Florida Postcards

First there were palm trees, and alligators.



Veronica's lanai,



and dolphins swam alongside our boat to the Keys.



Then streets of Key West!





to the very end.



Our hotel bar and the blue blue ocean.



Parasailing at six hundred feet, Veronica and I vowed to do this every year. We floated over the blue indifferent water and were lulled into thinking this was forever. Then drifting in the pool, Veronica did crosswords and praised me when I, eyes closed, halfheartedly helped.

Later the carnival of Key West absorbed us. Water sprayed our hot faces in the open bar and we sat relaxed drinking daiquiris as the drag queens, the addicts, the rich, the deluded, the undecided passed in their nightly procession. The Duval Crawl. Key lime martinis. Sandals. Tourists snapping a picture. Chickens on the street. Parades. A display of quirkiness for the tourists satisfies us that we are in the authentic Key West.

The evening before I leave a vivid double rainbow arcs in the sky over Naples. The pier is lined with fishermen and a young man reels in a big one. People gather round as his toil becomes a community effort. Boys run for glasses of water to douse him and men shout directives as he lowers his rod and reels in yards and yards of line. A half hour later he has passed the job to someone else, and men begin to be the first to see the catch. "It's a manta ray!" "It's a shark!" "It's about 10 feet." "It's 6 feet." "You snagged it in the tail."

The white beaches of Naples catch me off guard, and I am a beach bum again. A beach bum among the millionaires of Naples, whose yachts are parked outside their mansions on their own private waterways. My tiny dream beach shack would cost 3 million dollars here. Life as we know it can't go on. How can the world support the rich? I am attracted to the mixed colors of the guys on the pier, some speaking Spanish and all treating each other like brothers.

The day I left Veronica and I were sober, aloof, like all last days.

Florida, Veronica and Class Struggle

Funny Ryan should be writing about "his stint working at his local country club the summer after high school" as I pack to visit Veronica in Florida. Her family was one of THE FAMILIES in our town (meaning millionaires). They were golfers all, and members of the Country Club, known to insiders as "The Club".

We were best friends since kindergarten, and Veronica's home, spacious and with a beautiful kidney-shaped pool in their expansive back yard tended by Mexican laborers, was my second home.

It wasn't until I was around 15 years old that I began to rebel against the social class boundaries of the town (and other ugly hidden rules that we were required to live by), and naturally Veronica's family fell into that category that I needed to distain at the time. We had a "falling out", which actually started in Florida when we were in ninth grade when I accompanied her family to Hollywood for their yearly winter retreat from the snow. By the time we returned six weeks later, our relationship was indelibly changed. I was bleaching my hair blonde, skinny-dipping in the Country Club pool after hours with the wild Catholic kids and adopting terms for that local bastion of wealth and privilege, like "The Cunt Club". Veronica, although always wild (our habit was to steal fifths of Canadian Club from her father's supply of cases in their basement/lounge and drink till we vomited) always held on to her birthright - her desire for a certain standard of living. I leaned more toward living out of backpacks and being attracted to bad boys.

But I, like Ryan, have a history of being intimidated by wealth and power. Hell, how could we not, being raised in a country where money = respect and power, and working to make others rich = acceptance. It's not easy to cross class boundaries, especially when all of our folklore supports working hard and buying into our own oppression.

So this trip to Florida has much underlying history, practically a whole lifetime, as Veronica and I have remained "family" even with our class differences. She has an intelligence and humor (and an ability to forgive and forget) that I love, and she loves me, flaws and all. And things do change. The Cunt Club is now a public golf course where the local hoi palloi rub elbows with the (actually middle) class snobs, who are full of class panic and pretence.

While I, on our sojourn to the Keys, would have chosen to camp and be a real beach bum, she needs to stay at the ritzy hotel with the ocean view, and that's OK. On the tip of Florida overlooking the Gulf of Mexico, what can be wrong? I'm not greedy for anything from this trip, not planning on "getting" anything, unlike last summer when I was after (no less!) a new life. This time my goals are a bit subtler. I'd like to see an alligator, and taking Ryan's advice I'm going to pet the stingrays, wave to the dolphins and then float on my back in the ocean, arms outstretched. I'm going to let Veronica take the lead and flow with it. See what happens.

Walking Backwards

Rain and high winds go behind me today
Tomorrow brings blurred sleep under hazy sky

again

I look forward and squint at my past
Busy rustling leaves,
excited poplars in the breeze

movement, time, space

Yesterday drones ahead
Like glowing insects traveling through the night sky,

You take my breath away

Lost in the Gardens

I think I go to the gardens to not-think. To focus on something so closely with complete concentration that the incessant circular tape in my mind stops and I am existing in the moment.



There is peace in that moment.



Is it escape or is it destination?

Out of Focus

Are you tired of my photos yet? Yea? I can see why. Not much writing here, not much forthcoming. Auggie told me tonight that the objects in the foreground of my photos seem to be out of focus, while the things in the background seem to be in focus. I told him I did that on purpose. Sometimes things in the background just need to stand out, don't you think? And sometimes things are so much more interesting out of focus.

The gardens didn't have their usual appeal tonight, I'm not sure why. But there was this:



Four more days. I know I can make it. Then there will be Florida.

Weather God

The gardens are otherworldly tonight, and deserted. My mind recedes in this cool breeze. The birds sing in the swaying branches while I kneel by the cool pond. Ducks jump into the water, leave their egg, and air currents appear before me as sheets of pollen, seeds, distant thunder. Will it rain tonight? All thought bows down to the weather.

Home Stretch

I'm taking pictures with my new phone, which doesn't seem as delightfully low quality and grainy as my old camera phone. This will take some getting used to. But I did give you a little wave of petals in this self portrait.



I hope you all have a great week. I will be busy as hell with the heathen schoolchildren, but there is an end in sight, right? Naples. The Keys. Blue blue ocean....

Mountains and Waves

It's true, there is this. I am grading mountains of papers. Round one is finished, but there are three more rounds to go before it's over. Each round means grading 150 written assignments. Do you know what that's like? Did you know that it can drive you over the edge? Did you? Huh? Did you?



But there is also this....peonies!







So I would say there is some kind of strange balance in my life right now. Some greater embrace of both the good and the bad. Trying to possess one or deny the other doesn't work. Let's face it.

Let's just stop running headlong toward happiness, shall we? It is irrelevant whether I am happy or sad, whether I like or dislike, whether times are good or bad. Life just is. You don't have to tread water or swim away from sharks. Just let go and roll with the waves. Let the waves comfort you. Seek nothing.