Elizabeth Bishop Rediscovered

I received a surprising notice in my electronic doohickery that Elizabeth Bishop  was being celebrated while I work this weekend. The news I just learned is that at last her home where she lived in Key West before she went to Brazil to conclude an adventurous life has been purchased for restoration by the Literary Seminar.  What she left behind in Key West was a home barely acknowledged as her own. In similar fashion where Tennessee Williams lived is equally unmarked and unknown were you to look for it. Well that state of affairs is changing at least for Elizabeth Bishop. I don't suppose her home will become the talk of the planet the way Hemingway's home in Key West has become such a center of attention. She was after all a woman and decidedly not a swashbuckling drinker and big game hunter and war chaser, rather a poet of sensibility who yet managed to live life very much on her own terms. I rather prefer her style in writing and in life but the good news is an enduring institution which is the Seminar has announced a concerted effort and quite some commitment to making her home the landmark it deserves to be. Great news.

This essay I wrote in 2014, so the decrepitude of the landmark is no new thing, and given land prices in this absurd town, nothing could have made the purchase of an historic home on White Street at all easy. Yet it is done. Excellent. 

624 White Street

The state with the prettiest name,

the state that floats in brackish water,

held together by mangrove roots

that bear while living oysters in clusters,

and when dead strew white swamps with skeletons,

dotted as if bombarded, with green hummocks

like ancient cannon-balls sprouting grass.

The opening of Elizabeth Bishop's poem called Florida.

She lived here from 1938 to 1946, on White Street in Key West and published her poems as she gathered up her stuff and took off on a world tour. That tour stopped abruptly when she fell in love and settled in Brazil for 16 years. Those sixteen years were happier, they say, than the difficult years in Key West, a town she liked but that did not bring happiness, oddly enough. I don't think happiness in love was easy to find for a lesbian in those distant and prejudiced days, albeit a wealthy one able to ignore convention and not starve as a writer.

Bishop was born with a silver spoon in her mouth, got a good education and an inheritance so she was spared the tedium of daily work. However she also lacked the discipline of earning a living, but by way of compensation she turned out poems that are gaining in popularity and earning more respect the more time passes since she died.

Not that the famous poet gets much respect in Key West.  Hemingway's home is famous and the image is sold artfully by the family that owns the business. Everyone else is on their own, their marks on the city of Key West as obscure as if they had lived on the dark side of the moon. That this home has a plaque from the friends of the library is a minor miracle, but ironically enough Bishop's former home is an embarrassing wreck.

Who knows and who cares really. Lots of people live in tumbledown homes in Key West, and lots of people who think they want to live here expect the high rents to return a decent living space. That's not very likely in Old Town. But a famous writer's home should be a landmark shouldn't it?

My last writer's home was the opposite, not recognized at all but not left to rot, far from it. Key West Diary: 709 Baker's Lane, Key West. It's not easy to be critical of people living in their homes, owned or rented but there is a sense of sadness when you see this lovely old eyebrow home not just degenerating but taking a memory we owe the world with it. Indeed the homes of writers around the world are revered, the sense of place that imparts the art to the artist. Here? Nah. What a shame.

Elizabeth Bishop's Misunderstood Life World Library Volume, “Brazil” : The New Yorker

Monochrome Rain

It goes pretty much without saying that I am quite capable of being a bloody fool. Yesterday was one such morning. 

I took Rusty into town for an early morning walk without once glancing at the National Weather service app! Silly me. I left the umbrella in the car without thinking about it and we took off. 

It was a lovely dark morning, not quite six o'clock and no one was around. I felt very lucky to be there on a still silent morning. Not for long.

And then the sprinkles started, just a few, more like humidity in the air, and I hardly noticed it as rain.

That didn't last long and suddenly the heavens opened and we ducked rapidly, as one body under an arcade in front of Island Dogs bar. Rusty took his place under a separate doorway and we watched, and waited.

After a while I started to wonder whether this downpour would quit or not. Rain forever? I took out my phone and finally got smart. The weather app looked awful, a giant green and yellow sausage of rain and storms stretched over Key West and far out into the Western Caribbean promising rain all morning. And right there stuck on Front Street it wasn't yet seven. 

