.  I came from a place of eternal sunshine, endless roads, mountains and valleys.  There were also a steady stream of people around me.  I had money.  Living in many places has created a lot of holes in my soul.  I have often tried to fill the gap of nostalgia with returning to places that may fill me up.  After receiving my inheritance in 2011, I did choose to come back to Minnesota in 2012 so that my son could experience a normal education similar to one I grew up in.  He liked it and I made the right decision for a time.   He will be graduating this June and I will return to California shortly after that.  Some people can handle six month winters.  I can't.  I grew up in Central Minnesota in the Twin Cities which is very eclectic and stimulating.  Duluth is the epitome of hardship.  The landscape is ragged, the buildings ancient, the conditions fierce.  I cannot endure Duluth. That is why I chose gambling for a time.  I chose it because it was a short term solution to a long term problem.  I suffer from depression.  I probably did not even think through the entire decision to move here.  I am glad it was a good one for my son and that I created another solid foundation to discover a new aspect/lifestyle in America.  He may stay when I leave and I will have to provide him a supplemental support system.  But I have to leave.  Things happened here that did not happen anywhere else.  Painful things that I am through support able to put behind me.  I have now relaunched my running career and am running a 1/2 marathon in July or so.  I am not picking the top race in the region here, i am picking a lesser one.  The comradery I will feel with my body when it is fully developed once again will give me the strength to make better decisions in the future.  I thank God for all the good things that have happened to me in the last two years and I put aside all the painful ones.  I am also involved recently with some educational websites that will gain me more income in preparation to leave.

Fonduluth casino arbitrary management style

The spirit of the manitou has vacated Fonduluth

Comments 1

by Jane Hoffman

Fonduluth will reopen it's doors on September 1, 2015 after a remodel promising a more pleasurable experience of gaming which includes a smoke free first floor. All the amenities and modern electro lighted machines hides the fact that the casino is there for one thing, to take your money discretely. That fact aside, the patrons know that when they go in. What they don't know is what kind of reception they will get by casino management. If you are a regular and there every day, the relationship between casino staff and patrons can wear thin. The black jack dealer team has subjective rules which used to be listed 1-10. Favoritism is often an obstacle or hindrance to players that are not in good graces with black jack managers. Many of the dealers talk back to customers in depricating ways, predicting their next move or amount they plan to donate that day. One dealer who has been there over 10 years, even tried to predict what day and time a player may return. What is lacking is an overall respect for frequent visitors. It is possible that the staff themselves get tired of seeing the same people come every day, repeating the same cycles of behavior. Maybe they are using their lack of courtesy as a hint not to come back. A retiree with a limp who is generally cheerful comes every day except Sunday and is offered a free drink card each day. He plays at the Black Jack table, is entitled to his opinions and never doubted by staff. He plays one hand and then two and then one but complains when other people do it. He doesn't have a persistent attitude about winning or losing and he doesn't try to make enemies. The problem is, when other people try to play the same way as him periodically, they get crap for it. Lucille Henning, an acquantance of mine, has noticed this behavior by black jack staff. They target individuals whose playing style they don't like and pick on them for every small infraction. Another dealer who generally works graveyard, brags constantly about her good works in the community and her exceptional mom-hood but never mentions that her job entails collecting money from patrons every day in a devious manner that undermines her bragging rights as a Christian. Another problem with Fonduluth is that the tribal council in Cloquet honors the Native tradition and respects the feedback of players by letter or email but a verbal recourse directly in downtown Duluth is nearly impossible. If a player has a complaint, they can submit to a suggestion box but rarely can a problem while gaming be resolved with conversation. Nancy, a recent player, attended the casino five times the last two weeks in December. On the last day she was there, she gamed for 2 horus on a slot then walked upstairs to claim two $10 credits on the Black jack table. She was told by a security guard she had been banned. She spent 8 hours in the casino that week over a two day period. She spent 5 hours at the Black jack table the day before with cameras in full effect and no one once mentioned it to her either day that she was or would be suspended. She tried to ask the security team and they knew no answers. They didn't know what the mitigating incident was, what day the decision made or time of day, who was responsible or the specific reason. Since she spent over $600 that week at the casino, she felt like she was entitled to a decision. She called the floor manager after she left the casino. The female manager told her that the security team would know the information and circumstances. Nancy was transferred. The security office who answered said that she is supsended until further notice, they had no idea why. The security officer stated "Don't call back" and hung up on her. Michael Himango, one of the chief tribal members in Cloquet's Fond du Lac tribal management office is a man with integrity and backbone. He answers letters and addresses the needs of the patrons, loyal patrons who have legitimate questions and want them answered. He doesn't treat the patrons like unnecssary baggage. He is also an ordained minister and friends with one of my Native comrades. It is my estimation that if more people had the natural courage, congeniality and legitimacy in decision making, so many patrons at Fonduluth would not feel shafted. Bear in mind, Fonduluth has to deal with a lot of unemployed, downtown transients. One patron witnesses money laundering between taxis and gaming customers at Fonduluth. For those gamblers who quit and turned their life over to a higher power, they can excuse themselves from the chaos one must undergo as a regular gambler at Fonduluth. No one specific player on any day will know if their membership is being terminated. There are no specific guidelines. There is only one assurance. Fonduluth casino management has turned their higher power over to crony white European middle aged men and women who make daily decisions on who is worthy to play or pay with their life or lifestyle. The cost is high when you are kicked out wth no notice or explanation after losing $300. The danger is borderline abuse and self deprication for risking your money and life for an establshment that cares absolutely nothing about the individual player or their potential rights. Luckily, there is some polite staff there to attend to daily needs but they don't call the biggest shots. Cha-ching, game can be over before you push the cash out button on the slot.

