Around Here

Look at this watch. It’s a Coleman. The the same outfit that makes kerosene lanterns, tents, and camping chairs. I think it looks better with a few beads. Maybe I’ll spritz on some Safari, gather up the bud and head down to Coconut Point mall. Sip coffee at a sidewalk table and see what people look like this week. This mall is a world apart, I think it has its own zip code. It’s so gorgeous and peaceful that you feel nothing bad could ever happen there - the corporate rulers won’t let it. That's the illusion, anyway. Its all-out dedication to materialism is both relaxing and fizzy, a glass of Coke.  As a photographic locale, I like the mall. I like the modernity, the lush manicured foliage, the people, the possibilities for composition in the smart colors and keen sterility. It's not the iconic gritty street of a metropolis. But I find suburbia fascinating, germane, and less explored.

M y smoke detector in the hall outside the bathroom started going off whenever I take a shower. Even with the bathroom door closed. The first couple of times, I had to jump out of the shower and take it down, lest it alarm the neighbors, and throw it under the blanket on the bed until it calmed down. Then I decided to forestall the shrieking by taking it down before taking a shower. Then I forgot to do it, and it went off and just kept going. I was seriously looking around for a hammer when I remembered to take the battery out. Today I reinstalled the battery and put it back up. It appears to be behaving, at least for now. But I’m wary. What is it warning me about? Don’t use that shampoo? You’d better wash your neck and ears! Stop tying up the bathroom! I still don’t know. My smoke detector is a demented scold.

Under the clear skies and calm waters that tropical storm Debbie left behind, I set out by kayak last weekend to a favorite interesting place to nap - the floating pavilions among the mangroves at Four Mile Cove. There are three of them, accessible by boat. These ingenious structures are platforms that “float”, the surface of the floating deck about a foot above water. The platform is hitched to a pavilion comprised of four large beams anchored into the riverbed, and which support the roof. The illustration below is an overhead view, roof removed. Wooden collars with rollers, attached to the platform at each of the four corners, surround the beam and allow the platform to rise and fall with the tides. There is some limited lateral motion as well, like a boat gently bumping against a dock, that is very relaxing, rather otherworldly really, at least in calm weather. I sought shelter there in a storm once, and it was pretty wild - waves washing over the deck, rain lashing in, the platfor...