Tile Instal­la­tion, 1937, WPA “New Deal” Art,  Coral Way Ele­men­tary School in Miami. Our school grow­ing up, our father’s before us, and the place where his mother ran her 5th Grade class­room for over 20 years. All the sub­ject of a future post.

Man’s true his­tory can­not be writ­ten until he knows the self that is beyond time. Then he can write his his­tory, and then he can know his begin­ning. Then he can know it is not a line, but a cir­cle, ever evolv­ing, ever mov­ing, like infin­ity. No begin­ning and no end to it– that’s the his­tory of Man going on and on recre­at­ing itself over and over again.

– Lam­ber­tus Ekkart, Love of the Known

Lis­ten: Billy Pil­grim has come unstuck in time.

– Kurt Von­negut, Slaugh­ter­house Five

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the ques­tions them­selves, like locked rooms and like books that are now writ­ten in a very for­eign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which can­not be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live every­thing. Live the ques­tions now. Per­haps you will then grad­u­ally, with­out notic­ing it, live along some dis­tant day into the answer.

–  Reiner Maria Rilke, Let­ters to a Young Poet

The Florida Dream, Bound for Glory.

Your friendly host, at Bear Cut, Key Bis­cayne, perched pre­car­i­ously out in a man­grove tree doing his best to keep his can­vas (below) from becom­ing a kite with­out string.

Photo: Chuck Fadely, The Miami Her­ald

Bis­cayne Morn­ing               P. Crock­ett

HERE fol­lows one man’s chron­i­cles of a most unusual adven­ture, and I can only hope that by some means unknown it might make safe pas­sage into your good hands. I would gladly pro­vide you with my coor­di­nates, if I could, but that is most unfor­tu­nately impos­si­ble. Where I now sit writ­ing is not a place sub­ject to pin­point­ing upon a map. Nei­ther does it appear gov­erned by, or even the least bit inter­ested in, any part of the web of Logic, Law, Divine Jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, etc., found so use­ful by Man in the exer­cise of his unfet­tered lust for con­trol and dom­i­na­tion, for Power and for wealth, across the span of centuries.

Moon­light on Bis­cayne Bay, 1904

It has been weeks now, you see, since I first set forth upon my ven­ture into the depths of the Great Florida Dream! As you might imag­ine, it has been a most remark­able jour­ney. I appear to have “taken the plunge” into one of the most truly sin­gu­lar of Dreams held close in the Human heart, one of its most endur­ing, gen­er­ally incom­pre­hen­si­ble, and epic liv­ing Fables. 

I have indeed embarked upon a jour­ney of sorts, and now pause for a moment to write and invite you to join me. Cer­tainly hope you can make it. 

Dis­cov­ery is always much more fun, in the sharing.

SHOULD you choose to come along for the ride, we will cover a lot of ground and yet not really go any­where, at least in terms of an actual des­ti­na­tion. So if there is one sin­gle rea­son I have under­taken the con­sid­er­able labor of putting together this illus­trated explo­ration of an ongo­ing jour­ney, it arises sim­ply from my nat­ural desire to share that which I most love. (Although quite hon­estly, I have grown to real­ize that only well along the path.)

Key Bis­cayne Trail    P. Crockett

Early Con­fed­er­ate Flag made in Florida, 1861. 

Cap­tain Blood Inspect­ing the Trea­sure Dean Corn­well

MORE than any­thing else, then, this account is a per­sonal cel­e­bra­tion, and noth­ing would give its author greater plea­sure than for you to sim­ply enjoy it. 

To look at the pictures.

Should you by chance hap­pen to find any of the words or ideas herein worth the keep­ing, if only for fur­ther consideration, 

excel­lent.

Yet if you find here sim­ply a few moments of pleas­ant diver­sion, I shall count my endeavor a great suc­cess.

Miami as “Play­ground”: a recur­ring theme for a City in search of its identity. 

But in “sell­ing” the promise of its very inti­mate, per­sonal con­nec­tions with this par­tic­u­larly flir­ta­tious Siren, the City is far from alone.

From Coral Gables Today, 1926

SO please do enjoy. Oh, and Yes–

allow your­self to just imag­ine.

It’s good for the soul.

The Miami River Rapids, late 1890’s, near the loca­tion of today’s 27th Avenue. Peo­ple tend to think of Florida as com­pletely flat, but in actu­al­ity early sur­veys mea­sured Lake Okee­chobee at a mean of twenty feet above sea level. Over the cen­turies the river’s mighty force had worn its way through the lime­stone “basin” of the Everglade’s edge at the Miami’s source.

From here the water came “tum­bling out, falling 10 feet within a dis­tance of 300 yards.” It was described as a spot of extra­or­di­nary beauty. Destroyed by dyna­mite, early 20th cen­tury. Entrance to Ever­glades, at Miami, 1908.  (Below)

Poin­ciana (Still Proud) P. Crockett

SO many mar­vels to consider…

If ever an antique photo might weep for its lack of color, this could be it. Just imag­ine the scene, above,

when the Earth was so very much younger. 1908, Pic­tured Knowl­edge, an illus­trated ency­clo­pe­dia for children.

You’ve got to love a group of adults with the good sense to enjoy the sim­ple plea­sure of sit­ting together up in a tree. 

Coconut Grove, 1880’s. The “Hunt­ing Grounds” noted can be seen on the map of the area, 1859, below. 

The area would later become the site of Charle’s Deering’s home on the Bay, in the Cut­ler Ridge/ Pal­metto Bay area.

Drain­ing the Ever­glades Eugene Sav­age http://www.hamiltonauctiongalleries.com/Eugene-Savage.htm

Semi­nole, 1904.   We have never really known them at all, and can­not now pre­sume to say dif­fer­ent for their cur­rent own­er­ship of a Hard Rock Cafe Hotel and Gam­bling Casino with an actual street address, in Hol­ly­wood, Florida.

A “Florida West­ern,” 1951. Here the Injuns swim mur­der­ously beneath the “quick­sand” waters, leap like screech­ing demons from the trees, and God-knows-what-all else.

My friend Jane Reno (Janet’s mother) was of the opin­ion that the col­or­ful and fes­tive garb now so com­pletely iden­ti­fied with the Semi­nole was essen­tially a pro­tec­tive adap­ta­tion, facil­i­tated by the timely intro­duc­tion of the sewing machine, dis­tin­guish­ing theirs from the Black com­mu­nity in the notably hate­ful and vio­lent Jim Crow South.

I have not counted the num­ber of images pre­sented here, but it’s cer­tainly been (eas­ily!) enough to melt my mind!