900--the empty universe.

You were my four days ago, You were my middle of the night sob story.  You were destined to be my money pit.  $150 later I forgot about you, whatever promises I made, your outbound bookie with crossed off numbers.  You were just you.  You enjoyed people.  Whether you dealed or were on the slots you somehow attracted people like electro magnetic fields.  You had a high command of your ideals, the principles of playing black jack but you somehow never transformed me to the high standard of ethics you relentlessly prescribed to.  The rule of logic that swam around my head like a hand of loose pebbles.  Knocking sense in me took more than effort.  It was a shield.  I spent that $100 and the $100 after that.  I even spent my blood plasma money.  There was only one rule of doctrine I subscribed to.  Don't go in the casino with less than $100.  One needed back up.  At least $105.  I will show you the image which you cannot imagine just from guessing about my life.  It's not that you become angry with me or I become angry with myself.  The gravitational pull can easily be broken, if that's what I want, what I truly want.

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I am an anatomical being, a captive of my own pagan imagery that goes beyond human comprehension or human sensitivity. I cannot explain my actions or my reasons behind it. I take vengeance into my own hands, lashing upon my own soul, a terror against my own flesh.   My hand form a crippled state of postured anxiety, arthritic and deformed but ready for the next attack.  I anticipate the cards, the smell, the odor, the cigarette dodging and the short sightedness of joint players.  The mind game is to overcome the dealer.  The redemption is rising above my conditional circumstance to a new high, the paper product, the dollar.  I earn money ethically but squander it.  I look for a common enemy or a spiritual tranquilizer in the middle of my transition.  My feet move along.  I determine the speed but not the direction.

Lights out.

I walk in the casino at noon and boom, the power goes off.  I wait by a dark slot and stop by the black jack table a few minutes later to find Francine putting the new dawn cards back into the holder with a hand held phone flashlight.  The casino is purely dark.  Dark enough for the ceiling elegance to not even have an afterglow about them.  The pop machines won't bring forth liquid or ice.  I am in the afterlife, stripped of all desires.  Minutes pass and now change.  I look for the exit.  It's time to leave even before I get an ordinance from heaven.


to be continued.

For those who think they know me, I don't know you. Unfortunately, you don't know the better me. However, I am graduating from gambling treatment tomorrow.

I have a friend who I had a rift with about a year ago. He speaks in terms of obscurity and uses Gandhi like expressions for what they wish others and the world to ideally be. He has an altruistic vision of the world and he made a nice video about it but he still resorts to name calling and hate speech.  This is an example of someone who is human--not fully seeing the true picture of themselves.  However, every range of human emotion can be validated even if it is inappropriate.  We ultimately decide who we want to be and how we can offer ourselves in friendship or persecute in hate. He does not look for the particular goodness in others.  For those whom he likes (or responds to him well), he accentuates their strengths.  For those he dislikes, he is quick to point out their shortcomings.  He even has a video on happiness and makes it clear that one should not criticize others or point out the weaknesses of themselves.  I have tried to live my life with the rush of love and goodness by connecting with people I identify with and trying to learn more about those I don't connect with.  Lately when I have dealt with conflict, I have had to define and recognize with those whom I had the conflict with.  I had a 4 yr friendship with a neighbor in North Hollywood in whom had a lot of good qualities of intellectual pursuit but a lot of major weaknesses including over-dependence on a woman who was simply a flake.  She couldn't establish a job until she actually got one being his PCA because he was heavy with some acute health problems.  She made him a lot of dinners and lived with him rent free but then would complain about the proverbial price of that exchange.  Free rent is hard to come by.  She didn't really want to answer to him or pay a price in which he exacted loyalty from her.  There was also the imbalance that he was in love with her and she had no interest in him.  In time, they became good friends.  She also reached out to me, helped me pack and continued to send me letters.  I was really only a marginal neighbor busy with a student teaching program. I got to know them better but knew in the back of my mind I would not be spending much more than I had to in North Hollywood.  When I got my inheritance, I had to get out of the big city of L.A. and search for my childhood roots.  Unlike my former friend in New York, I am not immediately hostile to anyone who has an issue or problem and the terms of the friendship aren't contracted on the difficulty of their lives.  Because I had two recent conflicts with a close acquaintance but not an intimate friend and a long term friendship that was plagued with certain difficulties because of perspective, I have been forced to examine myself.  The long term friendship dissolved because all of a sudden one day it ended because the continuity of our radio production and other issues were defined totally by one party and his basic disappointment with me cut off.  He abruptly made decisions. There were times he was cruel to my mutual acquaintances, but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and forgave him assuming his personal growth over time would include learning not how to treat people like shit.  My radio show was purely recreational and I have not pursued vocational goals with it although I did start professional radio classes in Hollywood in 2012 with American Radio Network.  I can examine others and watch their videos on YouTube and determine what they are trying to say or who they are even if the friendship is over.  As adults, we strive for understanding and sometimes closure.  Now that I have made it out of my gambling addiction and graduate March 24th, I decided to publish some of my notes from my impending speech tomorrow night.  They may not make total sense, but my readers will understand where I am coming from.....enjoy!!!!  I value the new friendships I have made in this one year treatment center.

