Saturday, April 21, 2007

the sunshine state of affairs.

Florida is a waypoint for the transient minds and souls of the citizens of every nation on this earth, drawn to it like moths are drawn to bright empty parking lot lights. Florida is every one of it's street intersections, where the homeless beg for change at stop lights, while the drivers of the hundred thousand dollar cars stopped there say pages of nothing into cell phones. Florida is oil and water culture clashes, language barriers and invisible walls at every turn. Florida is a portrait of the land of opportunity hanging askew in a condemned building filled with society's unwanted. Florida is a giant edifice of Christianity, a huge solid gold cross embedded in a foundation of narcotics, tears, and blood money. Florida is a library burning on a picturesque beach. Florida is a spear filled with inebriated, half-naked young Republicans dancing rhythmically to the beat of Ignorance, being surgically installed into the side of a mock Jesus Christ. Florida is a tired, wide-eyed family of immigrants from a 3rd world country being painfully searched for diseases and fleas before being eaten by the giant mouths of Visa and Mastercard. Florida is shattered windows everywhere for miles from the screams and piercing cries of a daddy's girl because Li'l Jon wasn't paid to come to her sweet sixteen. Florida is a mutated, steroid-filled, tanned, chiseled and groomed modelesque monster waiting to devirginize the newly silicon-enhanced and Brazilian-waxed Daughters Of America in the dirty alleyways of South Beach while tourists stop to take pictures.
Florida is a white man in an Armani suit doing lines of coke off of the carcass of a washed-ashore Haitian, who is clutching a postcard of Miami.
Florida is a trailer park named "Happiness Grove" next to a garbage dump covered with grass and shrubs, a cell phone tower which is built to look like a palm tree, and giant billboards shouting Walt Disney propaganda.

Friday, April 6, 2007

security cameras everywhere.

so steve left last night.

picked up at work by justine, the only friend I had in florida left for west virginia, and eventually long island. I had come to get used to him being at work; when he left it instantly felt like a different job. am I going to feel differently about FYE now? I hope not.

I have an amazing wife, and an awesome apartment, and two crazy cats. I am surely blessed to have these things. Aside from those things, there is no doubt in my mind that this is the loneliest I've felt in my entire life. More than a year into my move to florida, nothing has really changed since I got here. there is an unavoidable, uncontrollable sense of detachment. It's a different culture, a different people, a city in which I am the visitor (sometimes I fear it's so obvious) and I am trespassing onto ground I shouldn't be on.

I fear I am the tree that is uprooted to the point that it can no longer be re-planted.