Darkness And Light

Years ago I was getting an education from the monks at an English Benedictine Abbey and Dom Daniel was assigned to teach me history. As one does when one is a schoolboy one soon learns to insinuate oneself into the memories of the teacher, the better to distract them from the lesson plan. That I was genuinely interested in history accounted in part for my interest in Dom Daniel's war service during the Second World War. As we walked the Downside Abbey Gardens discussing perhaps the English Civil War and the dissolution of the monasteries, I pressed Dom Daniel on his time with the RAF. His blue eyes twinkled beneath is red tonsure and he laughed out loud. "It would not be good for my humility!" he protested in his soft Irish brogue, a slave to his monastic vows. The lesson plan progressed.

So it was last night I wandered down to Duval Street on my four o'clock lunch break. Spring Break has been hitting us fairly hard and I felt it was time for me to see the chaos up close. After all it is easy to get detached from the business of policing the street when one gets to work from a secure, air conditioned room at the top of the police department. Something after the manner of the late Dom Daniel of Downside I felt it would be good for my humility. It was very good for my humility as it turned out. I can't possibly do what our young police officers do, night after night, with good grace and cheerfulness, dealing with drunks. I am just the dispatcher thank you, safe from the marauding crazies, wandering the streets in search of a drink and a new friend:I wonder sometimes why it is I like living in the Keys so much, especially as I am not in the least bit drawn to the preferred activity downtown. On my nights off I would rather sit at home and give myself an appendectomy than subject myself to the noise and crowds and stale beer smell of Lower Duval so imagine my surprise when I bumped into, literally, an off duty colleague of mine who apparently can't get enough of the bars. By the time I showed up it was after 4am (summer time) so they were closing and crowds were milling on the street.Everyone was very good natured, shouting to be heard over the confusion and laughter. Apparently some fights did break out but I walked the sidewalk unmolested, dodging crowds of raucous young people too busy making their point, whatever it was, to notice me. The cops standing around were also too busy keeping an eye on the seething mass to engage in banter with a bored dispatcher on lunch break.The hot dog stand was doing a roaring trade, as well it should because the dogs are quite tasty and doubtless especially so after a hard night's drinking. I like the hot dog stand partly also because it reminds me of taco stands I've frequented in Mexico, where the populace is out taking an entirely sober paseo, evening walk.

For some people the scruffy sidewalks of Lower Duval are the perfect environment to allow romance to flourish, a notion I find a little hard to second but there it is.Especially as it was freezing cold with a howling north wind and temperatures somewhere south of 60 degrees (15 Celsius). Nothing like a sticky cold sidewalk to get the youthful hormones in an uproar apparently.

It was clear to me I am not an urban animal, as though there were any doubt previously, and I slunk away from the bright lights and noise of this vision of an urban future previously predicted by Dante Alighieri and more recently in the movie Blade Runner. All Lower Duval lacked for my sensibilities was the patter of acid rain. If God doesn't have a sense of humor I shall be doomed to spend the rest of eternity in a place closely resembling Lower Duval at four in the morning...

However I do quite like Mallory Square at that hour of the morning it turns out. Who wouldn't with that deep black sky and wide open expanse of nothing but street lights glowing:

There were a few other people on the far side of the square sort of defying the curfew and enjoying the cold night air but i fiddled with my camera, and sat back to look at the impenetrable sky.This thing is so silly it always cracks me up:I think I must be too insecure because I wouldn't be seen dead with my head in one but I ride down Lazy Way Lane at Key West Bight and I always see smiling people getting their photos taken in a similar model. I expect they had nice upbringings in supportive families and thus aren't afraid to look stupid in public. This particular photographer's model is in back of El Meson De Pepe the best known Cuban restaurant on the island. Its usually pretty crowded so I don't get there very often but I really enjoyed their second location on the other end of the island. It didn't last which was too bad, but at Mallory Square El Meson's outside bar was closed for the night and looked very evocative to my camera.Warm Havana nights, even though its actually a cold Key West morning.

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This is the part of town where the tower of the Pirate Historeum glows in the night and Tifts Alley and Wall Street are empty, waiting for tomorrow's loads of cruise ship tourists, trolley passengers and souvenir hunters:

And so, to bed after all the excitement, except this was just my lunch break so I walked back to my motorcycle and rode back to work. In fact I did no such thing. The car needs to be driven from time to time and the back end of a cold cold front is the perfect time to air out the Maxima in my opinion. On such a cold night the guest's wheels at the Ocean Key House were tucked carefully away out of the breeze. Had I been riding the Bonneville I might have been jealous.
As it was the heater worked nicely in the car:The Nissan got me home in good order after work too, as it happens. Me? Hardcore Biker? Hardly. Wandering downtown in the early, freakish hours gave me a fresh perspective on why I do like Key West drunks and all. So much going on in one block, so little in another just a short walk away. Lots of room for everybody in such a small place. The magic expanding island. All mine at four in the morning offering at least the illusion of solitude.