Leaving South Beach

Tomorrow we go back to Massachusetts.  I'll miss the lush courtyards of South Beach--fringed palms and balconies. When I think of Boston, I think of cobblestones and brick--a cooler charm. With a little luck, I 'll keep some of the slower rhythm of our Flamingo Park neighborhood, where the playgrounds are filled with children, people actually stroll, and at twilight sit in the park, reading. 

Storm in Miami, June 5

Yesterday at three-thirty the room went dark.  I went out to the balcony.  The sky was wild, churning with storm clouds; to the south, a break in the clouds.  On the next balcony my neighbor and his girlfriend stood in each other's arms, happily watching the sky.  A few drops fell.  "It's started," he called out.  Within minutes great flashes of lightening went off, and it began to rain heavily.  There wasn't much wind.  Because of the odd light, the rain appeared to come down in lines, as in a Hiroshige painting.  (I had always thought he painted rain this way in order to show it, not that it actually happened this way.)

For the next three hours the thunder and lightening barely stopped.  Usually a storm will move through quickly.  Not this one; it stalled over Miami.  The noise was terrific and unpredictable.  I did not feel frightened, but my stomach heaved.  The lights flickered.  I unplugged the computers, not sure whether we had surge protection.  

The wind picked up.  Black water blew through the cracks between the bedroom windows and the sill.  I put rolled up towels against the window and lowered the heavy wooden blind.  What I thought was rain clattered against the windows; when I went into the living room I saw lumps of ice scattered across the floor.  I had left the door to the balcony open a crack.  I scooped up a piece of hail and put it in the freezer to show to John.  He had gone out hours ago.  I mopped up the melted hail.  The temperature had dropped ten degrees.  I put on a shirt over my skimpy tank top.  The shirt felt icy, as did the floor.  The lights flickered again.  I tried to read, but the thunder made it impossible.  The lightening set off car alarms.  There were sirens from passing fire trucks and police cars.  On and on the storm went.

John had bought a devotional candle at Meridian Market: Chango Macho, promising "Luck, Money, Power, Love, "espirito de buena suerte vela de oferenda," spirt of good luck offering candle.  I lit it.  John came in the door.  The trip from his rowing club, which usually took ten minutes, had taken him an hour.  The streets were flooded; there was more than a foot of water at the intersections.

Around six, the storm slowed.  People went out on their balconies.  The sun came out and a rainbow arced across the sky, a full bow, unbroken, with a second smaller arc.  I had never seen a double rainbow before.  (If you embiggen the photo, you can see the second rainbow.)  All our troubles should end so happily.   

Sea Turtles

Yesterday, on Miami Beach near 15th Street, when I saw the yellow caution tapes, I thought a piece of dangerous metal had washed up; but no, it was a sea turtle nest.  Human beings were the danger.  We were warned to keep away.

The only thing I knew about sea turtles I learned from Tennessee Williams's "Suddenly Last Summer"--O, how literature can shape the mind.  (There is a film version with Elizabeth Taylor, Montgomery Clift, and Katherine Hepburn).  Hepburn plays Mrs. Venerable, who gives a terrifying speech about the death of most newly hatched sea turtles: their soft underbellies are torn to pieces by sea birds.  This is still true.  The female uses her hind flippers to dig a nest, and lays up to 200 eggs, which take 45 to 70 days to hatch.  On their own, the hatchlings try to find the water, which in this case is only a few dozen feet away.  Most are eaten.  Yet the nest on Miami Beach amidst the sunbathers is a sign of their survival.  There's no reason why I can't think of Tennessee Williams's Mrs. Venerable and her terrifying view and at the same time admire the perseverance of the female sea turtle who dug this nest.

(The photo of the swimming sea turtle is by Jeremiah Tolbert.  You can see his fine work at: jeremiahtolbert.com/blog.)    

Crazy USA: Prunes

This is a crazy country I thought this morning as I read these words on the package of prunes from Publix market: "A lotta healthy love in a little bitty fruit."  Insulting!  Had focus groups advised the prune-packagers to appeal to the demented, the elderly, the childish?  "Who put the love in the little bitty fruit?" I asked John.  Then I remembered a song from our youth.  "Who put the love in the rama-lama ding dong?" I sang.

"Not love," John said.  "Dong.  Who put the dong in the rama-lama ding dong?"

