The Outside World

I haven't been recently.  To the outside world.  But it has come to see me in the form of my friend, Dana.

Being at home with your child can often feel more like being in a home with your child. Within four walls (that sometimes seem like they should be white and padded!) it's just you, the kid and one of the animated Bobs (the British construction dude or the one of geometric trousers). If your home is in a new place where you don't know many people, some days from the time of first stirrings in the morning, the only sound you hear is of your own throat clearing making way for words that might not  be spoken for hours.  So, it really can feel like you are not part of the exterior landscape. Moreover,  since the summer arrived here and brought with it a procession of mosquitoes and convectional squalls, the outdoors have become truly deserted coaxing one further inside. Since Gavin's (the fancy pilot's) schedule has changed to include intense flying all weekend - and I mean from 7am on Saturdays (or even Fridays) to 9pm on Sundays - I do feel a bit lonely and purposeless.  As far as entertaining my son,  I am left feeling a little like a birthday party clown who keeps bumping into the same kids on the party circuit and has run out of tricks.  There are only so many stimulating pre-schooler activities I can pull out of my tired, budget conscious a$$.....

One can see, then, that a visit from a friend is more than a pleasant opportunity to 'catch up'. Under these circumstances, a visit from a friend can be regenerative and can make you feel finally and once again part of the outside world.  But, as if in grand tribute to life imitating art,  a parade of slapstick style mishaps began almost as soon as we began to discuss Dana making a short trip down.  First of all, the doable range of dates for her visit were rendered laughably narrow, something that happens when you consider multiple families' commitments, thousands of miles to travel and everyone's perpetual quest for cheap airfare.
Eventually, the only way it would work was for Dana to arrive here at 1am and travel back three days later at 5am!   The idea that became Dana's visit was incongruous in its objectives:  Her aim was to briefly escape the mania that is her busy life.  My aim was to brush up against that mania just for a second - to feel the rush of juggling two activities, nay, a conversation AND and opinion at the same time just for a few days.  So, really the theme for the visit is one of irony, of incompatibility between the circumstances and its ultimate ends, of square pegs in round holes.  But we were desperate to realize this now monolith of a goal.

To travel through Toronto (or any other major city that could also qualify for the euphemistic 'big smoke' nickname) rush hour -and that western portion of the 401 that is perpetually and ironically 'rushing' at a standstill- to  reach the long line at the check in counter and to inch forward in that line for 45 minutes shuffling one's carry-on across the airport floor (because you didn't want to bring a rolling suitcase because you didn't want to have to check it and waste time unnecessarily!) have become expected parts of the experience of air travel.  Missing any of those steps would cause one to suspect the karmic coordinates, or the legislative engines of Murphy to be somehow out of whack.  But what is not expected is to be told - once you have shuffled yourself to finally be mere inches away from that flight check-in agent (ah - so close)- that your flight is canceled, not to be rescheduled for that day and that the reason is that they could not find a pilot.  Not that they couldn't find the pilot.  They couldn't find a pilot!  I know, right? 

She did get here in the end - a full nine hours later and after a dusk to dawn spent to-ing and fro-ing on aforementioned gauntlet of the 401. So, it became all the more important to savour our time together and get everything seen, every discussion theme plyed, every cell of her epidermis tan in whistlestop fashion. 

You see Dana, like myself,  spent her youth coming to this area - about 20 miles of where we are  - regularly.  Well into our teenage years, our parents - well meaning -  were dragging us on various modes of transport to spend vacations here in Florida.  Although she and I were in high school together, this never came up until recently.  With both of us being so familiar with the area, I had to pull out some stops and discard the regular itinerary of rote sites of interest in favour of one befitting my friend's well worn Florida lens.  A few torrential thunderstorms later and a requisite sojourn at the outlet mall and we began our quest for the unsung sites of the gulf-coast to have as backdrops for our planned dense and gratifying conversations.
 
