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| Key West, April 11 |
April 6-13, 2014 (again)
Dateline Florida: Fractions
“Did you ever notice
no one goes anywhere cold to find themselves?” − Tom
Nashe, among many others.
No, we
go to the south-by-the-sea, to eat cheaply − olives and fruit and loaves and fishes − to drink the
wine; to lie on the beach and think ourselves pilgrims; to look out over the
water and into the horizon as the sun turns to dusk turns to dark; to imagine
we are free, and happy, ourselves, at last.
And behind us, only yards from where
the beach ends and the street begins, the already happy natives are cleaning our
rooms, making our beds and mopping our floors; they are baking our bread,
frying our fish, mixing our drinks; they are minding our stores and making our
music; and they sweep the streets and rake the sand before we get up in the
morning. They burn their candles at both ends, hustling by day and allowing themselves
to be hustled at night, working two jobs eight days a week. When do they drink
wine or watch the sunset? They go to bed in the dark and they get up in the
dark. They may lie down next to another warm body, smelling of sea, sweat, and
sand, but that body is already asleep; it has to be up even darker.
***
Contemplation has been for all my devoted
non-effort at that non-activity something I have consistently failed at. And I consider
that my good fortune. It is better for our humility to fail at becoming “mystical”
than to succeed; for those that have succeeded − in whatever measure − are in my
experience the most prideful prigs in all the south, unbelievably arrogant
about their own humility before God. They are humble before nothing or no one
else; no one else can be other than inferior before their God-infused selves. They
may talk −
and they are always talking −
about their non-selves: they are no longer themselves but God in them; but it
is always to boast. “We have found ourselves and it is God in us. We have God in us!”
***
We have just walked kitschy Key West –
Castle and Neff and I. Now they are off looking for more birds and plants in
the botanical gardens behind the golf course north of the town. I am sitting at
a table on the sidewalk in town, drinking something Bobby brought me − “Whatever,” I
said −
something wide and cold, tasting of mango and gin. I am listening to the music bumping
and ringing out of the bar across the street. A gaggle of seven-eighths naked girls
wriggle by. Apparently, they’ve just been swimming. The youngest is complaining
she smells “like butt.” Bobby chuckles from the doorway, where he stands, arms
folded. I seem to be his only customer this early afternoon. “Never been in the
ocean before, I’m guessing,” he says. “Another?” “Will I be able to stand up
and walk away?” “I’ll call you a pedi-cab if you can’t.” “Good. Another!”
Bobby’s
from Miami. The mosquito-like waitress at “The Wooden Spoon,” where I had
breakfast this morning, is from Brooklyn. The lanky, low-voiced woman or boy behind
the cash register where I bought my US-1 zero-mile-marker keychain, explaining
why a credit card would be better even if it only cost four bucks, because he
or she can’t seem to get the damn register to balance, is from Madison,
Wisconsin.
Two-thirds
in my cups, I imagine that they are spiritual failures like I am. They came to
south-by-the-sea to find themselves, or at least to find freedom, but. . . . When I ask how they got from there to here: The
woman-or-boy just shrugs. Liselotte (the waitress) says only, “You know how one
thing leads to another.” I nod, though I do and
I don’t. I wonder what they make of these failures I attribute to them. Are
they saddened by them – and envious of the mystical few, as I once was? Do they
think, as I do now, of “that foolishness” as “a phase”? Are they amused (and
bemused) at the grandiosity that led them to believe they could come where it
was warm and the mangos were cheap and stuff their cheeks with the pulp of the
tree of Knowledge and . . . live?! For aren’t all spiritual adepts would-be Gnostics
like Adam and Eve? Eat or know the Right Thing, and you will be like God.
***
I sit and watch and listen and smell. Bobby
brings me a third whatever, and I call Castle to tell him I can’t meet by the
church, he’s going to have to pick me up. I give the phone to Bobby, so he can
give him directions.
“Thanks,”
I say. “You know, you’re a great guy.” And I plan to leave a big tip, no matter
what the drinks are costing. “You like it here?” I ask. Bobby shakes his head. He
guesses he does. “Good as anywhere,” he says.
I
do like it here, in my stupor. I like that it’s warm and that there are girls
that smell like butt and music that bumps and bongs and people that mix sweet drinks
that take away your good sense. I like that it’s bright and noisy and gently rude;
I like that it’s tacky and honestly dishonest, that somewhere within a couple of
blocks, there is a store selling the right sort of crap for everyone from the cheapest
to freest-spending, from the stinkiest to sweetest-smelling, from the humblest
to most arrogant. Shop right up! Buy happiness here.
d
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