Downpour

Summer is rainy season in the Keys when sudden thunderstorms sweep down and deposit buckets of water amid all the drama of heavy black clouds, sudden winds and rolling thunder. 

The temperature drops twenty degrees, landmarks disappear in the murk and half an hour later the only sign of the sudden disturbance is wet surfaces steaming in the reemerged sunshine.

So it was when I went into town for exercise as usual followed by a snap decision to cut my hair. I saw the black cloud lurking but I had my waterproofs and anyway, how bad could it be I asked myself. Pretty bad actually, as rain descended with ferocity and instant flooding followed.

I cowed under an awning for a while and made a transoceanic call to Florence in Italy, totally free on WhatsApp.  I am still amazed by technology and making free calls around the world blows me away. 

After that amusement passed and the rain eased a little I got going wrapped in plastic and picking my way through deeply flooded intersections wondering how the Burgman's belt drive would cope. Fine as it turned out but it was a test  as flood waters swirled around the floorboards.. 

 I wasn't alone on two wheels and others manged the streets with more aplomb than I:

 Oddly enough there wasn't enough wind to make the ocean boil o there was still boat traffic wandering around between squalls:

 The sudden weather onslaught brought it's own beauty:

I never bothered to take my helmet off as it was still raining. Imagine my surprise when it started to rain date palm fronds and one hit my head with a loud clunk. Lucky I was wearing my helmet as it turned out. 

I got home with feet soaked through but for the rest only mildly damp. ten miles from Key West skies were blue and sunny and there wasn't the slightest hint of the drama I had ridden through. So it is around here in summer.

Ocean Views

 Pictures taken from the Garden Club and also from Rest Beach looking more or less south.

 The White Street Pier:

 The white plaster building hinted to me of North Africa.

 Higgs Beach looking north toward the White Street Pier:

Rest Beach looking south toward the pier.

Higgs And Rest Beaches And Irma

With the post hurricane limited bandwidth I can only post a few pictures at a time in the middle of the night so bear with me. At least I have this after days of being completely cut off. 

Irma And Smathers Beach

I went by the south side of Key West yesterday and saw the smelly chaos of seaweed thrown onto land to decompose. It too will be cleared even more thoroughly than it has been so far 

Rest Beach

From February 2009, eight months before Cheyenne, I took these pictures of Rest Beach. in December that year this was where I brought her, only to discover I had rescued a Labrador never taught to swim or enjoy the water. Despite my best efforts, to this day, she only cares to drink water not paddle in it.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

On The Beach

I am very fond of the book, On The Beach, by Neville Shute that describes the end of the world at the hands of an expanding cloud of nuclear dust. On the other hand I am also fond of just pausing by the beach, sneaking a pause between appointments.Rest Beach is one of my preferred spots for a quick break because it's right there, it's got parking next to Atlantic Boulevard, it has beachfront seating in the form of rather insalubrious tiki huts and from the comfort of the hard wooden benches one can sit and ponder the meaning of life:The nice thing is that there is also stuff to see out on the water, in winter sailboats are traveling Hawk Channel to and from Marathon, cyclists and walkers are enjoying the White Street Pier and the sun sparkles on the water giving it a festive tinsel-like sheen.I feel the need to remind people who don't know, that magnificent beaches are not part of what makes the Keys attractive. Unlike mainland Florida which is a gigantic sandpit that produces incredible arcs of beach, the Keys are more like the Bahamas, lumps of hard limestone rock that don't produce much in the way of sandy beaches. But what there is people do try to enjoy:My wife and I very much enjoy spending our summer afternoons,when she gets home from work and before I leave for my night job, going swimming. Because I live 25 miles out of town I get to keep our little 14 foot skiff on the canal behind our house and its a matter of no effort at all to get out into Newfound Harbor, a wide expanse of protected water, drop the anchor and go for a refreshing swim. However I have to admit I am not fond of swimming in waters cooler than 80 degrees (27C), so the boat comes out of the water in late October usually and goes back in around mid April. Visitors to the islands are less fussy and they go swimming even in February, and some of them manage to get some sunburn on their delicate northern epidermis:Not everyone is so informal. I spotted one gent, nattily dressed, out for an afternoon constitutional, quietly resting at the tiki hut nearest the condos by the beach:That's the great pleasure of the beach, and Key West in general, the whole philosophy of come as you are. I am not really a great fan of beach vacations, all that suntan oiled indolence, the uncomfortable posture for reading, the sand in the crevices, the immobility. However the beach is the place where you can wear a cardigan, or a diaper; the beach is the great leveller:And one has to reflect that I took these pictures on an average afternoon in February, amidst reports of snow ice rain and cold almost everywhere north of here. I can sense winter is crawling towards a gradual close, but in conditions like these winter is no real hardship, even if it is too cold for a swim.I like having the opportunity to ride to work the "long way" round the island, taking South Roosevelt, stopping at Rest Beach on Atlantic Boulevard, and perhaps getting a cafe con leche at Sandys on White Street before reporting for work at the Police Station. It's good to take the time to enjoy the sun, smell the sea air and watch the water for a while.

A Key West Speck Of Light In Endless Darkness

I'm fifty six today which gives me the duty or perhaps the obligation to reflect on the passage of time. Which is a perfectly pointless use of a ticking clock hand. Time passes, if it exists at all and we have to spend it on this little blue ball suspended in the darkness of space. Which is a rather portentous way of thinking about how serene and peaceful the night sky can be, especially when close to the ocean.

