Revdarth.com

“The impression that someone has of being somewhere while, in reality, he is physically in another place.” (from googling “define immersive.”). Immersive experience tonight at the Diamond Jo casino on the Dubuque riverfront. While I agree in some respects with the comments about Miguel’s being a “more immersive experience,” I think based on the definition above, I experienced that even at the low-grade casino shoehorned into a moored riverboat. While I sat for 5 (?), 10 (?), 20 (?) minutes at the blackjack table, I was in another place. I was vaguely aware of Mike sitting to my right and of a woman (young? old? I do remember she was blond. Or was it grey hair?) to my left. I think the dealer was named Donald. Beyond that, I remember that I won my last hand by doubling down on a 4 & 7 and getting a King of Diamonds. I remember winning with a 16, an 18, a 20, and 3-card 21. I remember losing one hand on a stupid hit on a 15 while the dealer had a soft 16. I remember my heart rate accelerating as soon as the first cards were dealt and having a rush throughout my time at the table. The rush didn’t change with winning or losing a hand, but instead was just there the whole time I sat at the green felt table. I am thankful for Mike breaking the spell and giving Donald (?) his $5 tip and walking away. I played three more hands and found myself up $15 and I put down my tip and walked away as well. If not for the unintentional accountability of another, would I have walked away?

As I walked away, I felt the weight of the six 5s in my hand and kept feeling them and looking at them and twirling them in my left hand. All the while, my pulse stayed strong, almost as if I were still sitting at the table. After a few minutes of chit-chat, I went back to the cashier’s cage hidden in the back of the casino, passing by all the tables and cashed out my six chips and put the $30 in my wallet. As I walked back to our group, my pulse slowed and my breathing returned more to normal.

Maybe the best comparison is to the feeling one gets after a near miss in a car accident (without the fear and shock). The heart rate that one can feel in the ears, the shallowed and quickened breathing. All there at the table.

Wandered around the casino with various people and experienced different aspects of the place. Until Erin spoke it (with the Alien slot machine) and Shar lived it (with the more traditional BAR/7 slot), I didn’t realize that there are no instructions for those unfamiliar with the casino experience. There aren’t dealers willing to teach a quick few hands to one who might want to learn (and maybe eventually help to pay their salary). There’s nothing that said, “We want you here.” However, there was no shortage of people walking in and our, sitting down at table(s), or blindly pressing the slot machine buttons not much different than a Pavlovian dog.

We moved from there to Miguel’s coffee house to debrief our immersive experience. What started as something couched in “academic language” turned into a different form of immersive experience. We sat in a place that seemed as dusty and unkempt as the B-grade casino, but felt much more at home. The eight of us crowded around a 3-4 person table in the center of the restaurant and talked over coffees from Miguel or his employees and 2 ice creams smuggled in from across the parking lot. While there was sharing of the experience, I spent more of my time looking around. An X’er jumped over the back of the couch to sit down because he couldn’t move around us in the center of the restaurant (or maybe he would have done it anyway if we weren’t there). A young woman in an Augustana (Sioux Falls?) t-shirt fiddled with her iPod headphones while standing talking to two of her friends, walking back and forth to the counter several times before walking away with a coffee. A Ricky Martin wannabe looked over us high on the wall advertising a local photographer. A dusty, but seemingly well-used bookcase sat in the far corner waiting for people to pick up and flip through the offerings. Three desktop computers sat unused and lonely in the back of the room while either people clicked away on their laptops. A guitar sat on a stand and a keyboard ready waiting for someone to pick them up. A young woman sat at a table behind us with a warm smile on her face as she connected with others through the wireless threads in the room – IM, email, message board, pictures? Who knows? But her face shined with connection and relationship while she sat by herself.

We sat squished around the small table and shared of our immersive experience of the night, surrounded by relationships, connections, smiles, and laughter. We shared of our earlier stop where people sat as individuals and groups entered together. The two places couldn’t be at further poles. One place strove, through games of chance, to take from those who came in and sat down. One place strove, through couches, dusty books and wi-fi, to give others a chance to connect either with those around a crowded table or those represented only through pixels on a screen. I was $10 ahead in the first and much further ahead in the second.