destin, fl

So again I’ve stopped traveling, stopped posting. I may or may not be travelling soon. I am taking a three or four or six day trip in a week or two; hitching the five hours to New Orleans and couchsurfing(.com) in the city. I need a break from work.

About my new home life, I can say that it is working out in Florida in many ways. I’m making excellent money. I have job security in a large restaurant/bar/club that is within walking distance of my sizable (and empty, save the contents of my backpack and a newly bought air mattress) apartment. I have no television to distract from the books I’ve been devouring (just finished A River Sutra by Gita Mehta – just started Cormac McCarthy’s The Road). I’m going to join a yacht club this Sunday, buy a boat in the near future, and I’m going to live on it.

In many other ways I want to be as far from this place and lifestyle as possible. I’ve gathered that the deep south has the potential for personal exploration, meaningful human connections, and new (to me) cultural experiences. Unfortunately, in an attempt to make as much money as quickly as possible, I landed in a beachy tourist trap locally dubbed the “Redneck Riviera”. At the Gulf Coast a mile from my house you can spot dolphins in the clear teal waters, eating fish in the gentle warm surf. Then turn around and beyond the snow white sand is a golf course, and a water slide park, and a go-cart track, then another golf course, then an endless parking lot, soaking in the daily nuclear blast from the sun for later dispersion. The paved earth is +2 armor for the Florida heat.

That’s all I really want to say. I didn’t even want to say that much. I don’t want to go out on a negative, so two things that are awesome follow:

1) The Florida lizards are marching the sidewalks daily like hoards of scaly warriors. They continue to speak in scratchy haiku’s and continue to tempt me away from my goals with promises of scampering and bug eating and detachable tales.

2) I have a southern accent now. Everybody says it sounds fake, but fuck that. Madonna is a faker. I’ve had a majestic dialect laying dormant in me for 24 years. I now fix to do things and I greet all the tables I wait on with ‘yall’.

I don’t know who reads this blog. Or who read it when it started, stopped reading when I didn’t keep it up. Or who checks it so infrequently that this will be obsolete when they finally come across it. So to whom it may concern: for the moment I have an address where I can receive letters. This may interest the many people who have been receiving letters from me over the last few months (Alison, Brandon, Catey, Des, Em, the Fir House – to alphabetically name a few.)

310 Vinnings Way Blvd
Apt #8-103
Destin, FL 32541

Take care. I miss everyone. Fixin to get a few letters in the mail, I am.