Around Here

A couple of weeks ago this crazy little squirrel started hanging out at the condo. I have never, in fifteen years, seen a squirrel here. Neither had anybody else. A friendly little beast, he would follow me, would follow anybody, up and down the hall. Some of the women freaked out. He would follow you home and run up your screen door. Look you quizzically in the face. He jumped on Dan's shoulder. We concluded that he must have been somebody's lost pet, so frank was his trust. Barbara fed him almonds. His behavior wasn't rabies-peculiar or erratic. Just unaccountably friendly. Finally he followed a woman to the laundry room; Phyllis ran home screaming and refused to leave her apartment. She called me. I told her I had seen the squirrel and wasn't sure what, if anything, I could do, or could be done. By now I was feeling a bit protective of the little guy, while realizing that of course he couldn't stay. Phyllis was undaunted. She began making a series of phon...

It was a picture of Jesus. A framed print, gloriously sentimental, probably  painted by a starving artist in  Poland . But to the eyes of a twelve year old  Catholic boy it was the most beautiful Mother's Day present in  the world. When I looked at the price sticker, just below the blue Woolworth label, the  sticker shock was twofold: it  confirmed its inaccessibility while further  glamorizing  its value. The picture next to it was half that price. I  switched the  price tags.  I wasn't alone. My friend Kenny thought that this was so cool that he  followed  suit, and switched the price  tag on a pair of sunglasses. Now it was a  conspiracy.  The irony that I was perpetrating a fraud to acquire an image of  Jesus wasn't  entirely lost on me, even as a  twelve year old. I did feel a little  crummy. But the  grandeur of this gift, the anticipated glory of my mother's  smile  ...

I'd heard that there was a ghost in the swamp. And finding myself with nothing particular to do on a bright balmy day last week I set off, glazed with mosquito repellent, to see what I could see. Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is the "largest remaining stand of ancient bald cypress left in North America," some six thousand acres in the heart of southwest Florida. It is managed by the National Audubon Society. I was virtually alone in the sanctuary that day. But as I trekked deeper into the wild, and ever further from traffic and voices and buzz, I came to realized that my reference for the meaning of 'alone', the absence of human beings, was short sighted. An old, lichen-dappled boardwalk threads through the preserve. There was something familiar, comforting, about those old boards, drawing me endlessly into the woods. A Gulf Fritillary on a wildflower. Wildlife here seems to move in a primordial calm. Alligator flags lead to a clearing and a chorus of shrouds. Corkscr...

So I jumped off the safari (more work than my work, come to think of it) long enough to photograph this neo-mediterranian house, built on a preserve in the southwest corner of the city. Three stories, plus an observation tower. I can maybe afford a scooter to park under the portico. A kitchen worthy of my fettuccine alfredo. Just 'around the corner' in this shower enclosure is a marble hot tub. That could provide a whole new incentive to get dirty. Gill, I'll be ordering some Dermalogica. A standing order.

I came across this tree, upended by beach erosion, probably an Australian pine, while hiking Bowman's Beach on Sanibel Island. Its roots were hung, rather whimsically, with sea shells.

Is this a new marketing strategy?

It rains every day now, often a thundershower, late in the day, a return to the archaic tropical cycle. I exult in this kiss of responsibility suspended, business as usual deferred. The weather's own little sabbath. I venture out, a bike ride in the cooled and gleaming aftermath, the deepened colors, coasting through puddles, tires rinsed and blackened. In an hour it seeps away, absorbed by this ancient pile of shells. The trees drip on til morning.

When T.E. Lawrence was asked why he liked the desert he replied "It's clean." Sunday I awoke with a yen for Lover's Key. I went alone. There's a remote section of the beach there where the solitude and simplicity whisper vastly, intimately, to my spirit. With my body stripped and sanded, sun-burnished, my soul swims freely to the horizon. I get lost in a primal rapture out here, sweet music of surf and sky, abandoned to divine providence. "Return of the native." I heard an osprey scream. I grabbed my camera and looked around. It circled overhead and then swooped down to snag a fish. The raptor's piercing cry seems an ancient exultation. Washed ashore, the seaweeds reminisce, with delicate scribbles, about the sea.