I have learned a great deal in the course of this jour­ney. Please do not feel rushed, or any need to absorb it all at one sit­ting. I’m not cer­tain that it may even be com­fort­ably pos­si­ble to “read” this post­ing in a sit­ting. Images, I sup­pose, call for more atten­tion. (At this par­tic­u­lar point, for that mat­ter, I’m not even cer­tain that it will ever be fin­ished! But if you are read­ing these words, that is a very good sign.) 

You might want to allow some time in your life to pause and enjoy them, sim­ply for what­ever they are. 

Just a lit­tle “dream­ing” time.

Ocean Drive, Miami Beach 1912

From Coral Gables: A Per­fect City 19261

THEY have no other plans and should be around, if you feel like com­ing back for another visit. Any time of the day or night, really, is com­pletely all right with them. 

In fact, images love being appre­ci­ated, really seen, ide­ally being remem­bered in a good way. It feels to them even an impor­tant part of what they are here for; appre­ci­a­tion helps keep them proud and alive. Oth­er­wise col­ors will start to fade, lines grow indis­tinct. Just a lit­tle, at first.

Please, drop on by when­ever the idea might occur to you. You will find this a won­der­ful, pri­vate place to relax and just breathe.

It’s always cool in the shade here, and quiet. The sound of the foun­tain is like music. 

You are always welcome.

And so it has been always, yet the vast bulk of images from the greater span of his­tory no longer exist, even in memory.

Above and below from Wreck­ers of the Florida Keys, Harper’s Mag­a­zine, 1911

A pic­ture is worth a thou­sand words, eas­ily, and some­times more than any num­ber. Maybe 100 images care­fully col­lected and joined together as part of one chron­i­cle tell a thou­sand stories. 

If I asked “What is the Florida dream, to you?,” and you stopped to think about it, you would prob­a­bly see: pic­tures.

“Win­ter Vis­i­tors to Cocoanut Grove, 1886–87″

THAT is also the way that we dream.

1953. Filmed at the famed Cypress Gardens.

And, how we remem­ber. (Although smell and music seem also to share that qual­ity of putting us right on that train back to mem­ory, leav­ing logic or ratio­nal thought dis­tantly behind at the sta­tion, scratch­ing its head.)

It is a pro­found ques­tion that knows no bot­tom, the power of the image. They soothe and delight us, they hor­rify and deeply dis­turb us, they inspire or manip­u­late us. 

Some­times images have a power all their own, and some­times the mes­sage is in the jux­ta­po­si­tion. Here is one of the numer­ous pho­tographs from Florida’s his­tory evi­denc­ing man’s wan­ton treat­ment of the envi­ron­ment, and espe­cially the other ani­mals. I count this image within that cat­e­gory only because the Whip Ray has never been con­sid­ered edi­ble in the West­ern Hemi­sphere. So it has been killed for sport, for cheap thrills, or for no rea­son at all.

Is it not a beau­ti­ful creature?

Almost as soon as I saw it, another image flashed into my mind. Maybe that is why images are so pow­er­ful a thing. Like music (for exam­ple, “cheesy” but catchy adver­tis­ing jin­gles), they require no for­mal invi­ta­tion to take up res­i­dence in your head. Once some­thing has been seen, it can­not be unseen, even if (per­haps espe­cially if) you really wish that it could.

With­out fur­ther com­men­tary, here is the other image:

IT occurs to me that the great philoso­pher Plato dis­missed the image (paint­ings, in his days), as a mere “shadow of a shadow.” Yet his quest was dif­fer­ent than ours, and since his days, or even within the last 20 years, the world has under­gone a sea change. We live out our lives in an abound­ing and lim­it­less world of images (made pos­si­ble, for exam­ple, by the Inter­net and the com­puter you now sit pon­der­ing) far beyond the imag­i­na­tion of even that most bril­liant of men. 

To him, the “idea of a tree” was under no cir­cum­stances to be mis­taken for the tree itself.  We under­stand that, I believe, and have gone one step further. 

It is indeed true that, say, a pho­to­graph of a Polar bear run­ning along with two of its cubs is not to be mis­taken for the ani­mals them­selves. Yet therein lies its very power—in the idea itself. We know that if we put the photo to our noses, we will smell no scent of bear. And its sur­face is smooth to the touch, not wooly and frosted with ice.

And yet if the ani­mal is to be saved—if such redemp­tion remains possible—it will be the image much more than the bear itself that makes it hap­pen. Part of us knows that if we do not apply our atten­tion to its plight, and quickly, the image will be all that we have left. And that, for only so long as we might have left. 

We have already lost so much; the thought is unbearable.

An Edwardian-era case dis­play of pre­served pas­sen­ger pigeons. Two hun­dred years ago the world’s most abun­dant bird, num­ber­ing in the bil­lions. The last known wild pigeon was shot in 1900. Martha, the heart­bro­ken last of her species, died at the Cincin­nati Zoo on Sep­tem­ber 1, 1914.

The pho­to­graph may remain,  but the world it doc­u­ments will itself have been dimin­ished. The Mama and baby bears scam­per­ing along on the ice, the bears in the pic­ture, and any descen­dants that might have fol­lowed them, will no longer leave paw prints upon the ice. The sub­text of the image will be trans­formed from excite­ment and majesty to sorrow.

Even the lit­tle guy in the box of ani­mal crack­ers would remind us. He never seemed lonely before despite his lack of a mate, but then again, we knew that they were out there.

Stere­op­ti­con, Polar Bear Fam­ily with Seal, Chicago Museum of Nat­ural His­tory

And our children’s chil­dren will have to explain to theirs, “No, that’s not make-believe. There really were bears that were all white, once. The snow and the ice were their home. They were fierce on land, but you should’ve seen how they could dive and swim.”

“Yes, they were beau­ti­ful. They really were.”

WITH images, as with our atten­tion and per­cep­tion, the power is all in the edit­ing. When used as a medium for gen­uine com­mu­ni­ca­tion, the power of the image is with­out par­al­lel. Words are clunky in com­par­i­son, able to carry only a frac­tion of the “freight” of mean­ing as might an image, and in the process tend­ing to invite fur­ther mis­un­der­stand­ing and greater divisiveness. 

There is a qual­ity of the Human heart that will con­tinue turn intu­itively to an image, with a sense of Hope, when all words have become for­ever frozen in a hard, thick layer of mis­trust. Words are hard and sharp, and can be seen com­ing a mile away. In con­trast, peo­ple only rarely approach an image antic­i­pat­ing any kind of attack.  Thus the raw power of propaganda.

The most direct means of approach to the deeper tale always unfold­ing in the Florida Dream, in all of its breath­tak­ing audac­ity and brazen shame­less­ness, it seems to me….

The steady march to the drum-beat of Progress: from Tech­ni­color (above), 1941, to Miami­Color! below, 1967.

