First rain since I got here.

The march of marvelous days becomes a bit unnerving.  When does the overcast start?  A raindrop?

Hemingway’s house — really Pauline Hemingway’s house — isn’t a calm retreat; it’s too much in the center of Key West, with cars and motorbikes and airplanes audible.  But it’s an expansive, palmy compound that, like Faulkner’s house in Mississippi, does convey something of the writer. 

What it conveys, accurately enough, is his mordancy.  There’s an irony in the air which feels excessive, studied. 

Even maybe spiritless, like our rather robotic tour guide — a standard-issue Key West male, sixtyish, slender, in loose-fitting clothes with cigarettes and dollar bills (tip prompts) sticking out of pockets.  His sun-stained eyes had white circles around them where his sunglasses went.  “Folks tragically Hemingway died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound manic depressive here’s photos of  all his ex-wives on the wall behind me.”  Arranged in order of abandonment.

Polydactyl cats lay unconscious atop poolside tables.  “There’s forty-four of them here.  About half of each litter have six or even seven toes.”  The guide shook a bag of dry food at them and they wandered over to get their pictures taken.  Those with extra digits had an odd splayed walk.  “This one’s Archibald MacLeish, and that’s Gertrude Stein.” 

The cat cemetery, with slabs for Frank Sinatra and Zsa Zsa Gabor, was … I dunno.  Put it together with the fountain made from a urinal and lots of other clever stuff — a cat named Mr. Bette Davis — and it’s trop camp pour moi, dearies.  At some point I start seeing all those too-too characters in Fitzgerald stories who seem to have skipped right over being human beings.

… of being are here on United Street. The

Normal pleasures of the sun’s kingdom
The hedonistic body basks within
And takes for granted — summer on the skin,
Sleep without break, the moderate taste of tea
In a dry mouth.

The sweets are here, on this street, on a winter morning in Key West.

It’s Saturday, and behind the little brown house next door, a man holding a lopper stands on a tin roof. From her second floor apartment, UD watches him.

Inside the house, a little girl sings in Spanish, and the man sings with her. He whistles with his birds.

All over Key West people are lopping twice-blooming flowers.

Through UD‘s unscreened door sweet air enters and curls around a ceiling fan. Below her, in the garden, water trickles from a tub into a pool.

Tiny white airships take to the blue overhead.

The leaves of the palms stir.

There’s an internet cafe much closer to UD‘s apartment, but Sippin’ (part of a Key West chain) has couches and psychedelic paintings.  She’ll settle in, try not to listen to the wimpy Donovanesque music, and write to you.

Yet another warm clear breezy day for UD‘s walk here.  What do they do for rain in KW?

“Most of the plants are succulents,” Liz, a new friend, explained to UD yesterday.

Liz took Dramamine and sailed through the long violent trip to and from the Dry Tortugas.   Macho, pill-averse UD doesn’t do things like that, so she took an inside seat, pressed her eyes shut like one in deep prayer, and sweated like mad as the boat flew up and smacked the water like a mofo.  For hours.

She opened her eyes only to glance at the flat barf bag awaiting her vomit.  But while others vomited, UD refrained.  Barely.

The island’s surreal.  Reminded UD of North Africa, which she’s never visited, but dedicated readers know UD has a thing for Tunisia and wants to go someday.  Stark sun over a ruined fort on a beach.  Camus territory.

Local delicacies too, that you won’t find in Tunis.  A homemade boat used by Cuban refugees, for instance, lies on the strand.

UD skipped the guided tour of the fort and went right to the beach. The water was a wild mix of blue and green, and the sand was like coarse salt. She snorkeled the calm, shallow inlet, and though, as usual, the views were only so-so, she loved feeling part of the drift of the sea.

Then she went back to shore, stripped off her snorkel gear, strapped on simple goggles, and swam for a long time in the same warm clear water. Even her weak eyes marveled at the enormous brick fort that loomed up whenever she took a breath.

This morning, for the first time, my ancient Florida memories revived. I was walking up Margaret Street at six, on my way to Yankee Freedom’s trip to the Dry Tortugas.