 Parts of the Gulf Coast of Florida follow lines on a Sacred Energy Grid. Sometimes, this is called Gaia's sacred sites map or the crystalline earth grid.  So, like any good diamagnetic gravity vortex, it needs a housing, a place people can go to soak in this energy.  This area has one such Eco-Spiritual Center and I had been a few times before. We went there together hoping to attract, in a few short minutes, the serenity promised by a full session of meditation.  Given the telescoped nature of our tour of the area, we were trying to fit in a nice sophisticated dinner à  la girls night out after our eco-spiritual-yogic-karma mini-journey.  So, a muddy PWYC kayak ride or a sitting in the sweat lodge was out of the question.  They would have really ruined our hair.  And so we settled for an express-meditation (an oxymoron if I ever did hear one) a walk on the deliciously rickety suspension bridge (built in a true community effort by residents donating boards one by one - each engraved with a few words beseeching peace or love or both) and went on our way - fancy clothes and constitution unscathed despite our quick retreat into the rainforest.

 Dining out in Florida or other franchise-heavy destinations is an altogether different experience from
eating a meal in a restaurant in a big city or in a rural area.  The scene here is homogenous.  Whereas in a big city, there are hip 'up and coming' chefs, traditional kitchy diners and earthy, fun food trucks all crowded together on the same city block, this restaurant landscape is a bit one-note.  And that note is moderately-priced, semi-casual, mid-level, cross-section of cuisines.  Yes, this is the land of the infamous mid-meal.  And it is fitting as many of the residents whether seasonal, or year round transplants, are from the mid-west of the U.S. where food is not particularly marked as an adventure or a medium of art.  So, even though places may be disguised as unique and quirky, they get their homey thatchkes from the Sysco of decorators - standardized and mass produced.  But, I say unto you: You can't judge a menu by it's giant plastic cover.  Because....you are not likely to find any other kind. Wonderfully,  there are plenty of good eats to be found if you shift your expectations a hair.  Dana and I - both of us hopelessly uberconscious of food, how it is prepared, where it comes from, with whom it is shared, and all those other considerations that so many of my other friends find boring and pointless - ended up at an upscale version of a mid-place(!)
 Yes, the menu is giant with lots of specials and combos but the food was very tasty.  This particular restaurant was one of those chains disguised as a California style bistro.  They got it right though.  The shrimp appetizer is prepared consistently to the point that an 'A' list celeb is currently promoting it and the restaurant on funny radio spots nestled comfortably between reassuring ads for anti-depressants and rousing entreaties from local personal injury lawyers.

Of course, Dana also accompanied me to my daily grind equivalents: my ESL classes full of amazing and ebullient - mostly female- students, the fitness classes I teach a few times a week to keep limber and prepared for  whatever osteo-situation awaits me.  And I accompanied her on vacation-type activities: dips in the sea, shopping, lolling on the beach.  Because although I have emphasized quite dramatically the isolation I sometimes feel - even here in paradise - the truth is friendship is therapy.  It casts a startling new colour on whatever it is in your life you are gazing at sometimes for too long under the same light.  So, the splash of colour she added for me was the perspective to see the small rewards in my routines, the serenity of the sea so close by and the pleasure of not needing much more than a pair of flip-flops and a bathing suit.  I will be bold and suggest that my paint brush stroke left for her a reassurance that you can step away for a moment - not even that far away - from the noise and simply take a quick swim.

There is no doubt that social connection is essentially about communicating with frequency, quality and  vibrancy.  It boils down to dialogue.  So, to Dana I will pay one of the most meaningful compliments I have to proffer:  Thank you, my friend, for the conversation.

The dark and sunny sides of the Sunshine State...

