Floating above it
Right now I’m stealing a random late-night* wifi signal on a bench about two miles from the retiree-community condo in which my extended family is staying on vacation. I’m on Marco Island, Florida; a stone’s throw north of the southwestern edge of the Everglades. The news says the eastern Everglades is suffering arson-based swamp fires clouding the skies around Ft. Lauderdale and Miami, but there’s no sign to the west. In fact, it is oddly timeless except for the tan-agument aging of resident retirees. To explain: twenty members of my extended family assembled for my evil-but-trying-to-make-up-for-it Grandmother’s 90th birthday here on Marco; “neutral territory” for all Breckenridge clan members according to my father the de facto trip planner.
It is generally accepted that Grandmother’s ultimate mean-spirited act toward her progeny will be who inherits her BUFEs (pronounced ‘buffies’)—hip-high white porcelain elephant-shaped pedestal planter boxes, with gold leaf inlay and jade & teal trim. My uncle (ex-State Department, etc) says many post-WWII families of military and State assignments in eastern Asia came home with buffies. By way of his unofficial etymology, buffies comes from the pronunciation of the acronym B.U.F.E.s, or big effin’ ugly elephants. Grandmother’s buffies haunted my childhood, in the sense that they were the only imaginative thing about her Colorado Springs static-electricity-filled house, yet I was not allowed to play with them due to the precious, precious cacti growing in pots on their pedestals. Bullshit. Instead as a child I played with the distance of arc I could get between myself and the wrought iron bannisters.
However, Grandmother is exacting a preemptive penance by bringing us here. I’m not inclined to put much value in geographic location, but I *greatly dislike* Florida. People are not meant to live here. I would whine further, but it is all uncharitable, sarcastic and (ultimately) naive railing against this hideously consumerist, sedentary, cud-chewing retiree culture. We’ll see what I come up with when I’m 80, if indeed I *get* the option to retire that young.
“And She Was” by the Talking Heads has been running through my head these past days. It is amazingly appropriate—
I just got accused by a golf-cart-riding security guard that I’m a ne’er do well and should move on. So damn right, which takes the place of a critique of the song and Florida I though up. Moving on, making sure she is still breathing, opens up her eyes. The world was moving and she was right there with it. And she was.
* Late by east coast times. I’m running on insomniatic West coast daylight, so neither the mosquitos or I consider it late. In fact, due to the rapacious mosquitos, I’m wearing a hoodie with hood pulled in tight in 95* heat at night, watching my hands be eaten alive. Type, stop, rub, swat, curse, repeat. I recognize this as addiction…because in fact the sprinklers are soaking my shoes, but I can’t move or I lose signal.