It turns out that the correct question is: "Who put the ram in the rama-lama ding dong?"  Was it the same being who put love in the little bitty fruit?  

Maybe the words on the package of prunes were spiritual: a gift of love for the love-starved.

In addition to these disgustingly cute messages, we also have "Nutrition Facts," a chart giving us serving size, calories, total fat, saturated fat, trans fat, cholesterol, sodium, potassium, total carbohydrate, dietary fiber, sugars, protein, vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, iron.  These charts are now printed on every can, every package of food, apparently with the mistaken belief that we are unable to figure out what type of food we are eating--whether a food is sweet, and can't be trusted to know that fruit is not a high protein food.  Aren't prunes famous for fiber? What might be helpful to know is the amount of insecticide residue.          

  

Change Purse and Poem

The little change purse I found on the street contained only air.  I brought it home, intending to use it, but it lay on my desk for weeks, until this morning, when I decided to give it away.

I had been re-reading a poem of Garcia Lorca's, "La Luna Asoma," and remembered the last stanza with its startling images:

Cuando sale la luna

de cien rostros iguales,

las moneda de plata

solloza en el bolsillo.

When the moon rises

with a hundred identical faces,

the silver coins

sob in your pocket.

I copied the stanza and the translation onto an index card in purple ink, folded it twice, and put it and some quarters into the purse.  When I went out for my walk--in my Spanish-speaking neighborhood--I left it for someone to find.

It may have been childish, but I liked doing it.  Someone once told me that in order to lure their students, Hebrew teachers smeared honey on the pages of ancient texts.  I doubt it.  Honey would have ruined the pages, but there is something to be said for luring readers.

I've heard poets complain about the lack of appreciation for poetry.  What would happen if they left a poem and some silver money in a change purse for someone to find?  Someone might love the poem and be glad of the money.  Maybe the person who finds my little change purse will love the idea of silver money sobbing in a pocket.  Those lines--la moneda de plata/ solloza en el bolsillo--never seem sad to me.  The moon and all it represents is so powerful it can make money sob.  If the finders do not respond to the poems, they will still have a few coins to spend.  At the very least they will wonder.          

The Pineapple and the Blitz

Memoirs are often more interesting than accounts written by historians. I've been reading Bryher's "Days of Mars," a memoir of her years in London during the Blitz, when she shared a flat at 49 Lowndes Square with the American poet, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle).  (The rent was two hundred and fifty pounds a year.)  The chapter, "1944," begins with a story: 

"Norman Pearson returned towards the end of January, after an absence in Spain and Portugal, bearing two bananas, two oranges and a pineapple.  The bananas and oranges were simple, Hilda and I had one each.  Apart from a few green apples and some berries in Cornwall, it was the first fruit that we had tasted for two years.  It seemed so unreal that we hardly liked to touch it.  The pineapple was different.  Even Hilda, the recluse, agreed that we could not eat it alone and that, wartime or not, it called for a party." 

"By the time that I had telephoned, written notes or gone round in person with the invitations, we managed to collect about twenty people and how we all got into our little sitting room at Lowndes remains a mystery.  First we looked respectfully at the pineapple, then with infinite solemnity it was sliced into tiny mouthfuls."

Bryher writes; "It was the Puritan element, a matter of conscience and principle, that had now kept Hilda in London.  'It was here that people first read my poetry,' she said.  'I am staying with them.'"

Here is a poem by HD:

Sea Poppies Amber husk  fluted with gold,  fruit on the sand  marked with a rich grain,  treasure  spilled near the shrub-pines  to bleach on the boulders:  your stalk has caught root  among wet pebbles  and drift flung by the sea  and grated shells  and split conch-shells.  Beautiful, wide-spread,  fire upon leaf,  what meadow yields  so fragrant a leaf  as your bright leaf?

Poinciana

The tree has many names; Poinciana, for M. Poinci, 17th century governor of the French Antilles, Flame Tree, Mohur Tree, Red Flame, Royal Poinciana, Flamboyant Tree.

This one is flaming on the corner of Michigan Avenue and Thirteenth Street in South Beach, its span at least fifty feet.  

I had a cousin who believed that red was disreputable.  The Flame Tree is scarlet, red with an orange tint.  Red, scarlet, vermillion, crimson, carmine, rose: my favorite colors.