The Dark Side: OK - so you've heard a lot of it before:  the vast distances and the car culture, the strip malls, the constant complaint that, "It's not the heat, it's the humidity" and finally, the big one... the cultural barrenness.   Well, we were prepared for all these and other not so desirable paradigms of this State of tropical climes.
The distances are great but driving 20 minutes to pick up milk doesn't seem like much of a run when Gavin is flying to Ft. Lauderdale (on the other coast) just  to practice!  As far as living in one's car, we are new car-owners anyway.  Owning our first car this late (relatively) in life means we can probably drive every day across the State until we are well into our octogenarian years before we match the carbon foot-print of most of our contemporaries.
  The malls do abound, it's true.  One could spend 6 hrs in a different one of these air-conditioned temples of consumption every day for a year and still not make a dent in any in the next county. So we do visit these from time to time - when retail activity is required.  But we adjust our entertainment expectations and avail of nearby free diversions (surprisingly plentiful and expounded on in the next section) as our financial profile becomes ever leaner.

Regarding the issue of humidity, many of you know that I have lived for decades with a natural humidex on top of my shoulders.  So, when it comes to humidity, I have enough tragic hair days behind me to have learned that there isn't much that an entire bottle of product and some creative air flow redirection won't solve.  Of course, humidity affects more than just hair.  Nothing really ever dries here unless you put it directly under the sun during that sliver of a window between 11:45am and 12:30pm.  And with some things, even that  won't work..

The tiny - and I am emphatic here - soon to be completely renovated - kitchen has enough counterspace for a spoon and.... maybe another (smaller) spoon.  So, everything has to be mounted on walls on hooks or placed on (also scarce) shelves.  We thought a magnetic knife rail on the fridge would be a great space saver.  We nearly gave up on that idea after finding it loping downward days after it was installed or walking into the apartment after being out, to find a crime aftermath-like scene with knives splayed all over the floor.  The adhesive didn't dry properly so the rail didn't stick to the side of the fridge and just slid right off and onto the floor.  Finally Gavin, braving the possibility of collision between his Dremmel and a freon pipe actually drilled the rivets into the side of the fridge to hold the fr*&@!#ing thing up!

I address the issue of the absence of culture as a segue into.....

The Sunny Side: So, we have all been the bearers of jokes at the expense of this saw-grass State or laughed heartily when someone pointed out that its geography is nothing but swamp with beaches at it's edges sprinkled with Perkin's restaurants flying  hilariously oversized flags out front.  I have been coming to this area of Fla. since I was a child but my concerns then never reached beyond how to maximize my tanning time by employing the right kind of air mattress in the water so as not to overheat before I had bronzed sufficiently (of course, this was before ozone awareness and climate change).
Now as a resident, I have deepened the search for meaning in these marshes.  The immediate scarcity of things to do beyond baking oneself by the pool leads to full on scouring of any available resources.  Despite being familiar with the area, I never really committed to finding a place in the community - who does that, after all, on vacation?  So, as a result of afore-mentioned scouring, I have found free kayak trails, a very decent zoo, a historic railway that still runs sightseeing trips, dozens of free parks and playgrounds, an impressive library system, a not laughable theatre scene and two large, nearby and very respectable concert venues.
The dame of diversions should not be forgotten either: the beach.  Yes, it is when I hear the waves from my balcony (did I mention the beach is right across the street?), walk on the strand, watch Luca carrying buckets of sand to and from the construction site of "Yuca's (Luca's) castle", follow windsurfers up and down the coast that the toppling knife rail, the fast-food drive throughs, the billboards advertising outlet malls dissolve into the background.
The other thing is that my partner, who I have loved for a long time, who has always been generous and wonderful, reserved yet friendly and who has a lot of characteristics that make him a generally likeable, well adjusted guy is finally, well and truly complete.

No, I know that this is a blog meant to reach a wide audience of friends and acquaintances, give you some idea of what we are up to and entertain...maybe garner a few chuckles and - if I do it right - one hearty guffaw (or two) per post.  So, I will tread lightly in this area of relative emotional depth and just say: the feeling you get when you see someone you love unearth a sliver of themselves they have just found as if it they knew it was there all the time is indescribable.  So, do I like it here in sunny Fla.? If the Gavin that returns from a day of flying with his spirit still some 2000 ft off the ground is my litmus, I belong here.