I took a lunch break at White Street Pier, where the cool night air was blowing and everything felt contaminated by salty dampness at three o'clock in the morning... Fall is upon us but in Key West that means something a little different compared to places where leaves change and frost kills plants and dogs chained outside grow winter coats and howl at the demons of the night. In the Keys humidity drops away, lips chap and one's Labrador starts to perk up after a summer of avoiding direct sunlight. "It's cold outside," Shannon said cheerfully when she got back from her lunch break at ten in the evening. By the time I took a Vespa ride to the beach four hours later it was in the mid seventies and decidedly parky. Just like people Up North who look forward to the first snows and loathe the last, I like the first signs of a break in the weather though by January I will be waiting for the return of summer, a time when sixty degrees is nowhere to be seen outside an ice box.

I drank a large ice cold can of Coke Zero while I watched the half moon move across the sky, ducking in and out among the clouds, and I felt pretty good. We got through Fantasy Fest in good order at work. I spent the night of the parade dispatching ambulances and taking calls from severely intoxicated people who had lost, it seemed, all the appurtenances of their complex modern lives; the city was adrift in a sea of missing cars, bicycles, cell phones, wallets purses and family members. Through it all I managed to keep above the fray and stay cheerful such that Shannon, new to 911 call taking, asked me how I managed that. Nine years of Fantasy Fest in dispatch I said, and in saying it I was surprised how long I have worked at the police department. It's the human condition, you get used to anything. One caller got mad at me because I didn't get all in a lather when he reported a man passed out at Higgs Beach. I got all the information to make sure the officer could find him with minimal effort and the caller was acting like I was supposed to get myself worked up as he was. "Oh I don't want to get involved." the caller said when I asked him if he wanted to meet the officer. Of course he didn't,but I noted his request for anonimity as I calmly did my job, because thats what we do in the modern world. We aren't our brothers keepers anymore, unless we extend ourselves to call the government for help, and I am grateful for that; its my job security, other people's fear, and that makes my job weird. It always amazes me how people can drink themselves insensible in the streets of our fair city, and leave themselves to be picked up by perfect strangers. I wonder what they think when they wake up next day in the drunk tank at the jail. Mostly they call the police department all angry as though its our fault they got pick pocketted while passed out. By then I'm home asleep with my dog and their loss of dignity is long forgotten.

Most of the time I have worked nights because I like night shift and I have been out to the White Street Pier before now in the middle of my lunch break. It sticks out south of Higgs Beach like a finger pointing at Havana and the tour guides like to joke it is the stump of the former road bridge to Cuba closed by the embargo. It is in point of fact just a fishing pier, a nice one, but nothing more. And I like to come here from time to time and contemplate the night time mysteries of the universe and the pleasure of being alive and intact. This time I was impressed by the utter blackness of the night surrounding the tiny specks of light I caught in my camera lense. I hope that in the event my body fails one piece at a time before my demise i shall still be able to take pleasure in the vastness of the unvierse around me.

While buying my coke I met the sergeant in charge of our shift at the convenience store and we chatted for a while. He is enjoying a new relationship which is helping him overcome the unhappiness of a recent divorce, and the new relationship makes for a much happier shift. When the sergeant ain't happy ain't nobody happy, believe me. We talked about the subtle pleasures of working nights, and he showed me a video of his latest high speed track driving exploit and we laughed at the prospect of one day being retired and not having a reason to stand around at the Circle K shooting the breeze. The best is to have lived with no regrets he said. Or as few as possible, as he admired his new companion pictured riding in the race car next to him at the Homestead Race Track.

The landward end of the pier is an area dedicated to the AIDS memorial, a remembrance of the time when people were dying all over the island in droves. And from time to time a new name still gets added. At three in the morning ruffled by that cool autumnal breeze the memorial gains in strength as the black shiny memorial slabs reflect the infinite darkness overhead, the place where those memorialized have gone and where we are bound to follow. No regrets.

It strikes me as telling that these kinds of thoughts only seem to be permitted in the dark of night in this town, which is a place dedicated to having fun, and that diversion is held as the highest ideal. Sun sea sand and music and restaurants and costumes and parties and all that stuff pushes thoughts of age and the darkness of eternity to one side. Just as well I suppose, but I am content and I feel lucky, in the face of decay. At the Big Pine dog park I met an old white guy radiating contentment along with his cheerful Collie, so happy Cheyenne got tired of him in a hurry. We were sitting there in the dawn's early grayness and he talked about a fellow he knew, a computer repair wizard who rescued a Ridgeback dog from South Africa and flew it home to Key West. They are inseparable and if you want your computer fixed you have to welcome the Rhodesian right alongside the tech into your home.

It kind of surprised me, my conventional interlocutor remarked, suggesting love of dog could cut business prospects. Cool I said, tired as I am of being nice on command, as necessary as it is in our overcrowded world. Lose some work (gasp!) love your dog. Nice indeed. He's a good dog the dude in the garden chair across from me went on, idling ruffling his Collie's coat. They live for 25 years, Rhodesian Ridgebacks. Hell I said its too late for me, the bloody dog would outlive me! He started chuckling, you'd be 80 as I told him my age, claiming 55 for the last time. Yes I said, if I get that far. I figure I've got maybe two more Labradors in me yet.

It's not possible for normally engaged Westerners to be constantly aware, as the Bhuddists would like us to be, of our status as a small speck of stardust suspended in Carl Sagan's dark and lonely cosmos. But from time to time it's nice to remember our main obligation is just to get through it and do as little harm as possible while being as kind as one can manage. Growing older I am finding it easier to be a human being rather than a human doing, and that can't be all bad. Living, working and having a life in Key West is icing on this very temporary cake.

Key West on Dwellable

Posted with Blogsy