…is in the bounty of images it has always seemed to generate.

It must surely rank among the most doc­u­mented of Great Dreams. That’s not the prob­lem; this is not that kind of puz­zle.

Florida Dreams of Itself

Below: Alli­ga­tor Released to cus­tody of town taxidermist.

Note in the back­ground what must be one of Florida’s “shell stores.”

Florida has always seemed, and in fact been, a sort of per­pet­ual fron­tier. A last fron­tier, always.

WITH this Dream, the real chal­lenge is in try­ing to fig­ure out what in the devil is going on. Or for that mat­ter, even begin­ning to make heads or tails out of any of it!

Of course, it’s worth not­ing that a Dream is specif­i­cally not a Puz­zle.

Then again, I sup­pose I must grant that it might be!

If one is to ven­ture any real depth into the Florida dream, the sole require­ment might seem an open mind. Not as easy as it sounds; in our “branded” cul­ture of com­mod­ity, where absolute con­for­mity is pur­sued as a relent­less ideal, it’s no won­der that peo­ple pre­sume to know today, exactly where they are to be, tomorrow.

It’s a shabby and unfor­tu­nate busi­ness indeed when trav­el­ers keep them­selves men­tally occu­pied solely by prov­ing to them­selves (or impos­ing upon oth­ers) what­ever notions or beliefs they might have brought with them in the first place. 

In such cases, when agenda replaces aware­ness, it is not dif­fi­cult to miss com­pletely how very wide and open is the hori­zon sur­round­ing us on all sides, and the skies above!

Ever­glades, 1880’s

Do I con­tra­dict myself? Very well, then I con­tra­dict myself, I am large, I con­tain multitudes.

—Walt Whit­man

THE Dream itself is not to be found on any map. It requires no place, for it is woven of many. Dreams are more like stars than plan­ets, and closer to galax­ies than stars, because they are vast, and are larger than all of it, yet some­how at the same time them­selves inter­wo­ven into a grand tapestry. 

Even a young child can point out the dis­tinc­tive out­lines of the State on a map (usu­ally the one embell­ished with the alli­ga­tors, oranges, and/or bikini-clad beach babes under the umbrel­las), and even touch the map with her lit­tle fin­gers, but will only shrug when asked about the loca­tion of the Dream.

Sci­en­tific Map of Miami, 1933

Yet some­thing calls out out to us from this dis­tant realm. Though it be far beyond our ken, it promises some­thing that will com­plete us. Those for­tu­nate enough to have some­how found their way there and to taste of it, have returned home bear­ing some knowl­edge that mat­ters.

They come back enriched by a new under­stand­ing, that might yield a sin­gle golden fruit: Hope.

It is the only har­vest of its kind, and quite mirac­u­lous: sim­ply dream­ing of it, await­ing with what­ever patience one might muster the hour of its glo­ri­ous arrival, brings it forth. One small seed, held in the palm of your hand, is as golden and valu­able as the entire crop of any great grove.

(And may there come a day, and soon, when the peo­ple remem­ber that when one of us is lifted, it does not pull any of us down, or hurt the rest of us. But when any of us fall, we are all diminished. 

We tend to get that one back­wards. And many more of us are falling, than rising.) 

Maybe we can try com­pas­sion. We seem so ready to pun­ish.

I am quite cer­tain that the best place to prac­tice com­pas­sion, ounce for ounce, is also its (far and away) most dif­fi­cult, elu­sive and some­how dis­tant tar­get: our­selves.

The face look­ing back at yours, curi­ously, in the mirror.

SOME jour­neys are not for mea­sur­ing in miles. As appar­ently suits its pur­poses, the path on which this jour­ney has led me remains com­pletely unbound by time, dis­tance, or even rea­son. The way has been any­thing but lin­ear, in fact, with nei­ther map nor com­pass of any real use, and only instinct and intu­ition to guide. In this realm, I am not experienced. 

Or maybe I am. I once wrote in my jour­nal, in which I made note of my dreams, “By noon, the dream is forgotten.”

One of the early “Motion Pic­ture Nov­els” of the Everglades.

Para­dox thrives in its heady atmos­phere as does, say saw­grass in its Ever­glades home. It is everywhere! 

Words are use­ful only to a degree in pre­sum­ing to report upon a Mys­tery more infi­nite and vast by far than their archi­tec­ture was ever intended to sustain.

Res­cue Winslow Homer

Crop, 1900’s

Miami leaves even the most beloved dreams of yes­ter­day behind. It is only a mat­ter of time before all evi­dence has been destroyed.

Henry Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel

“Trop­i­cal Wonderland”

Bis­cayne Night P. Crock­ett

I HAVE under­taken research of a scope and depth of inten­sity that can only bespeak true pas­sion (You know how it’s so easy to learn every­thing you can about the things you really love?), as if some­thing of the utmost impor­tance depended upon it. 

I have labored with the inten­sity of an archivist handed the finest and most very pre­cious vol­umes of Knowl­edge, inscribed in dis­ap­pear­ing ink.

The rarest of the rare: the breed of vision­ary who can not only see the whim­si­cal ele­gance of the Venet­ian Pool where oth­ers see only a sharp-edged, gap­ing rock pit, but can then pro­ceed to bring his vision into being, for all to see and enjoy and expe­ri­ence. We all owe him. George Edgar Mer­rick, Founder of Coral Gables.

Miami as Venet­ian Dream (Above & Below)

Adver­tise­ment in Miami Senior High School Year Book, 1922

Adver­tise­ment for “the City Beau­ti­ful,” 1926

Never with­out a good fight!

Road to Cocoanut Grove. Below, inter­est­ingly, Drive to Cocoanut Grove.

Viz­caya

And yet it hasn’t really felt like work, at all.

I have gath­ered count­less images of Florida and its his­tory, and pho­tographs and doc­u­ments span­ning sev­eral gen­er­a­tions of my fam­ily. I have inter­viewed older fam­ily mem­bers, uncov­ered con­tem­po­rary chron­i­cles, and vora­ciously con­sumed his­tor­i­cal accounts.

The Dade County Cour­t­house, Ris­ing Over the Old Cour­t­house 1920’s

I have hit count­less dead-ends, yet found also unex­pected por­tals where I might have expected only a hard, flat brick wall. 

I have at last given up on the com­ple­tion of cer­tain puz­zles, only to see them (almost as if by hap­pen­stance) come together with pieces fallen from one com­pletely different. 

Much to my sur­prise: more like watch­ing petals fall softly upon the grass, pre­sum­ably from some flower above, than tak­ing to the hot forge again with ham­mer and anvil, deter­mined to make it fit.

