So I'll say it thrice.
Feb. 27th, 2008 06:31 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
raybearI’ve been sluggish most all day, with the exception of putting together a submission for workshop. Considered writing down some things about my weekend, but that made me sad. I’ll be fine soon enough, I just need to mope and brood. I came into work and immediately was descended on by the in-your-face nervous nellies who are my office neighbors. 5 o’clock can’t come soon enough, I think. Then I am saved – my boss wants to meet with me briefly. With good news. And you know, its hard to know if ‘good news’ in corporate speak is always good news, because it could be something like, “congratulations, you’ve been chosen for this long, involved tedious project and we’re giving you a $5 gift card to a place you don’t go as thanks!” However, this was authentic good news. I’m now getting paid time off. Starting March 1st, but possibly because I’m ‘paid in arrears”, it would be retroactive such that the vacation I just took would get me paid hours. This is very good news. I can now be sick or go on vacation and not have to live off credit cards to do either.
Now I’m a bit less mopey. Now my office mate is gone for the evening. Now I can write a little about it.
Miami!
I lived in a studio apartment three short blocks from the beach. The blocks in Miami are very short, such that trips between places never took as long as I thought. Except for the one time I decided to go 100+ blocks via rented bike to find a nude beach. I rode 11 miles and only saw one naked sunbather from a distance and he wasn’t that exciting. He wasn’t even actually on the nude beach, I think, like me, he gave up looking and just found an isolated patch and dropped trousers. I was tired and hot and found my own isolated patch and stripped down to my euro trunks. The sand is amazing there, dry and large rounded pieces, the kind that easily brushes off, doesn’t get too hot or stick to your skin. Or maybe I’m just not as sensitive as I used to be. The water was cool, cold even, but once you got under it was fine. The waves were gentle, almost no more than the eastern side of Lake Michigan. I’ve never thought of myself as a beach person, except I think I realized I love the beach, but I love proximity to it, I don’t love 10 hour days committed to it. Almost every day I’d go early early in the morning for a jog or a bike ride or a sitting and sunrise watching, then back to the condo and change into swim trunks, then go back for the morning sunlight that wouldn’t burn my skin as bad. I constantly overapplied sunscreen. By lunchtime I’d shower and change and wander off to find food, to people watch, to see if anything in the guidebook I wanted to go to still existed. This was actually somewhat of a problem, only in that I, of course, wanted to go to lowkey dive bars or restaurants that were cheap and filled with locals, and those were the places that in the 3 years since the book came out, have been bought up and replaced with things like a Diesel store.
I couldn’t find good coffee in Miami. I mean, I didn’t hunt it down ravenously, I was actually trying to drink more tea, I’m trying to cut back my caffeine intake, but the three times I had it, at a well-known established breakfast place, at a French café, everywhere it was horrible. The drip was like poorly made folgers, the espresso drinks were like poorly made bustelo. It is not a coffee town. Though I didn’t make it to an Italian restaurant, I suspect some of them might do it right.
And there’s a lot of overpriced, mediocre food and drink. I unfortunately fell victim to it, but only for one meal. And at least the bread was delicious and the outdoor seating was pleasant enough. I scored well every where else. On Saturday night I ate at Tap Tap, which has spinach in coconut sauce and stewed chicken and delicious cocktails with rum and triple sec and mango and passionfruit and live music and I sat across from an interracial lesbian couple on an intimate first date. At one point they got up and danced in the aisle, directly in the way of the path of the two servers who were trying to keep up a full restaurant on a Saturday night, and they were never asked to move. They just squeezed themselves around their embraced bodies and never spilled a plate or a dropped a fork. On Sunday I rented the bike and went on my massive ride all of the island, to Hanover Park, to the botanical gardens, to random side islands that branch off the main one. There was a brief rain, but it was Florida afternoon showers, where heavy drops fall, instantly soak you, even though you can see blue skies only a few blocks away. Its lasts for a few minutes, but your shorts take hours to dry, even on a bike. By the early evening, I was home and exhausted from 25 miles of riding and constant sunshine, so I washed it all off, put on clean clothes, and walked Joe’s Crab House, the institution of the area that does live up to the hype, as I was told by a local. I got enough take out for two people, crab legs and conch fritters and olive salad, and then got home and ate it while watch the Oscars. People say the Oscars were boring. They are always boring, I feel they haven’t changed in years and probably never will and I think its just the nature of awards ceremonies, god knows I’ve been to enough live ones to know they are equally long and tedious. But I love the Oscars, I always have, I don’t mind the once a year 5 hour exercise. I made commentary to my imaginary friend the whole night and enjoyed myself.