 There was hardly anyone around, a few mad exercisers, a dog walker or two like me, but hardly any cars.

 In its own way it was peaceful enough sitting there under cover watching the water fall.

 When finally it started to ease up we made our way, him fluffy with wet fur and me squelching every step.

You know how they say a cold gray day is a day for a good book? I think any day is good to hang out and read. Yesterday was perfect. I took full advantage.

Window Shopping

I like Sloppy Joe's Bar when it's closed. The dutch barn doors are sealed, there's no one around and the clock on Old City Hall says I made the picture shortly before seven in the morning, a civilized hour to be downtown. Later of course the doors will open and the drinking and eating will begin. I will be long gone.

The CVS program on Duval Street is still going strong showcasing local artists, per their agreement with the landlord, the owner of Fast Buck Freddie's that used to own the space. The artists who is a friend of my wife's said all you have to do is apply and they will slot you in for the next available date. Lucy lucked out and got  a date apparently in the very middle of high tourist season for maximum exposure. Very cool.

Around the corner on Fleming I was taken by the display of local books at Island Books. Still going strong and visible.

I puzzled over this sign for a while. It seems as though the only qualification to get a peace sign on a safety pin is to buy something. 

And here is the window display of the other CVS store, one of many chain store pharmacies in the city. Enticing isn't it. No local artists here, Just boxes of stuff!

I loved these plastic hat holders and I'm someone who never wears hats. They would be brilliant in a storm.

A short walk with a  few ideas and some pictures of everyone's favorite -Key West. That's it. Go back to doing something useful. Your break is finished.

Tallahassee In The Keys

Last weekend we had plans, lunch with friends, a play after dark, half a day's overtime and time enough to exhaust Rusty before abandoning him to go to the Red Barn. That all fell apart when I woke up at 3:45 feeling like death and unwilling to get up to even walk Rusty. I called work and told them Keith's cold bug had got me, even though I had hoped on Friday that Keith's dire predictions were not going to come true. 

We were surprised and delighted when the Red Barn box office was able to give us seats this Saturday night so I plan to not get sick again like everyone around me. I say nothing but privately I am relieved I got the 'flu vaccine early in the season and disappointed the young bucks who fear needles or autism or whatever fashionable rant most moves them failed to do likewise. Massive sick outs put stress on survivors in a  town where adequate hiring is impossible to maintain. 

The newspaper is reporting the results of the annual junket to Tallahassee to get lawmakers to support issues of concern to these few people who live in these peculiar islands. Florida is run by the governor and cabinet members who are elected separately while the two houses of the legislature only work part time, three months a year and members only get paid something like twenty thousand dollars for the three months work guaranteeing only people with money can run to be representatives and senators.  It's a pretty creaky system in a state as large and complex as Florida and gives massive power to the Governor and Cabinet. To make it all even less representative gerrymandering has given a majority Democrat state a Republican dominated legislature and the Agriculture Secretary is the sole statewide elected Democrat. 

So the resistance Keys legislators offer to environmental proposals coming out of Tallahassee where old school thinking dominates means not very much. It's not easy to explain the need to control sunscreen sales to a Hendry county rancher who has never seen a coral reef in his entire agricultural life and has no plans to either. I found the same dichotomy in California when I was a youngster in Santa Cruz, a hotbed of university fueled activism surrounded by the hard headed conservative farm policies of inland ranching and orchard interests in Gilroy and Merced and Lodi, places that couldn't give a damn about the Monterey bay National marine Sanctuary that was so important to the Coastal Commission. 

I look back a hundred years and force myself to think hard about the drive of Henry Plant on the West Coast as well as our more familiar Henry Flagler on the East Coast, men of vision and boatloads of cash who wanted to open up the Sunshine State to tourism and industry. And they got on with it. A quotation attributed to Flagler, a partner in the early oil industry explosion of wealth goes something like this; "I'd be a rich man if it weren't for Florida." Indeed his East Coast Extension Railroad to Key West from Miami was always a losing proposition and following the 1935 hurricane, long after his death, was abandoned and handed over to the state to turn it into a road.

