I see skies of blue and clouds of white
 The bright blessed day, the dark sacred night
 And I think to myself, what a wonderful world

 The colours of the rainbow, so pretty in the sky
 Are also on the faces of people going by
 I see friends shakin' hands, sayin' "How do you do?"
 They're really saying "I love you"

--What a Wonderful World, Performed by Louis Armstong

Return to Wainwright P. Crockett

EXACTLY now, on an evening somehow just like this one, seems the right time to finally begin working into some form (any form!) my simple “Holiday greetings.”  Why?  For one, as the din and haste of yet another  mad holiday season once again recedes into memory, I can hear myself think!

And just now, within that welcomed and welcoming silence, I feel a need arising to just reach out to so many people I care a great deal for, but have not seen for too long, and ask ”How do you do?” I want you to know that I care.

Some of you might have little idea how much you mean to me, or how much richer my life has been because of your place in it.  William Blake wrote, “Kindness is the milk of the Human spirit.”  True enough, because life can be brutal and hit us head on, full force.

In which Man learns the tragic (but important) lesson of the return of a hurricane’s eye wall.  Miami Beach, 1926.

IT occurs to me that it is your kindness I want to celebrate, in this brief greeting.  To say:  I am grateful for the ways you have touched me.  And as well,  to offer up a reminder that no genuine act of kindness, however small, is ever wasted.  Or, even forgotten. (“Reality check” that idea in terms of your own experience.  It holds, for me.)  I have grown to realize that it is absolutely impossible to bestow a blessing on another without  as a result receiving some other, in full, like measure.

How, exactly?  And when?  And why would this be so?

I cannot say; don't really know.  But I don't need to fully understand, or be able to logically analyze.  I know what I know, and part of the known seems likely as not to remain always in the province of  mystery.  It is no problem to be solved; it is a gift.

This particular question partakes especially of mystery, because it is not always ours to see what we might be giving or receiving, nor  to or from whom.  Often, the exact opposite of what I believed to be true was in fact transpiring, to vastly greater effect.

Once I saw that one had posted in an online profile a quotation to the effect that "the true measure of a man is how he treats one who can do nothing for him."  I sent on a note commenting that I could see his point, but pointing out that in deeper truth, none of us ever have any real way of ascertaining who might or might not be in a position to help us.  Assumptions tend to inflict devastating damage in the greater field of open possibility, and often do.

And so: though I cannot articulate the applicable laws of interrelation or metaphysics that might offer substantiation or explanation, I have zero doubt that the thought is the deepest kind of true.

We seem to generally miscomprehend the extent of our logical understanding concerning matters of the heart, and grant our clownish notions a solemn dignity that ill-fits them, as polka-dotted diapers might a (blushing) baby elephant.

Our conscious musings generally plod along at a fair distance behind the real “action”— by the time it arrives upon the scene the souls might already have always known one another for all of eternity, for in that realm there is no time.  Or there might have been some great show with sparks cascading like fireworks and even current arcing, yet the quicksilver dance will have been  completed and its restless energy already moved on.  Its ebb and flow is both ancient and vastly subtle, relating to the unfolding needs of the soul.  None can presume to chart it, or fathom its depths.  It is sufficient to completely experience.

In the processes of our inner growth and becoming, so often facilitated in the mirror of relationship with others,  the rational mind indeed plays a critical role.  Yet it is only one part of the picture.  And quite possibly a lesser player, at that.  One part of us hates that idea, and the other even half breathes a deep sigh of relief, Thank God!

The things that we think we know about matters of the heart might bear no more causative relation to its actual kinetic unfoldings, than our awareness of our breathing and the the beating of our hearts initiate or govern either process.

This is why it makes sense to give beyond reason, as we may be called, or feel led.  In a sense it is our only way of keeping anything worth having.

THESE are hard, truly awful times for many.  Yet even so, strangely, it occurs to me to put this idea upon the table:

If you want to receive the best others have to give, then give others your own.  Do it first, and do not waver.  Come on, what choice do you have anyway, really?

And, if you’d actually see yourself in a position to receive blessings, and are truly ready,  then start first by applying your creative intelligence to focus upon what it might be that you have to give.  Ascertain whatever it is that you, and you alone, have to offer up to this big hurtin' world.  I am warning you: if you see it at all (for we are often blind to our own true inner gold), you might think it either foolish, or laughable. But I am telling you: it is there. And it might point the way toward your salvation.

(By which I mean, the satisfaction of your deepest needs.  Your personal epiphany.  A sudden "click of miracle" that is your own.)

