Fecundity and Florida

Seated on Park Avenue sipping a two-dollar cup of Cafe arabica (i.e. a sloppily grown and roasted cup of Brazilian joe), i was watching the flow of golf carts carrying the filthy rich residents of Boca Grande, a Floridian island off the southwestern coast. Thinking about my day thus far...

I took a walk early this morning and saw a brilliant red disc rise out of Charlotte Bay, a sight that everyone beholds each morning. Zigzagging through the quiet streets of an upper-upper-class caucasian community toward one of the many beaches and adjacent mangroves. Binoculars about my neck, bag of books biting into my shoulder and feeling one of the most pleasant states of euphoria. Observed a cluster of staunchly perched brown pelicans outnumbered by a company of caspian terns and double-crested cormorants. Further down an osprey sailing over a few arctic terns who hovered still above the water spying herring below the surface.

On the way back to town i decided to attempt a good cup of coffee, something Florida sadly lacks. Nearing the cafe i found a banyan tree and neighboring palm full of chattering green parrots and a smaller band of monk parakeets. Thinking this is certainly a good life i stepped into the cafe. And that's where i began... I was seated outside on the sidewalk trying to find a comfortable position in a poorly structured metalloid chair, a task i failed. Looking out at the future skin-cancer patients and flipflop fatties with whiteknuckle grips on their tiki-bar prize maids. White, white everywhere... not the people, but the color. White tennis shoes and bleached, starched shirts... always collared. White jaguars and hummers. White pickets fences and golf carts parked on the lawn. Everyone is experiencing symptons of burgeoning vitamin-D levels.

I haven't always cared much for the tropical regions of this earth. They seem to attract a certain type of person, either inherently poor yet often hospitable and kind third-world product, or as one songwriter sings "and in the other corner(wearing the white trunks) today's tourists already sweating." But for every thesis an antithesis. People in one corner and birds in the other. And for every day another species unseen always moving northward with the warming climate. And for every negative thought, I realize time may go... and i could spend a long time here not talking to a soul. Content...