The hours of Miami are a party town – dinner is usually after 9, the clubs don’t start filling up until after midnight. I ate early when it was cheap and empty and bartenders would serve me extra drinks. On Monday night I had an argentine steak that was one of the most amazing piece of beef I have ever eaten, and he managed to make a great mojito with Bacardi rum – it was lots of fresh crushed limes and mint, I think – and it made him happy that he convinced me of his skill, and in turn gave me two drinks for the price of one, plus some random lemon-esque dessert drink on the house too. I stumbled home that night, even with 10 ounces of beef in my stomach.
I never made it into a proper club. On Saturday night I wandered the streets and they were packed. Its like Bourbon Street, where you go down and spend all your time outside people watching and listening to the music. Who needs to go in where its empty? Or pay $15 cover and $10 for drinks? Especially when there’s a near full moon reflecting off the ocean, and the park up against the beach has a group of drummers performing for a crowd who spontaneously dances and sings along. Especially when I am not really that guy. I am the one who reads a Coetzee novel at dinner and sets an alarm for 6 am to watch the sunrise and meditate on the beach, who rides around all day on a bike singing outloud to my ipod and looking at plants and architecture. I wanted to be around people, I don’t necessarily want to talk to them, and I especially don't want to have to pay to do it while being judged for my clothes and listening to loud music. The vacation was a success, in that sense, I accomplished it perfectly. Had a few pleasant interactions with strangers, enough to never be lonely, not too much to ever feel obligated.
There was something else though, something that took a hold of me while there. It has been so long since I’ve experienced Florida. So long. Being there pulled up so many forgotten memories of family vacations, summer church trips, thanksgivings to visit relatives on the panhandle. When my plane circled over the beach before landing, I was too moved by the sight to cry, I could only sort of gape. How did I forget? When I stepped out onto the sidewalk and smelled the salt wetness on hot concrete, I though how did I forget? When my feet touched linoleum, when the crickets buzzed at night, when the sound of the surf drowned out even the loudest child’s scream as I laid in the sun, when I floated on my back and felt my toes poke up, I kept saying, how did I forget? On Saturday morning I remember laying there in the sun, drying off, some song on my headphones and my hat blocking the sun and I dozed off, I realized I had a huge grin on my face. I was just....happy.
Travelling back on Tuesday was a mess –there were thunderstorms in Atlanta that morning, so my plane from Miami was delayed. When I made it to Hartsfield finally, flights to Chicago were also delayed because of snow. I was reading in the waiting room and saw on the news that a massive power outage hit 1/3 of the state of Florida, including where I just was. It wasn’t exactly a path of destruction behind and ahead of me, more a path of massive inconveniences. But its hard not to make connections between it all, since my heart and head was already doing it anyway. Because something strange happened to me over the weekend, I went back to all these places, all these holes that I’ve ignored or forgotten, all these thoughts and spaces and stories opened back up for me again. Being alone for several days in a row, I started to talk to people in my head constantly. Old ghosts mostly, in new forms. Or my old self. And at one point, I was convinced I needed to go back. It is the first time this has happened. When I left for Chicago, I never anticipated wanting to go back, to return to the South – at least not for more than a visit. Suddenly this ache was unlocked. I missed it. I craved it. It was confusing.
Flying into Atlanta didn’t help. I know what this is all about. I know its about writing I’m working on anyway, about geography of self, of formations and influences and what we associate with them. About being grounded in place and identity at near cellular levels, in addition to our ability to morph, change, adapt. Before I left on vacation, I found all these old friends on Facebook. There is a larger process here, it wasn’t as sudden as it felt.
And landing in Chicago, looking out on the snow-covered roofs of houses packed together, the industrial corridors and city skyline and train tracks, it didn’t feel bad. It felt familiar too. I didn’t feel ecstatic to be home, but I didn’t dread it one bit either. This was helpful in a way, as a part of me was worried, maybe I would go home and be miserable, maybe I would pack up everything in a fit and migrate suddenly without warning and wake up in some sleepy beach town on the other side of an early mid-life crisis. That’s not what this is. But there is some other process here, and I’ll probably be back sooner rather than later, and I’m still trying to figure out what it will look like and why and how. Vacation, man. For all its middle-class dreams of leisure and tapping into those compulsions that can make you feel confused and inferior and broke, there’s also moments of find that deep relaxation in the escape. And in those moments, sometimes surprising things come up.