Personally, I take heart in Oscar Wilde’s observation that “only the shallow know themselves.”

Along the Way P. Crockett

The good news in this whole scenario, as we trudge forward in this canyon of epic paradox: there are not really any wrong answers.  Life may be a schoolroom for the Spirit, but it is not a test.  From one perspective, certainly, none who really try, who gives it their all, fail.

And we are not here simply to compete with one another until our last, clinching, tight-assed breath!

THE theme to which I keep returning in this "non-Hallmark Greeting," I suppose, is a reassurance, flowing from the deep conviction that we are none of us truly alone.  That remains true, no matter what in the HELL might be going on in your life!  Even if (or perhaps especially if), for example, your mess of a financial situation and “Home Sweet 'Upside-Down' Home" have you feeling something like this,

At least you can be glad that you put on  festive shoes that morning!

I like the idea of reaching out on this day precisely because it is “ordinary.”  This “Holy day” (a Monday, yet!) is marked out on no public calendar as  “different,” and accorded no special significance in observation of any historical event or tradition, or prevailing custom, expression of political bombast, etc.

It's simply a gay-day, man! Yet another jewel upon the mysterious and golden chain that somehow takes form, and knows no end.  That makes up a life.

La Paz Garden P. Crockett   Collection Eric Raits

IT is not special because of the date on the calendar, or tomorrow’s.

More so, because the sun rose this morning and completed its arc across the sky, leaving us once again  to the moon above, and  the stars.

Solar System Quilt, 1876.

Because the children played,

inviting a contemplation of innocence.

And because we enjoyed the supreme luxury of taking for granted the company of our loved ones and of our pets, exactly as if we’d have them forever.

My longtime next-door neighbor and friend Vivian Howard, ever the soul of grace.  She is here 9, with her brother and her sister Sibyl.  She had essentially (and suddenly) become a mother to them both after their mother’s death in childbirth only months before.  If she ever felt “put upon,” or for that matter anything other than blessed, I was never shown the first clue of it.

Because it may be so that we will always have an opportunity to touch those we love and simply say, in words or through actions, “I love you…”

My father's parents, Bruce and Annelise, enjoying easy “lawn time” together in the front yard of their home on SW 26th Road, always a block away from ours,   I love this picture.  He adored her so.

but the sharing may be  more rewarding while they are still here with us.  Today.

My parents, Anne and Jerry, back in the swingin' sixties.  This August, God willing, will mark 57 years of sacred partnership together. They have attended well to the only lesson that really matters-- how to love—and  done their level best to pass it on, as had been their truest legacy.

The gracious and truly one-of-a-kind Betty Langdon: Alan’s Mom.  It is she, I am quite certain, who taught her son that differences can indeed be festive, and wove color all around her beloved boy, free as air.

Certain lessons never quite die.  Below: a glimpse of Alan’s kaleidoscopic inner sanctum.

TODAY seems the day because it is of threads exactly like that added on this day, for better or for worse, that over the course of a lifetime the tapestries of our lives are interwoven.

And so: though it may well be that dreams are dying all around us,

New American Gothic Illustration: P Crockett

Why not then make it a special point not only to keep ours alive (itself, no small feat!),

but to go for the biggest and most brilliant we can imagine?   To one day hold its promise as our very own, inside of our hearts?

Dreams need no reason, but we need our dreams!

If nothing else, why should we not set our sights on the prospect of having an epic dream?  So many have been orphaned…

Big Blue, Scott Gillen  Collection of George Fishman

James Deering, who actually worked very hard and well to help build the family business, is here seen outside of  Deering Works in Chicago, just taking a moment to indulge in some outlandish dream.

ALONG the course of your journey, may you be well accompanied,

and allow  yourself the luxury of time to see and to savor and to share the beauty all  around.

Bear Cut, Key Biscayne

Jade Vine, Next Door

MAY  you be sustained and blessed, until you have at last found your way home.

So there you have it, my simple “New Year’s Greetings,” from the heart.

THANK YOU for coming along on my journey.

Thank you for being.

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Road to Cocoanut Grove, 1910's Stereopticon Image

ALONG the way of one of our recent garage sale excursions, I had the pleasure of meeting noted Coconut Grove artist Carol Garvin at her wonderful home there. (Her work can be seen at http://www.cgarvin.com/openframe.html ) She had decided to let go of a number of treasures, including a number of old books once owned by the Munroe family (one of whom built the still-standing Barnacle homestead on the shores of the Bay), and a more recent, wonderful document:

SITTING down with it and turning its pages was wonderful, and strange.