Key West is eerie at six. The sky is blue velvet, and in the silence the palms clatter to a strange life, human-feeling. Their long trunks and massive heads whisper to the houses, and the houses whisper back.

Streetlamps shed a thin light, and as you pass the island cemetery the stacked coffins glimmer.

It was the scent and the feel of the air that revived my memory of waking up early in Florida campsites – the same warm salty wind, the same velvet sky. Or maybe I’m remembering the wildness of the palms against the subdued start of day.

… in need of your UD fix… UD‘s been away all day on her Extreme Seasickness Adventure, and she will be called away again any minute to have dessert at El Sibony with friends. But until then she will share with you another narrative of her Key West day.

Oops. There’s the call. Back in a bit.

… Key West evening,
I looked for a cab
near Duval, and
found a pink one
stopped at an
intersection.

The guy didn’t have any passengers, but he didn’t see me. I tapped on his window. He was talking on the phone.

He nodded me in.

The conversation on the phone was intimate and urgent. He drove distractedly.

I gave him my address. He nodded again, staggered down Duval, and kept talking.

Then he put the phone down and said to me:

“She wants me back, but I’m still under the restraining order she took out on me. I’m tellin’ her I don’t want to go jail. I know what that’s like. It’s the roommate’s fault. A real bitch that one. I fixed her. I have a friend at the housing office and they’re out of compliance. She don’t know it but she’s getting thrown out. Ha ha.”

The phone rang again. “Honey, what if you change your mind? I don’t want to go to jail.”

the end

Once she got her mask properly tightened, UD began the calm slow kick and arms-to-the-body stillness of snorkeling around The Danger. These weren’t the massive rounded coral reefs of Cozumel, teeming with fish, but they had their moments, and UD encountered a flock of cuttlefish.  She’d have called them elephant fish, because when they stare right in your face, the way these stared in UD‘s face, they look like flimsy little elephants.

PBS did a special about them because they’re “one of the brainiest, most bizarre animals in the ocean.”

The water was warm and shallow (pretty warm; UD wore a wetsuit), and the views, when you lifted your head from the water, were all light green waves and light green islands.  She could see around her because for the first time she had on a prescription mask.

Later, when she, as feared, lowered herself into a bobbing kayak with her partner already in it, UD handily slipped into her seat in the back, where she took charge of steering.

She steered pretty well, only once drifting into mangrove roots.

And she saw many varieties of that shag, or cormorant, that Elizabeth Bishop described in Cape Breton.

It was so quiet where they paddled.  The quiet, and the prehistoric pelicans, made you feel as though you’d fallen out of time into some antechamber of existence.

Back on board, we gathered to watch the famous Key West sunset, just the opposite of the soft ponderous Rehoboth dusk.  Here, the sun, a trembling bronze, all but hurled itself down into the horizon.

end of part three

This is from a customer review of El Siboney, an excellent Cuban restaurant steps from UD‘s apartment.  Doesn’t look like much on the outside, but as she started her afternoon walk in search of food, she peeked in.  Hopping.  Clearly the place to be.  So she sat down and had some grilled mahi-mahi and was very happy.  And she ordered two more plates to go.

“Are you the captain?”

UD leaned over the marina railing and greeted a leathery guy in a fishing boat.  She had ten minutes to kill before her boat, thrillingly named The Danger, set sail.

“I like to be the mate.”  He had that Hemingway thing going — bristly beard, red face, squishy sweaty white hat.

“It says you take novices out.  That right?”

“We love first-timers.  Haven’t developed bad habits.”

“You’d show me how to fish?”

“Yup.  Last week a little kid caught a shark.”

“How big.”

“Eight feet.”

“You wouldn’t be telling me a… a…”

“Fish story?”

He leaned back in the cabin and came out with a photo album.

“You’d help me reel it in, right?  Looks a bit on the heavy side.”

“Sure.”

“How much is it to go out?”

“If you charter the boat for yourself, eight hundred dollars.  But you’d want to do a split charter.  That’s much less.

“Thanks.  Enjoy your trip.  Beautiful day to go fishing.”

“It’s freezing.”

“What?”

“Cold day for Key West.”

UD laughed and went to join her fellow kayakers.