Now I’m a bit less mopey. Now my office mate is gone for the evening. Now I can write a little about it.
Miami!
I lived in a studio apartment three short blocks from the beach. The blocks in Miami are very short, such that trips between places never took as long as I thought. Except for the one time I decided to go 100+ blocks via rented bike to find a nude beach. I rode 11 miles and only saw one naked sunbather from a distance and he wasn’t that exciting. He wasn’t even actually on the nude beach, I think, like me, he gave up looking and just found an isolated patch and dropped trousers. I was tired and hot and found my own isolated patch and stripped down to my euro trunks. The sand is amazing there, dry and large rounded pieces, the kind that easily brushes off, doesn’t get too hot or stick to your skin. Or maybe I’m just not as sensitive as I used to be. The water was cool, cold even, but once you got under it was fine. The waves were gentle, almost no more than the eastern side of Lake Michigan. I’ve never thought of myself as a beach person, except I think I realized I love the beach, but I love proximity to it, I don’t love 10 hour days committed to it. Almost every day I’d go early early in the morning for a jog or a bike ride or a sitting and sunrise watching, then back to the condo and change into swim trunks, then go back for the morning sunlight that wouldn’t burn my skin as bad. I constantly overapplied sunscreen. By lunchtime I’d shower and change and wander off to find food, to people watch, to see if anything in the guidebook I wanted to go to still existed. This was actually somewhat of a problem, only in that I, of course, wanted to go to lowkey dive bars or restaurants that were cheap and filled with locals, and those were the places that in the 3 years since the book came out, have been bought up and replaced with things like a Diesel store.
I couldn’t find good coffee in Miami. I mean, I didn’t hunt it down ravenously, I was actually trying to drink more tea, I’m trying to cut back my caffeine intake, but the three times I had it, at a well-known established breakfast place, at a French café, everywhere it was horrible. The drip was like poorly made folgers, the espresso drinks were like poorly made bustelo. It is not a coffee town. Though I didn’t make it to an Italian restaurant, I suspect some of them might do it right.
And there’s a lot of overpriced, mediocre food and drink. I unfortunately fell victim to it, but only for one meal. And at least the bread was delicious and the outdoor seating was pleasant enough. I scored well every where else. On Saturday night I ate at Tap Tap, which has spinach in coconut sauce and stewed chicken and delicious cocktails with rum and triple sec and mango and passionfruit and live music and I sat across from an interracial lesbian couple on an intimate first date. At one point they got up and danced in the aisle, directly in the way of the path of the two servers who were trying to keep up a full restaurant on a Saturday night, and they were never asked to move. They just squeezed themselves around their embraced bodies and never spilled a plate or a dropped a fork. On Sunday I rented the bike and went on my massive ride all of the island, to Hanover Park, to the botanical gardens, to random side islands that branch off the main one. There was a brief rain, but it was Florida afternoon showers, where heavy drops fall, instantly soak you, even though you can see blue skies only a few blocks away. Its lasts for a few minutes, but your shorts take hours to dry, even on a bike. By the early evening, I was home and exhausted from 25 miles of riding and constant sunshine, so I washed it all off, put on clean clothes, and walked Joe’s Crab House, the institution of the area that does live up to the hype, as I was told by a local. I got enough take out for two people, crab legs and conch fritters and olive salad, and then got home and ate it while watch the Oscars. People say the Oscars were boring. They are always boring, I feel they haven’t changed in years and probably never will and I think its just the nature of awards ceremonies, god knows I’ve been to enough live ones to know they are equally long and tedious. But I love the Oscars, I always have, I don’t mind the once a year 5 hour exercise. I made commentary to my imaginary friend the whole night and enjoyed myself.
The hours of Miami are a party town – dinner is usually after 9, the clubs don’t start filling up until after midnight. I ate early when it was cheap and empty and bartenders would serve me extra drinks. On Monday night I had an argentine steak that was one of the most amazing piece of beef I have ever eaten, and he managed to make a great mojito with Bacardi rum – it was lots of fresh crushed limes and mint, I think – and it made him happy that he convinced me of his skill, and in turn gave me two drinks for the price of one, plus some random lemon-esque dessert drink on the house too. I stumbled home that night, even with 10 ounces of beef in my stomach.
