floridyllic...

Sand, mangroves, water, warmth...
I must be on the Gulf of Mexico.
After a decade in the concrete jungle and a spiritual journey that left me too emotionally vulnerable for my own good, i come to Estero Island for healing. Battered, hypersensitive to my own pain and the loneliness, anger, and fear that emanates from all those around us...undertouched, underloved, and in a mild depression...i come to this familiar shore.
Before going to Nuevo York, i lived in these semi-tropical parts for eight years. I took care of my grandmother, became a working actor, and founded a couple edgy theaters.
By beautiful chance, i'm in the very same little apartment in which i last lived. On a canal, 150 feet from the beach. In the home of two dear friends who went north for the summer shortly after i arrived, i now keep company with a brimming host of fauna. On any given day, you might meet lizards, pelicans, ibis, heron, egret, seagulls, crows, and squirrels. Possibly a snake. A crab on the dock. The occasional periplaneta americana. A two-foot iguana. Or Norman, the baby osprey! He and his mother share a nest here...you should see him wiggle his head at me.
I trim trees. I eat the coconuts that thud startlingly to the ground. I spend more of my life naked, than not. The rainy season has arrived, and when the storms whip in, you might find me on top of the third floor roof. Most days, i walk out to the beach to drink in the lithium sunset.
Such beauty. Such peace.
In the interest of full disclosure, i should also mention that this island is, by any reasonable standard, "overdeveloped"...which is probably what anyone in this country not in the "1%" can expect. When's that non-violent revolution coming? Estero Island might also laughingly (and with truth) be named "Booze Beach"...the #1 local diversion is varying levels of self-medicating inebriation.
How is my new home different? In New York, i got called "young man" once or twice a year - here, once or twice a week. In Florida, they don't wear bike helmets or underwear. I embraced one of these changes the very first day, the other i still resist.
Not everything is perfect...the person i most dreamed of when i came here, with whom i imagined finally reaping the fruits of full friendship i'd been carefully sowing for over a decade, is in a spiritual shambles. Turning to alcohol to escape from the misery of hormonal love addiction modified by the jealous possessiveness our society attaches to romance, she's incapable of offering me even the most simple human compassion. That same darkness is keeping her ex, another with whom i'd hoped to share all the comforts of friendship, in anti-social squalor as well.
But i'm breathing. Alive.
On most days, i no longer feel the stress-related stomach unease that has been my companion for many months. In truth, a tiny part of me had wondered whether i were coming here to die. Whether the genie i had let out of the bottle could never be returned.
But even in the midst of crashing disappointment, i've learned something immeasurably important. Living with my zombie-like friend for a week, so close to hope i could touch it, my sleep became markedly restored from the interruption and insomnia of the past year.
Healing is possible...for me anyway.
I know the barrier that stands between anyone and true health, in this broken society. After food and shelter, our most basic needs are love, touch, and laughter. In this society, all you'll find are negotiation, personal space...and laughter.
That laughter will be lacking in quantity, however, and colored by our deprivations.
But desperate laughter is better than none at all.
Bad touch is better than none at all.
And the hope for love is almost as powerful as the real thing.
There is hope. For me, and for all of us.
Norman thinks so, too.