Span­ish Moss John Singer Sargent

Gar­den Oasis       P. Crockett

AND so, as I embark upon what I have come to rec­og­nize at last as a jour­ney of the Heart, I move for­ward with a sin­gu­lar hope and intention. 

As I move freely in and out of the Mag­i­cal, and dive beneath that river well known to us to swim deep and free within the cur­rents more ancient and vast run­ning always just beneath,

from Wreck­ers of the Florida Keys, Harper’s Mag­a­zine, 1911

as I ven­ture fur­ther into a realm of pure pos­si­bil­ity unbound by time, dis­tance, or even reason,

I cast my strongest hope in some­how touch­ing that chord within your Heart that knows and under­stands, even if we both might have in part forgotten.

After­noon Tea, Pea­cock Inn 1887

WHO knows when a tiny spark of recog­ni­tion might take flight and burst into a liv­ing golden flame that warms and 

lights at last an inner hearth long grown a lit­tle cold, and dark?

There is some­thing great and good that we share, though you might well know it by any other name. It is the heart of your Home and the Home of your Heart, and you can seek out its exact cen­ter by tak­ing the time to stop for a moment, and to feel where your love is.

Sail­boats, Cocoanut Grove, 1880’s

You see, the truly won­drous thing about this Great Dream in which I find myself awak­en­ing is, that I am not alone in it, and nei­ther is it my Dream alone. And nei­ther is it for­eign to you, not in the least. 

It is unde­ni­ably so that any explo­ration of a land that con­tains oranges and alli­ga­tors, saw­grass and key lime pie, lurid flamin­gos and chocolate-covered coconut pat­ties that out­last Human lives, by its very nature, can­not omit whimsy. I mean, come on, con­sider the sun­sets!

Car­men Miranda (The Morn­ing After) P. Crock­ett

Deco Dreams 1989 Marty Kreloff http://martinkreloff.com//

Poster art for the annual art deco event hosted by the Miami Design Preser­va­tion League, bring­ing to mind an era that now seems long, long ago and far, far away. Marty is a friend of mine. Although his notable art career has led him to L.A. for the past sev­eral years now, he will always carry Florida with him, in his heart and on his palette. Can­not help it.

Bathers

He has absolutely no idea of it, but Marty played an impor­tant role in my own artis­tic jour­ney. Back in 1990, 

I brought to this real, estab­lished pro­fes­sional artist, a bit ner­vously, only the fourth or fifth paint­ing I’d ever done for critique:

Scott and Daviea P Crockett 

He said,“Keep it up.” At that time and in that place, he made a pos­i­tive dif­fer­ence in my life. Thank you, Marty.

YET nei­ther is our jour­ney together any indul­gence in pure whimsy, or entirely fan­ci­ful. We are here at the same time in our respec­tive places, and you are now read­ing these words, for a reason. 

And we need not know exactly what it is, per­haps are not meant to, or it will not serve us. But is it not in our nature to inquire?

Night Gar­den P. Crock­ett

Imag­ine. Your train will either pull into the sta­tion wait­ing, or dis­ap­pear forever.

It remains fully mys­te­ri­ous, and yet this I know. It is not only wel­com­ing of all, it par­takes of all, as the sun and sil­ver moon shine their light upon all equally, with­out regard to qual­i­fi­ca­tion or virtue. 

It might be seen as some­thing larger than any of us but leav­ing out not one of us. We are all of us part of it, and are as a mat­ter of com­mon course blessed and enriched by the works and vision of those we will never know, or might choose to have noth­ing to do with, if we did. 

It is as an ocean, that refuses no rivers.

Hunt­ing Eugene Sav­age

NONE may lay claim to it with any flag, though mighty king­doms have cer­tainly tried, and nei­ther can its geog­ra­phy be reduced to points upon a one-dimensional map. We all are home together there, per­haps held too close to see within its warm embrace. 

The heart even now beat­ing within your breast, together with all of your hopes, fears, and dreams large and small, is an indis­pens­able part of it. Its very heart beats along with yours, and mine. 

And words fade away at last to Light! hav­ing served their pur­pose and ful­filled their com­mis­sion.

Along the Way P. Crockett

THE ani­mals can hear it bet­ter and more clearly than we. And in their very being, despite every­thing, they pray it. 

How could we pos­si­bly imag­ine any real Florida dream with­out them?

Ben­jamin Dis­raeli famously observed that there are three kinds of lies: “lies, damned lies, and sta­tis­tics.” This is a damned lie, and bizarre, to boot. The event “reported” never hap­pened, and nei­ther was any­thing like it at all likely. Florida Pan­thers are among the most diminu­tive of the “big cats,” and are by tem­pera­ment shy and reclu­sive. Pos­si­bly a Victorian-era moral­ity tale, teach­ing that per­haps it is bet­ter to stick with “the beast that you know”—and require no “pur­suit for a kiss,” than to take your chances in the greater “jun­gle out there” of the World. Only one pos­si­ble inter­pre­ta­tion, of many. What­ever the intended les­son, how­ever, it had absolutely no proper busi­ness involv­ing the inno­cent panther.

Any such fine points as to “sub­text” were lost com­pletely on Florida’s set­tlers, who learned to shoot to kill, on sight.

Pan­ther Cubs

“First fox caught in South Florida.” I won­der if any remain.

“Gath­er­ing Tur­tle Eggs, Florida”

Pop­u­lar Mechan­ics Mag­a­zine, 1928 .

The ancient, mag­nif­i­cent sea tur­tles never really had a chance, being both slow and cum­ber­some on land, and delicious.

IT really can­not all be put into words. Count me a fool for even try­ing. And yet, 

none have ever heard even a minor strain of this Great Song without 

break­ing down in tears, for the sheer joy of it.

The Artist’s Home at Night P. Crockett

“The Deer­ing Estate,” Villa Vizcaya

Wel­come to the Pea­cock Inn P. Crockett

The story of this paint­ing has been told on this web log, at

http://www.growingintothemystery.com/2008/08/capturing-history-before-its-gone.html

Love Never Dies, II P. Crockett

The Lay of the Land: the Mys­te­ri­ous Everglades

I. The Great Question

The nat­ural lay of the land. South Florida, 1859.

WELL beneath the abun­dance of col­or­ful images and the frothy pro­fu­sion of stereo­types that we tend to imme­di­ately rec­og­nize and appre­ci­ate as facets of the Great Florida Dream, there has always run an ancient and solemn sense of mys­tery. It might be under­stood as Florida’s “shadow” or “dark side,” bal­anc­ing out the bright and gar­ish color we usu­ally asso­ciate with the State. (What other place yields a fruit named for a color?)