UD made friends with the fifteen or so people on her outing, all of them desperate escapees from places like Thunder Bay, Ontario and Duluth, Minnesota.

She liked Bess, the only woman on the crew, immediately. She’d already seen Bess – twentyish, looking like Jean Seberg in Joan of Arc – in a little harbor shop where UD had gone to get something to drink before the trip. In front of UD in line, Bess had insisted that the cashier put a twenty dollar bill from the register into the tip jar.

“Do it! Do it! I promise people will give you higher tips. When they see the twenty… It’s psychological… They’ll give more.”

“Or they’ll steal the twenty,” said UD.

Bess was one of those pushy oblivious women — much like UD — whom UD privately saw as the future of the female race. Odd, out there, genial under a vast array of unsettling conditions, Bess was perfect for the job of standing up in a kayak under mangrove trees and barking away at people about birds who make nests out of their own shit.

Or something. I wasn’t really listening. I was gazing at Bess, standing up in a boat like George Washington on the Delaware.

At one point in her talk Bess got carried away about the blight of human beings upon earth’s delicate ecosystems.

“I hate to get all morbid with you, but it’d be better if we were all dead.”

end of part two

UD will now relate the events of yesterday in a series of sentences and paragraphs organized in terms of beginning, middle, and end.

≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈≈

“I’d be too scared to do that.”

The wife of the retired dermatologist (they’re renting the apartment next to UD‘s) sat poolside watching UD emerge from her morning swim.  UD‘s neighbor had been thinking about UD ‘s plans for the day.  “So you’re going snorkeling.  And kayaking too.   When I was younger, maybe.  But when you get old you only think about what could go wrong.”

UD pulled some water out of her hair and decided it was time to get a cut and color somewhere in Key West.

Then she decided it wouldn’t be in the free, free as the wind spirit of Key West to do that.

“Oh, snorkeling is for sissies.”

UD immediately felt guilty for saying this, so she covered it over with a big fake laugh.

“How long will you be on the sailboat?”

“Five hours.”

“See… I’d worry about getting sick way out on the ocean or whatever…”

UD had focused on only one thing to worry about.  One teeny teeny very particular thing:  Getting from the boat to the kayak.  Doing that while not falling into the water.  Doing that while not capsizing the kayak, into which her partner would already have settled her butt.  Everything else seemed doable.

“How do you manage to do laps in that thing?” asked UD‘s neighbor, pointing to their rather small pool.

“I do small little breast stroky movements… It seems to work.”

“We bought all these bottles of wine and we’re not going to be able to finish them before we go.  Will you come over tomorrow night and have some wine with us?”

“Of course!  Thanks.  I won’t be able to put away too much of it, but I’d be glad to have some with you.”

On her walk to the marina, UD reflected, as she so often did, upon Gore Vidal‘s words of wisdom: “It is not enough to succeed.  Others must fail.”  It is not enough to spend the day on the ocean snorkeling and kayaking.  Others must be afraid to do so.  It is not enough to be walking on a palm-lined street on yet another day of full sun, mild wind, and temperatures in the high seventies.  Others must endure hailstorms.

She took Elizabeth Street, her favorite among the sunny sumptuous streets of Key West, and she smiled and paused when she got to her favorite Key West house.

At the dock, she paid for the outing. The woman in the kiosk also reserved a trip for UD on Thursday to the Dry Tortugas.

UD loves the name Dry Tortugas. For some reason, it always reminds her of how, when they were kids, she and her siblings used to say Tough Noogies.

end of part one

… kayaking and snorkeling the out islands off Key West.

Will blog tomorrow.

Meanwhile, a new Inside Higher Ed post.

… sang Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright, and her voice drifted out to Duval Street, where UD was walking.

This drift of Dylan made UD happy, and she stopped for a moment and sang along, and she kept singing as she walked on.

Duval’s dark caverns seem strange to UD. She doesn’t understand why anyone would want the inner depths when the sun shines the way it does in Key West in the afternoon.

But maybe these are bars more than cafés, and maybe people want to get drunk out of the sun.

After yesterday’s long snorkeling expedition, UD spent most of today inside, working.  Midday, she left to get lunch, and on her way to a little restaurant on the harbor (while she ate, she watched a man throw fish to a crowd of pelicans), she marveled again and again at the white palmy houses of Key West.

