Around Here

The town of Matlacha (pronounced Matt LaShay) is a small island, perforated with inlets and canals, shaped like a bird in flight, the eastern gateway to Pine Island on the Florida gulf coast. Its name is a Caloosa Indian word for "water up to the chin." A funky little fishing village, it grew into an artsy town with a population of about 800, consisting mostly of fishermen, restaurateurs, bikers, assorted artists, musicians, misfits, and quite a few of what my friend Bobby calls "leftover hippies." (Where the non-leftover hippies are isn't clear, a parallel universe perhaps.) Matlacha is full of galleries, restaurants, bars, walkable from east to west, and an easy getaway. We go there to look and eat, or just sip cappuccinos and do what John Lennon said is people's favorite thing to do: sit around and talk.

Here's one I wrote some time ago (apologies to Gerard Manley Hopkins). It's been on my mind of late... Glory to God for coffee beans! For neon lights and faded jeans. Let angels and guitars alike, let chariots and motorbikes and high and low by every means sing his awesome grace. Praise be to God for jungle drums! For wedding feasts, for wine, for Tums. Let parliaments, let golden pond, let Mother T. and Elton John and monks and movie stars and bums dance his dazzling grace. Avid scribes in lairs outworn conjure canon, blame, and warn: “Don’t eat! Don’t kiss! Don’t fart! Don’t grin! Let uncouth humans, dust, and sin and all subject to sacred scorn seek out a hiding place.” Glory to God for rockin’ bands! For tacky praises, wounded hands. Let golden pheasants, canyons, flutes, Let Amy, Zeppo, sandals, boots, all reconciled creation dance and sing his awesome grace.

Of all the holidays, Thanksgiving stirs for me the most ambivalence, and perhaps the least excitement, affection, nostalgia. These attachments are formed in childhood of course, and Thanksgiving, apart from my beloved Macy's Parade (I'd sit in front of the TV, spellbound), had little appeal to me. I grew up in a family that ate dinner together almost every day. The only thing different about turkey day was its lavish dimensions - and a menu that had none of my favorites. Roast turkey was overrated. Mashed potatoes, ho hum. Sweet potatoes made me gag. Cranberry sauce - ech. At least dessert was reliable. Thanksgiving's icons left me unmoved. I didn't like the pilgrims. They struck me as geeky and puritanical. Probably humorless. I wouldn't have wanted to meet one. The purported spiritual underpinnings, to express gratitude by kissing up to the ugly turkey god and being expected to gorge on that punishing meal, simply did not register, or if it did, it was as just one...

I'm afraid of heights. During the climactic scenes in King Kong I was scrunched so far down in my seat at the movie theater that I could barely see the screen between the heads of the couple in front of me. "Are you afraid of heights?" "Not really." You don't say no to a major client. So Friday night I was handed the key to the crane, after being shown how to operate it, and insisting that I could handle it, no problem. I was on my own. I spent most of the day Saturday watching the flag outside the condo for signs of a break in the prevailing winds. When it finally sagged against the flagpole, I headed out. The last place I wanted to find myself was in a bucket twelve stories in the air in a stiff breeze. The crane's controls were pretty basic. One key position operated the boom from the ground, another from the bucket. Three joysticks on the control panel got me where I needed to go: one moved the boom from horizontal to vertical, another rotated it, th...

Kevin regarded the beach, the shore, as one of a handful of elemental environments: the desert was another. As were the woods, the mountain, the metropolis. He gazed out at the Gulf from the lanai, and it occurred to him that on this, their third vacation together, he and Mitch had seen four of the five. They had skied outside Aspen, at the mountainside cabin of Kevin’s uncle, a retreat rarely used, and as pristine and spare as the distant peaks of Mount Elbert at dawn. The following year, it was the rain forest, the Brazilian Amazon, where they had seen butterflies, flashing blue neon, as large as coupons, flitting amidst steaming tree ferns. Now they were on the Gulf, the cozy beach on Sanibel Island, stretching mile after minimally-developed mile. Of course Lake Michigan, in their own Chicago, was itself oceanic: the Great Lake had the sea’s vacant horizon. But Kevin could sense that the Gulf, and the ocean beyond, was another presence altogether. He had read somewhere that tw...

The 21st Annual American Sandsculpting Championship rose out of Fort Myers Beach's sugar sand last weekend. The competition was a masters' invitational. I've always loved this festival, celebrating the monumental and momentary, the fantastic and the fleeting...

The revolving door whooshed closed behind me; the warm air of the street shrank to a slot, fanned the back of my neck, and vanished. Confronting the cool festivity inside the Burger King called up a spasm of joy. A primal response, no doubt, to community, voices, grilled beef. At close to three o’clock, the lunch hour rush was long past, but there was an air of conviviality inside, the merriment of those having escaped the elements into a refuge specifically designed, after all, to stimulate and nurture. A little clutch of what appeared to be hospital volunteers, all three wearing melon-tinted smocks and ordering with gusto and gossip, left with trays laden with drinks and food wrapped in colorful tissue. I could have eyed the panoramic menu, backlit and brightly colored, for eons. A garden of edible delights. Steaming burgers bursting with juicy ground beef; mustard and ketchup, perfectly red and yellow, oozing out from their toasted buns. French fries, oiled and crispened, browned a...

Ok, take away my man card. I like the mall. Maybe "like" isn't strong enough. Gone are the old enclosed noisy gymnasiums of the market place, the puny strips with their discount shoe stores and title companies. Florida malls are now whole cities, with named streets and their own zip codes. You can live there. Literally. The most recent iteration includes on-site condos. Is this gigantism the ultimate expression of the triumph of the marketplace - or a harbinger of its imminent demise? Who cares. It has a Barnes & Noble and a Starbucks.