These days you'd never see that sort of vision in Tallahassee, creating a road out of a roadbed, opening up these islands, spending government money to create. And the billionaires of our age are a pretty poor shadow of the vision and drive of the robber barons of those days who built public facilities and infrastructure, somewhat at random I grant you, but in places where nothing was seen before. 

The best they can come up with in Tallahasse is offering to make canal cleaning a big concern but with no money to back up the nice words about water quality, and that old bugaboo of increasing evacuation time to allow more development. Not exactly stellar legislative achievements for 2020 but when you elect people of limited vision you don't get thoughtful legislation. I suppose doing not too much damage is the most we can hope for these days. 

I was listening to the radio on my way to work yesterday morning and San Francisco has closed its downtown artery Market Street to private vehicles. Apparently it took years to build consensus for that modest change and they are monitoring results. In Key West closing Duval Street, an obvious move, is a non starter and electric bicycles as replacements for internal combustion are driving people mad with anger. Change really isn't easy is it?

Mangrove Walk

I must be feeling better as Tuesday was a full day for me. Up at four shivering round the neighborhood with a happy dog followed by four hours at work as Tuesday is my "short day." That is to say a four hour shift added to the twelve hour shifts each week equals a forty hour work week...The pain being that I was home with the awful hound at ten. He went to sunbathe on the deck and I went to bed for a quick nap...Two and a half hours later my trusty alarm woke me from a deep sleep and I set off back into town for another round of physical jerks at Body Zone. I admit, I was snuffling and using half the weights I usually use in class but I made it through the 90 minutes led by the redoubtable Irish Rose called Paula who is merciless...and effective. Bloody hell. Back in the car to Rusty and finally some time alone in the mangroves together.

I suppose I could have headed off to the Tropic for a movie or a stroll for some pictures of people or viewing some art at The Studios but this is my last week of overtime as our staffing is getting juggled around at work. We are short two dispatchers and my colleagues wanted a share of the bounty of overtime I have been enjoying so I am glad to get a break starting next week to enjoy some time away from 911.

In winter there is a neediness in Key West that veers far away from crime and into the realms of bad neighbors. I have no opinion about parking and fence hopping and all the minor infractions of daily living as I am fortunate or smart enough to live in the suburbs in a quiet street with lots of off street parking and neighbors I do occasionally talk to when I am around. In Key West where I take police calls it seems people's nerves are shredded by badly parked cars and errant tree limbs and loud noises and all the stuff that in Mayberry were taken care of by a kindly word and perhaps a berry pie as a gift to cover for monetary thoughtlessness. Perhaps I exaggerate a trifle but the fact that neighbors are afraid to talk to each other, to discuss a problem, to try to find a compromise and resort to calling the police over every little thing strikes me as sad.

I am grateful for the work, and glad of the job security, but two out of state registered scooters parked on a Key West street shouldn't provoke suspicion should they? Happily my job is to send a cop to investigate and when they report back no violations I set the call aside. Now I work on day shift the midnight brawls and drunken domestic disputes are much more the province of the night dispatchers still holding down the night shift in my absence.I'm enjoying living the difference, though I do miss my afternoon walks with Rusty before I cam into work, I equally enjoy dinner at home every night and also setting aside the petty squabbles and the occasional profoundly unhappy call. People do our each other in Key West, the difficulties of living in an expensive community create awful stress and the dams do burst but then I get to walk in the silence of the woods with my camera and my dog.

It restores my equilibrium. I am helping myself this year by avoiding politics and thus also avoiding Facebook, sticking to posting pictures and looking at pictures on Instagram and studying digital photography to replace my interest in motorcycles which is waning a bit in the face of my recently discussed encounters with constantly distracted drivers in the Keys. You can hardly blame them really and I try to sit back a bit on my commute and think what it must be like to see bridge after endless bridge over open water  for the first time with those long strange horizons rising up no higher than sea level, and all from the front seat of your rental vehicle on your way to the mythical destination. There really is nowhere in the world like the Keys, this extravagance of highway connecting tiny specks of land for mile upon mile all the way to nowhere. Who but the United States could imagine or afford such a place?