Some are yellow, and other pastels.

This is by Greg Little.

The houses on Key West are green retreats, small self-contained flowering jungles.  Hibiscus and coconut palms throng their facades.  Asian fountains pump water in hidden corners.

On the porches of these houses, cats curl on wicker chairs, and peonies color the front door.

Behind the houses are pools, not long, and rather narrow, but a perfect emblem of the ocean.  The pools complete the impression of a world boxed and shipped to the self-contained Key West houses.  Flowing and overflowing nature in the flowering palms; culture in the landscape and architecture; society in the pink bicycle that leans against the shed, and in the Conch Republic flag.

“We must be light!” writes James Merrill (whose own entry to Key West he recorded in Clearing the Title) in his poem about the Greek island, Santorini.  Human beings almost seem a species of light.  They brought light to the world.  They crave the light the world sheds.

He also means we have to remain as light – as young, clear, and buoyant – as we can, as long as we can.  We have to respond to the world’s overtures.

… Get off the phone!”

A crew member on our snorkel boat shouted this at a passenger opening his cell phone, and UD thought, yes, throw them all away and relax and gaze at the green water and the blue sky and feel the wind rippling your hair and the sun warming your back!

Yet she herself was talking into a phone.

She wanted to share her thoughts and experiences with Mr UD, but he wasn’t picking up, so UD left a bunch of messages narrating each stage of today’s trip to the reef: UD meeting with her fellow snorkelers by the newspaper machines; UD settling in to a semi-shaded seat on the boat and being surrounded by a family each of whose three children went back and forth over whether they were going to snorkel. (There are sharks. I won’t go. The wetsuit’s pinching my neck. I won’t go. The water’s 67 degrees. I won’t go.); UD‘s slight anxiety about snorkeling again after so many years (She did fine.); the just-okay reefs (UD, who has snorkeled Andros, the Caymans, and Cozumel, is spoiled.); the surpassingly beautiful island views from the boat…

Truly, despite the bad reggae on the return trip, UD was in heaven. Many happy people (the crew dashed about pouring beer) smiled at the solitary old woman … a widow?… still game after her long life … The old girl went in snorkeling!… And UD smiled back at every single one of them… In a deep bass she sang Moos peepool leev on a loonely island…

Some of the passengers had come from a Disney cruise ship. A vast Goofy — he seemed to be in the act of painting the ship’s name — hung suspended over the vessel’s side.

Many of these people wore mouse ears.

UD took a bicycle rickshaw home from the marina. “WHAT’S YOUR NAME,” the bicycle lady, a strapping twentyish woman, screamed at UD. “MINE’S NATALIE. ARE YOU AT AN INN OR A RESIDENCE. WHERE ARE YOU FROM. I GREW UP HERE. HEY BABY. [Hey baby was for a fellow rickshaw driver pumping up Duval. She was pumping down Duval, to UD‘s United Street apartment.] AND I’M TELLING YOU I’LL NEVER LEAVE YOU NEVER NEVER NEVER. [Sung along with the radio.] ”

Something indefinable – a balance of exotic remoteness, cultural marginality, and artistic intellect – beckons many to Key West, where, until recently, the Sunday New York Times often arrived on Monday and local phone numbers contained only five digits.

This begins to get at it…

It’s similar to what I wrote about Bali. Key West isn’t the coldly enigmatic world Elizabeth Bishop describes when she’s in Canada. Up there she shivers on frigid and foggy northern islands whose people live hidden away, and where we can’t see anything. “An ancient chill,” she writes, “is rippling the dark brooks.”

Down here in Key West, where Bishop also lived, the world doesn’t disdain the transient warm fragility of you. It doesn’t dismiss you as a mere human being in the glacial scheme of things.

Because there’s nothing glacial about it. All’s in motion, and all’s clear here: A fresh breeze is rippling the light fronds.

A fully visible world where people are out and about, living their lives in the sun, makes people part of nature, and makes the world, therefore, unenigmatic. In some senses, at least. We are, when we’re here, so obviously part of the scheme of things.