In this case, the “dark side” con­notes no sense of evil, noth­ing nec­es­sar­ily sin­is­ter at all. Closer to, for exam­ple, the dark side of the Moon. It is very much like the side we know, but sim­ply not illu­mi­nated. We might not know exactly what it is (thus its mys­tery), but it is not friv­o­lous. There is real power in it, beyond even our abil­ity to mea­sure, or even perceive. 

It seems suit­able that under­ground rivers and even “seas” (or aquifers) run beneath the ground that we walk upon, for we do not know pre­cisely the routes they fol­low, what their source, or where the mighty dark rivers might be bound if left alone to nature.

It makes the mys­tery no less because we turn on the shower or the sink and that very water pours out, though we might then tend to think about it no more.

In a Florida Jun­gle Winslow Homer

If one had to pin­point the very cen­ter of that deeper “mys­tery within the Mys­tery” at the core of Florida’s being, it would have to be the Ever­glades. Some might be delighted by and drawn to it and oth­ers repulsed, but in either case the “gath­er­ing” of the magic in the place, the inti­ma­tion of deeper and more ancient rhythms, is unde­ni­able.

IN the course of doing some explor­ing for this post­ing, I came across an extra­or­di­nary arti­cle pub­lished in a 1904 issue of Cen­tury Illus­trated Magazine. 

I wanted to share with you these parts of it:

“Not only the name fas­ci­nates, but the mys­tery. Here is a vast region close to inquis­i­tive pio­neer life, bor­dered by lines of com­merce and fash­ion­able travel, and yet as unplot­ted and almost as unvis­ited as the dark­est Africa of our school-day atlases. A few hun­dred Indi­ans share its hid­den life, thread its silent water-paths, and are at home in the heart of it; but the white man does not fol­low. They dis­ap­pear from his sight as into another planet, and he stands upon the brink gaz­ing curi­ously after them.

What is out there under the sunset?

There is undoubt­edly agri­cul­tural value in the rich depos­itof mud and muck at the bot­tom of this wide-stretching inland lagoon; and if the water could be with­drawn, the bat­tle with the grass would become com­par­a­tively sim­ple. Hence all the projects that have had to do with the tam­ing or reclaim­ing of the Ever­glades have been based on the drain­ing of them. … in fact, the enor­mous task is being boldly attempted. The fortress will be taken by siege, not by assault.

Mean­while, there are other points of view than the prac­ti­cal. The mys­tery of the Glades cre­ates a fascination. 

What is out there, just beyond our ken, under the warm evening sky? 

The mys­tery is a part of our national inher­i­tance. In our ear­li­est geog­ra­phy lessons we were told of this great, track­less water-wilderness. It cap­ti­vated our fancy once and for all. It has its place among the country’s native won­ders, like the Mam­moth Cave and Nia­gara Falls, the Yel­low­stone and Yosemite and the Grand Canon of the Col­orado, the Great Nat­ural Bridge of Vir­ginia and the newly dis­cov­ered greater nat­ural bridges of Utah. After all, it is rather a good thing to have a lit­tle of Won­der­land left. If this semi– trop­i­cal por­tion of it is not yet sur­veyed and plot­ted and drained and home­steaded, there are com­pen­sa­tions.

We shall all feel a secret regret when the North Pole is reached. There is a com­pelling charm in the unknown. In the Glades that charm is still potent. There are boats in the Mam­moth Cave, Nia­gara has been mea­sured and har­nessed, and there are national routes into the national parks and rail­road trains to the Canon; but the Ever­glades, taken as a whole, are still marked on the lat­est maps ” Unexplored.”

II. PAUL’S QUESTION

Q: Is it true that the east­ern edge of the Ever­glades once ran along the line now marked by 27th Avenue?

A: Yes. Now stop bug­ging me, already!

I had heard that in its nat­ural state, only a lit­tle over one hun­dred years ago, the above was the case. Only ten blocks west of my home. I found that dif­fi­cult to com­pre­hend. “Wait a minute,” I thought, “my friends Eric and Katy live down in Home­stead, and they’re the ones who live near the Ever­glades. From where I live, it’s a haul.”

Yet as I will show you visu­ally the state­ment is true; that is where the bound­ary lay. Upon fur­ther thought I real­ized that part of my dif­fi­culty in really get­ting that idea was that I had come to regard 27th Avenue as con­sid­er­ably more real, or solid, than the abstract idea of the Ever­glades. When I paid care­ful atten­tion to my think­ing, “Wow, it came right up to 27th Avenue,” I got a kick out of it. I was think­ing as if as if two immov­able forces of nature had col­lided, and per­haps been sur­prised to meet one another.

Bis­cayne Hol­i­day Eugene Sav­age

In my expe­ri­ence, the avenue has always been there, indeed some­thing of a land­mark if noth­ing to write home about (but then again, I am home) and as reli­able as the North Star in my nav­i­ga­tion. The Ever­glades, on the other hand, remained some­where else.

Think­ing back on it, I recall the fam­ily drive down to the Ever­glades National Park in my child­hood as a fairly epic jour­ney, distance-wise, with lit­tle to show for it. There were no gey­sers on the hour, per­form­ing ani­mals, or thrilling sharks. There was saw­grass; I remem­ber that. 

As I recall, a park ranger might have pointed toward this infi­nite field of green and talked about the nat­ural habi­tat of the alli­ga­tors. “That’s cool,” I thought, sud­denly pay­ing keen atten­tion and hop­ing to glimpse a sud­den blur of rep­til­ian motion, ide­ally hear an ear-piercing, dra­matic and extended, rat­tling and gur­gling death cry, and then see blood gush­ing. Lots of it!

But noth­ing hap­pened. He just kept dron­ing on, as if he might have been try­ing to talk him­self to sleep, and the grass shim­mer­ing in the waves of sum­mer heat began to blur in my vision.

IN ret­ro­spect, as a child I had no real way of putting into per­spec­tive where that “park” stood, what it might mean–, in rela­tion­ship to, say, the “other jun­gles,” Mon­key Jun­gle or Par­rot Jun­gle, where at least they had either cool or gar­ish ani­mals (or both), or for that mat­ter Pirate’s World up in Dania, which had not only actual rides but also ice cream, and was there­fore of clear and para­mount impor­tance in the nat­ural order of things.

Map to Par­rot Jun­gle. Few dared ven­ture in with­out it.

And I def­i­nitely saw more ani­mals at the Lion Coun­try Safari attrac­tion, although look­ing back they might well have been sedated. Can’t really say that I blame them. 

Oh, well…

Paul takes his B & W Polaroid to Lion Coun­try Safari, early ‘60’s.

Now, get­ting back to the ques­tion. I came upon evi­dence! This shot, taken in 1911, depicts the 27th Avenue bridge cross­ing over the Miami River. 