I never made it into a proper club. On Saturday night I wandered the streets and they were packed. Its like Bourbon Street, where you go down and spend all your time outside people watching and listening to the music. Who needs to go in where its empty? Or pay $15 cover and $10 for drinks? Especially when there’s a near full moon reflecting off the ocean, and the park up against the beach has a group of drummers performing for a crowd who spontaneously dances and sings along. Especially when I am not really that guy. I am the one who reads a Coetzee novel at dinner and sets an alarm for 6 am to watch the sunrise and meditate on the beach, who rides around all day on a bike singing outloud to my ipod and looking at plants and architecture. I wanted to be around people, I don’t necessarily want to talk to them, and I especially don't want to have to pay to do it while being judged for my clothes and listening to loud music. The vacation was a success, in that sense, I accomplished it perfectly. Had a few pleasant interactions with strangers, enough to never be lonely, not too much to ever feel obligated.
There was something else though, something that took a hold of me while there. It has been so long since I’ve experienced Florida. So long. Being there pulled up so many forgotten memories of family vacations, summer church trips, thanksgivings to visit relatives on the panhandle. When my plane circled over the beach before landing, I was too moved by the sight to cry, I could only sort of gape. How did I forget? When I stepped out onto the sidewalk and smelled the salt wetness on hot concrete, I though how did I forget? When my feet touched linoleum, when the crickets buzzed at night, when the sound of the surf drowned out even the loudest child’s scream as I laid in the sun, when I floated on my back and felt my toes poke up, I kept saying, how did I forget? On Saturday morning I remember laying there in the sun, drying off, some song on my headphones and my hat blocking the sun and I dozed off, I realized I had a huge grin on my face. I was just....happy.
Travelling back on Tuesday was a mess –there were thunderstorms in Atlanta that morning, so my plane from Miami was delayed. When I made it to Hartsfield finally, flights to Chicago were also delayed because of snow. I was reading in the waiting room and saw on the news that a massive power outage hit 1/3 of the state of Florida, including where I just was. It wasn’t exactly a path of destruction behind and ahead of me, more a path of massive inconveniences. But its hard not to make connections between it all, since my heart and head was already doing it anyway. Because something strange happened to me over the weekend, I went back to all these places, all these holes that I’ve ignored or forgotten, all these thoughts and spaces and stories opened back up for me again. Being alone for several days in a row, I started to talk to people in my head constantly. Old ghosts mostly, in new forms. Or my old self. And at one point, I was convinced I needed to go back. It is the first time this has happened. When I left for Chicago, I never anticipated wanting to go back, to return to the South – at least not for more than a visit. Suddenly this ache was unlocked. I missed it. I craved it. It was confusing.
Flying into Atlanta didn’t help. I know what this is all about. I know its about writing I’m working on anyway, about geography of self, of formations and influences and what we associate with them. About being grounded in place and identity at near cellular levels, in addition to our ability to morph, change, adapt. Before I left on vacation, I found all these old friends on Facebook. There is a larger process here, it wasn’t as sudden as it felt.
And landing in Chicago, looking out on the snow-covered roofs of houses packed together, the industrial corridors and city skyline and train tracks, it didn’t feel bad. It felt familiar too. I didn’t feel ecstatic to be home, but I didn’t dread it one bit either. This was helpful in a way, as a part of me was worried, maybe I would go home and be miserable, maybe I would pack up everything in a fit and migrate suddenly without warning and wake up in some sleepy beach town on the other side of an early mid-life crisis. That’s not what this is. But there is some other process here, and I’ll probably be back sooner rather than later, and I’m still trying to figure out what it will look like and why and how. Vacation, man. For all its middle-class dreams of leisure and tapping into those compulsions that can make you feel confused and inferior and broke, there’s also moments of find that deep relaxation in the escape. And in those moments, sometimes surprising things come up.
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Date: 2008-02-28 02:54 am (UTC)I bought a book of Marge Piercy poems and one of them is called "Your Standard Mid-Life Crisis" and I swear that every time I casually open it, I open it to that - ha!
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Date: 2008-02-28 04:36 pm (UTC)Also, I've been inspired by you -- I think I'm going to try writing a story a week. Even if its just barebones story idea/outline and a couple scenes. I feel like I keep 'storing' ideas only in my head when they pop up, which is really just becoming "forgetting".