I started the gambling treatment program on March 29, 2014.

Read Parable of lost sheep.  Luke 15

I joined with the incentive that help may be possible but I did not know what form I would receive it in.  It is because as a gambler, one is a perpetual runner from problems and the excitement was in that escape.

When I first entered Center for Alcohol and Drug Treatment , I filled out the forms and thought how could another structured environment exposing my weaknesses be reassuring?

When I first met people in the group, some had undefined motives for being there and others seemed to have stumble on a greater entity known as themselves.  Their actions didn’t match their countenance or presence of mind.  They had more gifts to share with the world than they could even be conscious of.

Candance – an inner and outward beauty and radiance.

Diane – persistence and dedication

John Clark – story telling abilities, soft sense of humor and candidness

Dawn – a determination to plead with participants to recognize themselves.

As soon as the essence of the program enlightened me, I understood the nature of why someone needed to commit.  Spending my whole life avoiding intimate confrontation with myself, my savior, my son and despair from the past such as losing a daughter by death and husband by divorce magnified the light of struggles.

Gambling was an easy escape in which I would enter the world of superficial light to conceal the outcome of permanent darkness.  Laughing people, jokesters, those dealers who thought they knew me and exploited my weaknesses, I became a pawn in their game.  I was attached to the one thing that would be my ultimate destruction.  Although I had allies, I was setting myself up for the final battle that would force confrontation with myself which was a cloud of eternal escape.

It seemed to be embodied in their profession that their jabbing insults would become my potential mockery.  Their act of genuity was like a false cup of reward, ready to remove my joy.

I was unable to separate myself so a power bigger than me made the eternal separation.  It was a result of my own actions, poor judgment and a swift decision by Native Am management that 86’ed me for life.  I felt like Tim Tebow with incredible gifts but only possessing the scrutiny of the media and a mockery for my true self which was a fallen Christian.

How did I find the light?  I saw it through the lines of despair and repentance of other people’s faces as they recognized in themselves that their greater good lie outside the actions of their temporary fix.  That there was something better within themselves that could allow them to conquer this mad disease.  For some if it was small children at home.  For others, they could not win over their critics but they won the victory over their own critics which included themselves.  Others had to face critical family members or job changes or financial consequences but the purpose of overcoming was not hindered by one obstacle.

We learned to depend on others and when those who could not define their higher power, they waded in the outpatient group by practicing the readings, learning slowly until they could envision an outline of a higher power that could strengthen them until the next meeting.

Some people cracked and faded, never fully gripping a self identity that could hurdle the next challenge.  For those fallen by the wayside, I recognize your battalion of excuses but it will only become future building blocks for the next bridge you will have to prepare yourself to cross.  You cannot escape yourself.

Running turns to walking and to stillness until the vision eventually becomes complete.  Then you find new ways to define yourself as you co mingle eternal paradigms of happiness, new joy and the flavor of love.  One day you will see in a mirror dimly and then you will see face to face.  I will know in part, I am understood even as I understand fully
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Addendum: True friendships are not built on hostility and finger pointing.  Friendships are built on acceptance of the person and the convergence of understanding and recognition of weaknesses.

The story is already written but the suspense remains

Far away in her mind, time creates gaps to a moment of passage that may or may not come. Because time can't give away that eternal clue as to what fate or outcome will bring. Faith and trust have become oblivious in the lump of her throat. She is still planning ahead, planning her escape. She knows it is time to leave. Stability? What is that? Her tears were salty wounds upon her skin when he left. The third element of her family gone now that she was left alone with her son. Between his moody interplays of gamiing, all was gone. He chastised her but never looked in the mirror at his own tunnel indulged life. God was as far from him as a broken apple core at the platter of Satan's palate. She was an errand boy to his needs, not always being able to fulfill them. .....The ax came today, her refuge cut out with printed words on the letter. the escape hatch now plunged down her throat like a menacing sentence that cut into her interior bloodline, her masqued identity, her alter ego. No more visits to that place of addiction. The door was closed. The grimacing smile of the gambling counselor's satisfaction paralleled the loss of choice in her own life. That kernel of rebellion erased unless she drove 98 miles to the other casino. Then it would be an inconvenience, no longer a diversion on her way home from whatever. The lifestyle gone, vanished. The family gone. The son not fully there. Yes, it was time to leave. She would make it happen.