Since that road runs North/ South, we now look west­ward past that landmark:

Since I know where the bridge is, hav­ing tra­versed it count­less times, I have a “link” to mean­ing. Noth­ing else in the image is even vaguely rec­og­niz­able, except for the river itself, sort of. 

Of course, I had to add a lit­tle color to the sit­u­a­tion. I just do these things; don’t ask me why.

Upon reflec­tion, I real­ized that the pho­to­graph was not at all what I’d first taken it to be. In the same sense that color post­cards once proudly illus­trated the excit­ing new fac­to­ries belch­ing forth their for­mi­da­ble fun­nels of black smoke into a wide blue sky, here was an image of progress!

The first words of its title are “Drainage Canal,” and this is no nature shot. It is to be filed under “technology/ progress,” with the Glades along for the ride only as its hap­less vic­tim. The mas­sive engi­neer­ing project of “recla­ma­tion” is now under­way, once and for all address­ing the “prob­lem” posed to agri­cul­ture, “progress,” etc., by all that damned water flow­ing willy-nilly in the Great River of Grass.

Since the Ever­glades is in essence a great river flow­ing South, these canals run­ning East/ West bisect­ing its path are much like a stake to the heart of a vam­pire, intended to dis­rupt and destroy its ancient pat­terns so that man can finally take mat­ters in hand and pro­ceed with the “tam­ing” of this uncon­trol­lable and thus offen­sive , and ulti­mately imper­mis­si­ble place.

ALL of which (some­how!) leads us back to where we now stand. To put things into some mean­ing­less per­spec­tive, let’s look at the same site today.

Click on the photo to enlarge: the Red “A” marks the site of the bridge.

(Don’t Blame it on Google.)

Or, here is the same view from the ground, cour­tesy of that ulti­mate voyeur, Google Earth. (“Hey, is that your car pass­ing by?) 

You can even catch a glimpse of the same stretch of river, at least a bit of it.

Just to end this study on a more pos­i­tive, if com­pletely imag­i­nary note, I was moved to rewrite his­tory through Pho­to­shop, if only on my com­puter and if only for a moment. 

But doesn’t the Earth look hap­pier? I know I would be.

Just food for thought… Hmmm, 32nd Avenue and Fla­gler St.

SO, any­body else out there also about ready to keep it movin’ on? Give me just a sec to pull out our magic map and see where we’re bound next. 

All right. Let’s see here. Hmmm.

What? You’d like to see the map?

Are you ready for this? Sure you can han­dle it?

OK then… Here it is.

Would never have con­sid­ered leav­ing home with­out it.

Paul’s work­ing map, within the Florida Dream

MOVING right along, then. 

I see, YES! The map is giv­ing me a great idea! (I’m sure that each of you had inde­pen­dently dis­cerned this yourselves.) 

BEING as how we are explor­ing the realm of dream, with all doors of pos­si­bil­ity flung wide open,

and some­thing keeps pulling me back towards that pris­tine, crys­tal clear Miami River,

Let’s do a little… 

“THREE or four miles above Cocoa-nut Grove is Miami, the old­est “town” on the bay, num­ber­ing not more than half a dozen houses. As Miami is located at the mouth of the river of the same name, which flows directly from the Ever­glades, it is the chief Indian trading-post on the bay, the store being located on the south bank, at Brickell’s land­ing.

Just across the river is all that remains of the old Fort Dal­las,

which holds a con­spic­u­ous place in the his­tory of the Semi­nole wars. It is now the res­i­dence of Mrs. Tut­tle, a North­ern lady of cul­ture and indomitable energy, who is doing a great deal for this sec­tion of Florida.

JULIA STURTEVANT TUTTLE of Cleve­land, Ohio, among the first of many Ohioans to relo­cate in Miami. She and her hus­band had trav­eled to the area in 1875 to visit her father, who held 40 acres there, includ­ing orange groves along the bay’s shore. She was charmed by the area, but duti­fully returned to Ohio’s win­ter. She was wid­owed in 1886, and kept suc­cess­fully in oper­a­tion the iron foundry that had been the fam­ily busi­ness. Five years later her father died, will­ing to her his land. 

She pro­ceeded forth­with to sell the fam­ily busi­ness and move to Miami, using the pro­ceeds to pur­chase 640 acres of (what is now con­sid­ered) prime real estate, includ­ing the North­ern shore of the Miami River on the Bay and much of what is today’s down­town. She became an impor­tant neigh­bor to the Brick­ell fam­ily, own­ers of sub­stan­tial acreage on the south side of the river. Their home and trad­ing post sat on the bayfront point oppo­site hers.

Hav­ing decided that what this back­wa­ter cow-town needed was a rail­road head­ing in its direc­tion, she began work­ing on Henry Fla­gler in 1893, and was twice rebuffed. A hard freeze (the year fol­low­ing our imag­i­nary visit) that dev­as­tated most of the State’s cit­rus and agri­cul­tural crop but spared Miami, along with sub­stan­tial gifts to him of her land, induced him to decide that year that the rail­road would be coming. 

She died unex­pect­edly young, at the age of 50, and was among the first interred at the then-new Miami City Ceme­tery. Peo­ple loved her, and not only for her cen­tral role in the birth of a city. She will be for­ever remem­bered, to the extent this city has any mem­ory at all, as “the Mother of Miami.” She was that most unusual and dynamic of com­bi­na­tions: a vision­ary in the extreme yet utterly prac­ti­cal, endowed with nat­ural “peo­ple skills,” unen­cum­bered by doubt and strate­gic in her approach. And, per­haps beyond all of these things, stub­born as a cypress stump.

The Tut­tle Home

“I was a guest for sev­eral days at Fort Dal­las, which, under her touch has been trans­formed into a lit­tle tropic par­adise… To Mrs. Tut­tle I was indebted for boat and guide for my trip into that won­der­land, the Everglades.

The Miami River is one of the prin­ci­pal out­lets from the glades on the east coast, and though a slug­gish stream at its mouth, it tum­bles over the coral rock near its source in splen­did rapids against which a boat is dragged, not rowed, with dif­fi­culty.

WE entered the glades by the north fork of the Miami, as beau­ti­ful a stream as ever flowed through an unbro­ken wilder­ness,

the trees in places almost arch­ing the water, its banks clothed with strange veg­e­ta­tion and stranger flow­ers, the bot­tom pre­sent­ing a kalei­do­scopic pic­ture of many-colored grasses and aquatic vegetation.

The guide told of fes­toons of moccasin-snakes sun­ning them­selves amid the branches of these trees in for­mer times, and of prowl­ing beasts in the bush, but we saw noth­ing to make us afraid.

WHEN the boat had been dragged over the point where the water makes its first plunge, at the head of the rapids, and we were row­ing again in smooth water, what a sur­prise was in store for us!