Having been there for at least part of that era, it struck me that the vibrant, eccentric, and proud "village" so vividly brought back to life through the mosaic of stories, photos, and advertisements in that large brown magazine is now gone. Almost every bit of it. A sense of quirkiness, pride in community and individuality, and an unabashed need to live and feel and experience "larger than life," were all conveyed with pellucid clarity in what was said, and what was not. The pictures and words spoke of an era that now seems nearly as unreachable and distant as that of the once open streets of cobbled Pompeii, before the molten rivers and mountains of hot ash spewed by Mount Vesuvius swallowed it all up within its shadow.

As I thumbed through page after oversized page of articles and exuberant advertisement for every manner of innovative and unique craftsmanship and creative expression: theater, cuisine and fashion,  jewelry and floral arrangement, and so on, I could not help but be struck by the thought, with no small wonder, "My God. My God. It would be a full 10 years until the sickness came." These young people, captured in their bold and brave and (generally) good spirit, quickening in the very prime of their art, were never going to sicken and die. And neither were their friends one after another, like bowling pins racked up badly out of order.

The horizon was as bright, bold, and inviting as that of the blue bay itself, at its most lyrical. In that sense, and many others, it was such an innocent time.

Yet innocence, I suppose, is a relative term that takes on meaning only in strict relationship to the lessons of its contrapuntal "shadow," experience. And we, all of us, adult and child alike, are becoming experienced. Like it or not.

(And by itself, that is not necessarily a bad thing. Not at all. But it is most certainly an invitation to the great o'er-looming question now hitting us all right in the face (and often very hard) collectively and alone: what are we to do with it, and where are we to go from here? Oh yeah, and how?

For some reason I cannot know, yet trust absolutely, I have hope.)

Coconut Grove 1970
(Click to view larger; return by back-arrow.)

Downtown, Close-Up

Perhaps I should clarify that I did not sit down to write another elegaic piece about AIDS and its long shadow. Been there, done that, am living it, and grateful to be alive.

I write more of a universal human experience confronted by anyone who sticks around long enough, and in South Florida it needn't be that long, at all: the fading into history of yet another golden era. As so poetically expressed by Robert Frost, Nothing Golden Can Stay.

I have to see that the Grove of that era was a "moment," one so exquisitely vibrant and alive that it did not seem so. And perhaps that is why, for all of its canned "festiveness," the Cocowalk mega-complex always touches me with a light but definite sense of sadness. Every time I go there, after all of these years.

This is how we often learn that we have really loved: we find ourselves mourning, to greater or lesser degree, and looking back. I believe there might be a better way.

Miami River, and Egret

I write of one era, and yet: I've heard from the old timers how the real peak of the Grove was in the '50's, (Oh, Paul, my God! You should've been there! It really was something to see.") when the "beat poets" took up residence and still more artists came, of all kinds, and a vibrant, cultured, and tolerant (real) community came to thrive in a most unlikely slice of tangled subtropical forest along the shores of Biscayne Bay.

And looking back further still, I have heard tales told by the even "older timers," who grew up when the Seminole Indians still came in from the Everglades by cypress canoe to trade, and before all this damned pavement, when the water was unimaginably clear and the Earth still breathed fresh and deep. And, it was not yet too crowded to prevent the sharing of the ample forest with roaming panther, fox, black bear, and any number of other creatures that had arrived here well before any man. Since the dawn of time, after all, none of these species had known of (or been even able to imagine) any other that would have the motivation and means to lay claim to all of it, land and sea and sky above, all for itself.

They, God bless them, were innocent.

Tenochtitlan, seat of the Aztec Empire (current site of Mexico City), November 1519, a thriving city in many respects absolutely unequaled in contemporary Europe. Cortez and his men would arrive on the 22nd day of the following month.

Strange, the way this line of contemplation hits me. There's no quality of the morbid to it; we are already grieving, yet we might not know exactly why. Every challenge I have yet encountered, no matter its seriousness or magnitude, is easier and most usefully faced in the light. Also, we cannot help but realize that the transience of our experience here is at once the most unimaginable burden we carry, and abiding sweetness that gets us through it.

And if the cities will come and go, perhaps we might set our sights on leaving behind, at the least, the finest and most golden treasure we possibly can. And quite possibly that treasure has nothing at all to do with gold of the cold metal kind.

Carpe diem. If you've got love in your heart, it is your greatest gift. Share it, all you can. Just because.

And I will aim to do the same.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

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