I am an atheist, which in the US these days is a political statement, but I mean it simply as a statement of fact. I believe the pursuit of meaning, the hope of life everlasting is futile and disperses energy best consumed in the pursuit of the best possible daily reality. I like the Buddhist notion of "mindfulness" that is to say attempting to pay attention to the value of each passing minute.
Which, like most religious precepts is almost impossible to follow precisely, because if religion were easy it would be senseless. The difficulty is part of the charm. Nevertheless I do try to live each day mindfully, and each day I fail, I remain determined to try again when I rise the next day.
After four and a half years and 2500 essays I felt I had figured out the blogging thing. I wanted a new challenge so I went into partnership. That the partnership has failed is my fault not Chuck's and I am forced to take responsibility for the failure of the other web site because I had to recognize I am a one man band not a partnership. I wanted to view blogging as an activity and I wanted to try to increase the difficulty of the activity to increase the challenge.
Instead I find my blog actually is my diary. I can go back and read an essay and use that tiny little window into the past to remind myself of a time in my life. I found myself drawn to my old diary for pleasure and to my new website less and less and apparently I was not alone. This site gets as many hits after a month of inactivity as the new website where I was blogging daily.
That reinforced my feeling that this space is different and special because it is particular. My space is mine because it's mine. Here I can meander in my own garden of ideas and make no excuses to anyone or for anyone. I have a quality rarely found on the pages of the Internet, an old fashioned quality that I like very much in myself.
Ironic detachment requires me to take observer status and try to see the unintended humor in daily life. I have the awkward attribute of being able to see two sides to any story, a quality that makes me unsuitably inclined to a career as a police officer. Ironic detachment is a fine quality I have discovered, in a police dispatcher. It is just too bad I cannot tell the stories here that cross my desk every work night. Irony is a very helpful tonic when forced to listen to endless stories of human misery night after night and then seek a solution to the intractable.
Ironic detachment requires the observer to have the ability to laugh at himself. When I was a reporter I grew up in the shadow of the old school dictum that a reporter's job is to "afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted" and some days I like to do the same here. On other less moody days I see myself as a clown on the stage of life, Mr Bean failing in the simplest of daily tasks, and better yet observing my fellows in doing the same.
It doesn't always work yet sometimes I find people recall with perfect clarity an essay I wrote and posted just to fill the space. It's impossible to tell who sees what richness and value in which space. This is my space as eccentric and uncertain as am I. The lesson is learned: this is my home. Welcome to my space on the infinite web, a place that could fairly be described in Shakespeare's "As You Like It" suitably enough as "a poor thing but mine own" quoted below in a discussion of virginity, it turns out, not penmanship.
God 'ild you, sir; I desire you of the like. I
press in here, sir, amongst the rest of the country
copulatives, to swear and to forswear: according as
marriage binds and blood breaks: a poor virgin,
sir, an ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own; a poor
humour of mine, sir, to take that that no man else
will: rich honesty dwells like a miser, sir, in a
poor house; as your pearl in your foul oyster.
I hope Key West Diary can occasionally yield a pearl from foul oysters.
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
There are people that delight in thinking Florida is flat which in point of fact is not true at all. Solares Hill, a couple of blocks east of Duval Street is variously reported to be between 14 and 18 feet above sea level. I take the middle ground and call it sixteen feet (about five meters in new money) which is, I think, a good height for a hill to be. For instance if you were planning a fishing trip on your bicycle and came this way, west on Angela Street, you could free wheel a block:
There is another hill in Key West, on Elizabeth Street near Eaton, and it, though unnamed is labeled by the presence of the Hilltop Laundry. But Solares Hill takes pride of place, by virtue of the fact that this is Key West's own Mount Everest, the top, the highest peak of all. You may even see people climbing the hill without the aid of supplemental oxygen. These hardy souls looked like visitors staying at Courtney's Place located on the South Col, just off the Hill itself:
Solares Hill isn't a straight climb. The road dips on its way up from City Hall at the corner of Simonton Street:
What makes this place odd is that in a town notorious for labelling every little non event in its tumultuous history, the highest point gets no marker. Here there is no souvenir stand, seashell vendor or tout with postcards. For the ardent labeller it is a do-it-yourself spot, and in that spirit I label this Key West's tallest house, the home with the front porch highest above the lapping waters of the Straits of Florida, one short mile to the south:
It could as easily be this imposing home across the street:
But I prefer the more modest Conch proportions of the little white house with it's sky blue trim and every time I pass I salute it as Key West's highest foundation. 
It becomes, momentarily, a modest little plaza that is actually an intersection where four roads join. At night the pink house with the drooping cantilevered extension looks quite a bit different, more imposing perhaps and a lurid shade of yellow in my viewfinder:
The lights in the distance mark Angela and Simonton Streets, the bright lights of downtown, but up here on the hill where every breath costs a climber effort, the lay of the land is much more peaceful, by day...
...and by night:
In that last picture I caught the trifecta of Key West wheels; the convertible, the scooter, and the shopping cart, something for everyone. From the intersection one can turn left onto Elizabeth and head towards the Fleming/Southard corridor, or keep going straight, down the hill towards the cemetery:
Or, if turning right one gets to freewheel a little bit back towards Truman Avenue and the main street out of Key West:
Or you could be like me and wander the hill at 4:30 in the morning and find a bunch of little alleyways, evocative and secret that I shall have to come back to check out in the cold light of day. I keep thinking I know this town and then there is a fifty yard strip of cement lined with laundry, sleeping cats and tile decorations that make a liar out of me. How provoking.
My wife's teaching assistant and office manager were salivating at the prospect of spending the afternoon at Jack Flats on Duval with their men while watching The Game, however for me an afternoon off means a meander through Old Town on my (wife's) Vespa taking pictures for future blogs ending up at the Old Pile seen above, St Paul's at the corner of Duval and Eaton, where the Philadelphia Brass Quintet was giving the first in this season's series of "Impromptu Concerts." 
On the steps of the church I met a couple of friends who invited me to sit with them and I did. The quintet did their bit in a concert I rated okay,interesting selection of pieces but the execution seemed uneven to me. As a former tuba player I love the instrument to death but it can too easily kill off the melody in a small, relatively small space.
The sun was setting as we streamed out of the church and key West always looks lovely in the light of the dying day, with a purplish tinge on the sky and warm gray tones down below as street lights come on and open doors throw squares of orange light onto the sidewalks. I took the long way out of town along the south coast startling an ambling convertible on my 50mph "moped." The ride home was delightful on the little Vespa.
Not least because it buzzes along merrily at 65mph and even allowed me to pass a dawdling kid in a souped up hatchback and I get silly pleasure from surprising people with my wife's little scooter.
My always thoughtful wife brought me home a copy of another book of Billy Collins' poems, and if you look at the title you'll know why this is a book you have to own. I've enjoyed only a very few 20th century poets, mostly writers out of the trenches of World War One, and I have mostly been drawn to romantic, rhyming, poetry-like poetry from the classical 19th century. Billy Collins has been a breakout for me, and my wife knows this.
So there it is, in black and white, an autographed copy of the book no less, which can join the other one in our loo. I have an autographed copy of a book by Billy Collins and I wasn't even there to get it! 
Gorazde, seen above, was a Bosnian-Muslim outpost surrounded by Serbs in the civil war, but nowadays bolstered by European Union money it is a prosperous little town on a sunny July afternoon. 