I had always asso­ci­ated with the term “Ever­glades,” on the map of Florida, the pic­ture of a low-lying, dank, dark, malar­ial swamp, the abode of ven­omous creep­ing things ; a morass where the rank veg­e­ta­tion lux­u­ri­at­ing in decay formed shad­owy dells, on enter­ing which one might well leave hope behind.

BUT instead I found an inland lake, of drink­able water, lying high up in the sun­shine,

while stretch­ing away toward sun­set as far as eye could reach was only a vision of blue waters, green isles, and vast areas of sedge-grass or reeds, mov­ing in the balmy breeze like ocean bil­lows.

This is the pic­ture of the Ever­glades in win­ter; in sum­mer it might be some­thing very dif­fer­ent.”

– Charles Richard Dodge, Sub­trop­i­cal Florida, Scribner’s Mag­a­zine, 18

94

FOLLOWING the river back to the present (upstream, of course) seems as likely and log­i­cal a means of return as any, assum­ing that we must come back.

1918

By now, the once-pristine river had already been largely “bro­ken” to man’s ser­vice. The first blow was the hard­est, a two-fisted punch per­haps itself enough to effec­tively destroy the River’s health: the demo­li­tion of its rapids in the early 1900’s and the accom­pa­ny­ing “Recla­ma­tion Project,” its spe­cific ambi­tion to dis­rupt as com­pletely as pos­si­ble the nat­ural flow of its source.

But another blow was to fol­low quite shortly: the evac­u­a­tion of all raw waste and sewage from Flagler’s Royal Palm Hotel directly into its waters. My father, born in Miami in 1930, remem­bers the River as always hav­ing been “disgusting.”

1929

Now as well-established as the city itself, an invalu­able resource for com­merce. Long since, a quin­tes­sen­tially urban, work­ing river.

1935

The Nation is locked in a Great Depres­sion. Who cares about the River?

AS long as we insist on con­tin­u­ing to probe with words this Great Mys­tery, it occurred to me to share a poem writ­ten in the spirit of the moment (in an email, actu­ally) in 2006 for my friend Jerry Anderson. 

Jerry is an Epis­co­pal priest who for decades was called to one of the most chal­leng­ing of mis­sions I can imag­ine– a very “hands on” min­istry for peo­ple suf­fer­ing the rav­ages of AIDS and for their shell-shocked loved ones. For so many years it was all a pure horror-show, with the truly tragic the stuff of a “day at the office,” and happy end­ings rare. 

In the early years, peo­ple suf­fered greatly and finally died. Had Jerry not under­taken this work at the time that he did– through min­istries he him­self had to cre­ate– many of these peo­ple would have died unat­tended by a car­ing spir­i­tual coun­selor, and many more died alone.

He arrived as a blessing.

I took this pic­ture to send to Max in 2003 (So no, this is not a casual shot of Jerry hold­ing art and pon­der­ing rock!), and called it the “the Sacred Among the Sacred.” Jerry is in my back yard, where a lush gar­den now thrives, hold­ing Max’s paint­ing Guinea Pig, a ref­er­ence to St. Sebas­t­ian hon­or­ing the count­less peo­ple with AIDS who con­tin­ued to vol­un­teer for clin­i­cal tri­als even when they had given up hope for them­selves. He is kneel­ing by the coral for­ma­tion just in front of the Cot­tage, then only recently exca­vated.

Some­thing came through in this let­ter, I sup­pose out of sheer neces­sity, because it was such an intense and truly awful time. A mutual friend dear to us both, Wes­ley Maxwell (“Max”) Law­ton, was at last about to die.

Max 4/27/56 – 9/16/06 

Back Home with the Angels.

Max was a truly great soul and a won­der­ful artist. A true orig­i­nal, rare indeed, with a huge heart. Also a for­mi­da­ble war­rior for those causes in which he had enlisted, will­ing to stand down to none if for­bid­den by his mis­sion. We loved him very much.

He had met Jerry in 1992, the year he was diag­nosed with advanced AIDS and effec­tively writ­ten off for dead. He was actu­ally advised by his treat­ing physi­cians to pre­pare for his demise, but Max appar­ently had other ideas on the sub­ject. Strong ones, which I have lit­tle doubt he made abun­dantly clear.

Although they shrugged their shoul­ders and called it “denial“when he made it clear that he had no inten­tion of dying, thank you very much—and that he wanted a chap­lain to help him pray to live rather than to help him pre­pare for death, he insisted. That is how he first met Jerry.

Here is one of his paint­ings, per­haps his mas­ter­piece, Man of Sor­rows: Christ with AIDS. Despite his very per­sonal, even pri­vate rela­tion­ship with the piece, it became the sub­ject of con­sid­er­able inter­na­tional noto­ri­ety and appre­ci­a­tion after he was invited by Arch­bishop Desmond Tutu to the Cathe­dral in Cape Town, South Africa to paint a ver­sion for instal­la­tion there. 

Some words writ­ten by the artist fol­low.

“In the Advent sea­son of 1993, I was alone in my apart­ment and was over­come with grief from the loss of almost all my friends, loved ones and men­tors to AIDS. I felt like no one knew me any­more. A strange thing hap­pened as I cried, I had a wak­ing dream, like a vision. 

I say myself sit­ting on a hos­pi­tal exam­i­na­tion table, naked, and hooked up to oxy­gen and IV drips. Sud­denly, the image changed. It was no longer me sit­ting there, but Christ cov­ered in AIDS can­cer lesions with his head bowed, nude, wear­ing only a crown of thorns. 

I knew I had to paint it. I quickly gath­ered my sup­plies and, in a tran­scen­dent expe­ri­ence, I made the first ver­sion of “Man of Sor­rows: Christ with AIDS.” 

I had ques­tions that needed to be answered. As I painted Christ I was reminded of the many ver­sions of “Man of Sor­rows” referred to in Isa­iah 53, 3–4, from the 16th cen­tury and of Gruenewald’s Christ as a plague vic­tim. This gave me the merit to continue.

I also knew I had to answer the fun­da­men­tal­ists who were say­ing AIDS was God’s judg­ment on gay peo­ple and drug users. In the paint­ing I also quoted Jesus’ words from Matthew 25 that when you offer care giv­ing “to the least of these, my brethren, you are doing it unto me.” I inter­twined the words with the image.

After­wards, I knew some­thing inside me changed. I real­ized God knows my pain and shares my grief. I was healed of a lot of hurt. God still knew me.”

– Wes­ley Maxwell Law­ton

WITH that back­drop, I give you this let­ter.

