In search of the Fountain of Youth

There is a non-blurry version of this one, but in it we are all really obviously sweaty.





Cemetery seahorses



Ernest Hemingway's writing studio-cum-mancave.



Sunset festival in Key West



Church in Key West



Our sweaty, suffocating homestead on Sugarloaf Key.



Powerlines



Giant prawn?



GIANT PRAWN!



Dragon fruit



Torrential downpour, with camera flash on.



Everglades with rain



That emu doesn't care at all that I'm about to kick its ass.



Shells playing cards.

Yeah, I don't care how long this post is. Some of the horizontals seem to be cut off, so for full views and more photos I recommend going to my Flickr page.

self promotion

What did I do on my vacation beside go to Florida, look at apartments, hang out at art fairs and vaudeville shows, wash my dishes and put my books in boxes and NOT make progress on the Triangle Shirtwaist poems? Write about going to Florida for Dane101. I get paid per page view, so if you're curious about what south Florida is like post-BP, following the link would be totally awesome and maybe in a few weeks I can buy a milkshake to celebrate.

Excerpt to tantalize: "It’s Independence Day and I’m seven miles off the coast of Key West, Florida, right on the cusp of the southernmost point in the contiguous United States. I’m having my first ever look at a shallow water coral reef through the clear glass of a snorkel mask. Two hours earlier my friends and I had stumbled, bleary-eyed, from a 95-degree tent at the KOA campground where we’d spent the night, in order to spend our holiday here, first snorkeling and then, after hours of sweaty wandering, watching fireworks from a beach filled with hundreds of people while rows of boats drifted just offshore, their lights bobbing like stars." Here's the link again.

If I delete this later it's because I used it in a project.

Independence Day in the Florida Keys coral reef system. All you can hear besides the motion of the water is the tiny crackling scratch of thousands of fish eating coral. If you look up from the sea floor, above the waterline, you will see twenty other tourists face-down in the water, invisible except for their snorkels and luminescent flotation devices, looking for all the world like giant fishing lures. Days before, NOAA reports a 61-80 percent chance of tar balls coming this way. There is a sense that one should be gobbling up as much of this experience as possible, in case it is the last chance.

Florida, day 4

Back from Key West. Both vile and amazing. Today started with snorkeling on the reef ($30 and worth every penny, I would have gone back for another round if we'd had the time) and ended with fireworks on the beach. Other stuff between. Bird sanctuary yesterday, the house where Hemingway wrote half his works and petted six-toed cats, the bar he spent every night in and which is now kind of vile. Sadly. Lots of tasty fish. & more to say, but I am saving some of it for a more formal piece, and anyway we drove straight back after the fireworks and must take M to the airport in four hours and are very tired and filthy and ready to sleep in an apartment instead of a 90+ degree tent with a rainfly on it and three people's worth of body heat. And chiggers.

Miami, 2

We drove down to South Beach just to see it. That was enough. Best club name: "Lord Balfour." It looked like every other club there, though. $15 for parking, so we didn't even stop - just turned around and crawled (congestion and idiots dashing into the street, sigh) back the other way. If tourism ever collapsed here, the city would have nothing, it is a boneless blob of places to live and places to spend your money and places to work as a waitress.

Everglades today. Rain all day. Beautiful, of course. And now the rain has pulled all the heat and misery out of the air.

Tomorrow we head to Key West to camp and snorkel and poke at Hemingway's old house. Storms predicted. The idea of being, in some ways, in the middle of the ocean connected only by a thin strip of causeway...I predict moments of agoraphobia. It's exciting.

I'll have to put up photos when I get back.

Miami, 1

Miami. Fetid air, pelicans and mangrove. Sea urchins just sitting there in the Bay of Biscayne waiting to be manhandled, little bone mouths and spines all grasping for the palm of your hand. Ineffectual. Water warm as a bath. Three nerdy girls: we bemoan the general dearth of ocean-safe laminated books. R almost loses her glasses to a strong wave, we fumble for them on the seafloor, blinded by the salt. Find, eventually. Salt residues on the skin. Breathing through air that is mostly water, air that clings like a plastic film on the skin. Feet scraped smooth from walking bare on sand. In the night, distant lightning flicker-flash silent over the nearby ocean, from R's balcony we see big condo towers dark (empty), an airplane perilously close, the bone and muscle insides of the clouds. A canal behind every apartment building, leading eventually to the sea. Everyone has a boat. From above, the land looks like a green sponge, soaked in blue. It is a wonder that the buildings manage to stand at all.