I am enjoying being sixty two as well oddly enough. I read that Britain wants to end all sales of internal combustion vehicles by 2035 and I thought to myself that sucks, as I am a child of the internal combustion era and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I did some sums on my fingers and realized I'd be 74 by then if I am even alive. I shall probably be able to slip in a car or motorcycle at that late stage, late enough to be a dinosaur but not too late to still see gasoline sold by the roadside and spare parts to still be stocked on the shelves. It is coming home to me that the world is changing which is no surprise but what is a revelation is that I am rapidly becoming irrelevant: and that is  something I have to come to terms with!

The interesting thing for me is that irrelevance on the larger stage is quite enjoyable. When I was a youngster everything seemed rather urgent as the political issues of the day promised life and death decisions that needed youthful intervention. Of course in a sense they were just that for someone somewhere but the issues were more complex and politics more nuanced than I could imagine when I was 25 and everything was good and bad.  I have discovered that it is a tad bit grandiose to imagine that US foreign policy is going to change much, or necessarily for the better, based on anyone's heart felt activism. At this stage I feel as though today's youngsters can make those choices and fight those fights and hopefully do a better job than we ended up doing. Indeed I recall in my twenties thinking what a muck the previous generation had made and now the youngsters look at us wondering what we were thinking leaving them a planet in such chaos.

Much better to look inward and retreat from the vagaries and drama of the world and of work where young people around me have that same intensity critiquing each other's work performance and private lives. As the oldest of old farts I am exempt from participation not least because I want nothing to do with the drama queens of either camp. I have retreated from all responsibility for anything other than my own work and I like it that way very much. I have lost  the intensity of youth and I am relieved. There is serenity to be found among the mangroves.

We walked, we ran (he ran really) and I set my alarm for 3:45 am as Wednesday, today is another fun day of taking calls, holding their hands and sending help to unravel the Gordian knots into which they manage to tangle otherwise simple lives. We are so lucky and I have to look at the former street dog who knows the value of a quiet home and routines and the ability to sleep uninterrupted to remind myself of that great good fortune. Most problems are first world problems. Only a  few problems are really life threatening and they are the ones that need our undivided attention. Sleep is the reward for paying attention.

Morning

These strange days of winter in Key West. The mornings brighten up before seven depending on the cloud cover which has been intense and the air is cold to the touch and when it's windy, which is often, it's cold enough to give you goosebumps if you aren't used to this sort of mild cold weather. 

Rusty and I have been strangers to downtown for a while now and I have to say it took an act of determination to head downtown when I got off my sickbed. Key West is packed with people and of traffic there is enough that getting around is tedious. Our long lines probably aren't that long in a world where true traffic jams occur daily but around here the traffic is intense by local standards this time of year. And in my opinion this year is a heavy one.

At work we get a stream of parking complaints from people trying to cope with vehicles blocking driveways, abandoned and taking up space or badly parked and blocking sight lines on narrow streets. If you don't know how to parallel park you'd better get a bicycle because i have met people who break into a cold sweat when faced with a  narrow spot and they prefer to drive around looking for something better. I have even parked friends' cars for them. 

I have seen some pretty terrible road rage too as the city empties in the evening and the workers go back to the housing they can afford on neighboring islands. Now that I am working day shift I leave the police station at 6 in time to join the late departures  from the city which started emptying at four in the afternoon. Mix in local commuters with people from out of town going home and losing their minds in slow lines of cars and some people drive very peculiarly. 

I have stopped riding two wheelers as I don't want another catastrophe and the fun has gone out of riding when surrounded by angry drivers intent on dicing and slicing all in their way. 

So I find it  a great pleasure when I can slip into town, ignore my workplace and find a spot to leave my car before everyone is awake. I greatly enjoy walking the woods with Rusty to get away from the world but Key West is a great place to wander before the crowds burst out of their hangovers.

I was on the waterfront as the sun came up and illuminated the clouds with that fresh pink light and by the time Rusty and I had wandered back and forth across numerous intersections we arrived back at the car when the sun was well up.

As Rusty laid into a bowl of water I looked around and saw all these abstract forms surrounding the parking lot. I had a drive to get home but I was going to be against the traffic flow, Rusty would be on the back seat and I had no plans to return to Key West all day. That I can handle.

My car was recalled last month to fix the airbag problem that has affected vehicles all over the world. I think about that as I watch the weird antics of the drivers around me on Highway One. Patience.