Oh, Dear Jerry : 

How fear­lessly you con­tinue to rush into the eter­nal flame,
Time and time, again;

Lest any­one be left alone within it
Left alone to feel the slow lick of the flames
Or per­chance to see com­ing, help­less, the freight-train plume head­ing dead-on
Toward impact, like a comet
inevitable and unimag­in­able
(Evap­o­rat­ing with­out a trace even the out­lines of the life that had been) 

Left alone to watch their lovers die 

Such an hour of exquis­ite agony,
The birth pangs of another death
A moment of pure power 

When one sud­denly bereft stands weakly

Blinded sud­denly
by a thick cur­tain of dark­ness descended
(Or per­haps light too bril­liant for mor­tal eye?)

Many a time I have thought back
Upon the death of my Love,
And come to real­ize, slow and cer­tain as a com­ing dawn, 

It was a good death

But even now, the com­fort­ing mar­gin of a decade
Safely under my belt,
The raw hor­ror hav­ing yielded into some­thing more gen­tle, and no longer fresh,
I can never for­get how ALONE I felt in those moments

(For I felt, I knew, that there must be some­thing any­thing I could do
to keep him from falling,
To keep him safe with me in our bed,
Where he belonged, damn it!
Some way to grab hold, some how, to keep him from slid­ing off that unseen edge
to drop so very far
He couldn’t even really be seen 

Not seen at all ) 

So what I want to tell you late this evening, my friend,
Hav­ing read your e-mail from the heart about our Max,
Is how very grate­ful I am
for the gift that you are 

Now, as way back when this dis­ease first began its long, slow burn
Under­neath our feet 

You remain
Sim­ply avail­able to wit­ness,
To love,
And to keep on feeling. 

And that gift, my friend,
Is the heart of grace
The pres­ence of mercy 

And, the best that any one of us can do
In this whole hurt­ing world. 

To love and keep on lov­ing,
As best we can,
No mat­ter what, 

For­ever.

And yet: even as I ask the unan­swer­able ques­tion:
What kind of Earth is this any­more, really,
With­out the Maxwells and Michaels,
The Ronalds and Scotts,
There to brighten our skies, night and day,
To hold us as we fall apart,
Time and again,
and to tell us
There, there. It will be all right
(and, most impor­tantly, mean it)

A lit­tle bird begins to take flight within me
The dis­tant flap­ping of tiny wings
Within and all around,
Like rain

Rais­ing with it this thought: 

How very won­der­ful a place
Heaven must be.

And so through grace,
From a well deeper by far than rea­son,
I am led to feel that if all shall be well
(And it shall) 

Then so it must be also here,
And now.

________________________

Each time my heart breaks anew
Wider open, and more shat­tered
(When I wouldn’t have thought more tiny pieces possible) 

I begin to hear
(what is that??)

Music

Even through the tears
Through even the chok­ing numbness 

I hear it!

And I feel
Life is great and life is Good,
and in a sense we are here to strug­gle.
To lose all
(the deeper the fall the greater the Love)
is the lot of the most blessed of us. 

I do not really under­stand,
Nor yet need I 

For what I feel, in the music, is 

This is Life’s great Song,
Singing to itself.

And so I pray,
Cry­ing out (with­out sound)
In the hard­est hour, sim­ply this: 

Oh God
Oh God
Break me down or build me up,
But keep me in your palm,
Save me Lift me Leave me draw breath
Fresh and new
And taste its sweet­ness
Even though it is not to last 

Send away the big dark sharks
now encir­cled every­where, draw­ing silently, steathily closer and closer
Nearly feel­ing the shad­owed brush of ancient wet rub­ber skin against mine,
to taste my final fear 

Only a scream away 

And yet the dark ocean is so vast,
And safety so far away,
For I am to see the one who meant all to me
Suf­fer and slip away 

And all I can do
Is watch

And scream, out loud or silently inside,
Can’t ANYBODY DO any­thing?

The only mir­a­cle I ask is this:
To be opened as from within,
To know:

This is Life’s great Song,
Singing to itself

And to know in the heart of my heart
that it is all about love
(the proof is in the pain,
as deep and real as it gets) 

And always has been, 

And we are each and every one of us
(but per­haps most espe­cially the broken-hearted)
part of it, 

Together

For­ever.

This is Life’s great Song,
Singing to itself

Amen.

I share that poem because I hap­pened to come across it while look­ing for some­thing else com­pletely, well into the process of writ­ing this post. It hit me like a bless­ing, because it occurred to me that here was the essence of the Great Florida Dream that I had set out to explore. As poetry can some­times do, it seemed more true than any other form of words I might be able to cob­ble together.

I hope that you find some­thing of value in it, to pos­si­bly help ease your own way.

THESE are hurtin’ times, made more chal­leng­ing still by the con­vinc­ing illu­sion that we each of us walk our paths alone, some­how sep­a­rate from one another .

We do not, and we are not. Never.

Some­times the dif­fer­ence between total dark­ness and one flick­er­ing, tiny can­dle flame seems huge, pos­si­bly mea­sur­able only in light years.

All I would hope to try and do is to offer up that can­dle. One small flame. That is my inten­tion. To offer these reminders, that: 

IF there has ever been sweet music, promis­ing of har­mony and some greater cho­rus of which we are all a part (and you know that you’ve heard it), 

then it still is now, although we yearn for its sound and lis­ten in vain;

Moon­light Sym­phony (Miami Sum­mer) P. Crock­ett

AND, if you have ever expe­ri­enced the answer to a prayer when you didn’t have a prayer, or ever had that tiny mir­a­cle come along in your life exactly when you most needed it to help you through what­ever when you would not have had even had a clue what to ask for,

(and you know that it has)

mir­a­cles are still pos­si­ble. Right now.

Bear Cut P. Crock­ett

THE thing is, to keep Hope alive. 

I am just putting these things out there with a pos­i­tive inten­tion, in a spirit of humil­ity, so that 

maybe some­body out there can remind me when I have for­got­ten.

Because I do for­get.

Sun­flower Impres­sion P. Crock­ett

I wanted to sin­cerely thank you for accom­pa­ny­ing me on my unusual jour­ney today, espe­cially if you have actu­ally read it this far! Believe it or not, hav­ing you along for the ride has made all of the difference.

I hope you enjoyed it as much as I wish that I had. You will def­i­nitely want to be on the train next time, because I have many spe­cial treats in store for you not to be found else­where, for any price! Please feel free to join my e-mail list, and I’ll be sure to keep you posted along the way, no mat­ter how many twists and turns may be encoun­tered between here and yonder.

At this point, noth­ing would sur­prise me!

Tags: color, coral gables, Everglades, Florida, Floridiana, history, illustration, love of home, native, pageant, Seminole, Venetian Pool, whimsy

This entry was posted on Monday, October 26th, 2009 at 2:26 am and is filed under Art. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.