It's so slow even for a Saturday. There's not any news on the news sites on the internet. There was a couple of e-mails in my Inbox. The most exciting thing going on around here is a physical reminder that the weather can still turn cool. Good sleeping weather. I slept with two comforters over me and didn't get too warm. I think that's why some people like living in desert areas. It may get rather warm during the day, but at least it cools down at night. Thats the reason desert cultures party all night. It's too hot during the day.
Living in Key West for six or seven years taught me something about that. Every day at the approach of sunset a group of people gather at the big wharf where the ocean liners tie up to celebrate sunset. Key West is not quite far enough south to be in the tropics, but it never freezes there, and winter is hardly noticeable to visitors, some of whom, after driving down in the winter from Minnesota, think they're in a virtual paradise. No blame.
There is a natural reason people gather at that pier located at Mallory Square. It faces west and is one of the best places for watching the sun go down, unless there is a big ocean liner parked there. People still gather there even when the big ships block the excuse people use for gathering. They gather to celebrate the coming of the cool of the evening, but mostly they gather to celebrate the arrival of the darkness.
While it's not a true tropical climate in the Florida Keys, the heat can be oppressive. Granted, the keys (cays) are islands and there is usually a breeze blowing in from either the Gulf of Mexico or the Atlantic side of the islands, but it's the persistence of the heat that gradually wears a body down. It doesn't take long for the morning sun to hot things up, and then it usually stays that way until sunset.
There is also the glare of the sun bouncing off the surface of the salt water that surrounds the islands. In Key West (which is fairly large for one of the cays), you're never that far from the shoreline. The sun reflects off the water, and when there are clouds the reflected light off the ocean re-reflects off the bottom of the clouds. That's one of the touristy features of the Florida Keys. The air is full of light. It's like no other place I've ever been.
The people gather at Mallory Square to celebrate a respite and surcease from all that light. They glad to see it the next day, but enough is enow. It's time to party. Break out the drums and the guitars. Dance the night away. It's a festival every night in Key West. Mostly because of it's location as the southernmost point of the continental U.S., and all those tourists that come down to participate in the nightly charade, but the atmosphere happens just about any tropical place they celebrate the blessings of the night.
I haven't spent that much time in adobe buildings, but I understand why they're so favored in the southwest on down into Mexico and Central America. It's the thickness of the walls that retain the cool of the night well into the day. It's a little like how caves stay the same temperature all year long.
I stayed a couple of days at a place called the New Buffalo Commune outside of Taos, New Mexico a long time ago. The regular commune people were adding an adobe building to the group of adobe buildings that were already there. I enjoyed watching them putting the adobe bricks together and then stacking them up to make walls. I had never witnessed nothing like it here on the coastal plains. They'd never last. Too much rain. Monsoons by comparison with out in New Mexico.
When I sit around and gab with the boys down to the greasy spoon about what we'd do if we won the lottery, there's not much doubt about what I'd do in my mind. None of them good ol' boys believe a word I say, but I tell 'em anyway about how I'd use all that money just to move from place to place during different times of the year, just to be there when what happened there and no place else, did what it did like it was just for me.
I'd open me up a travel agency that catered to nobody else but me and my happy retinue. The phone bill alone would be humongus. Attention to every detail of my comfort would be of the highest importance. Somebody would be checking and double-check on every facet of my travels. All the bills incurred would only be paid through this agency, and if some local person approached me about any part of a bill for their services, somebody gonna get fired!
I'm pretty sure there is some sort of universal, ongoing plot to make sure I never have much disposable cash to play around with. I'd be the meanest asshole that ever walked the Earth. I know from my own experience of being used by wealthy people how to use money to manipulate and torment poor people. That's why God is good to me and makes sure I never have any money. It's not so much for me, but for the good of the world.
I'm familiar with the term "misanthropy". The I Ching warns it's adherents to never let it happen to them. Under the penalty of extreme misfortune. Misfortune within and without. It suggests a penalty that's a lot like what the Gospel of Thomas offers for those who blaspheme the whole-y spirit.
44 Jesus said, "Whoever blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and whoever blasphemes against the son will be forgiven, but whoever blasphemes against the holy spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven."
http://users.misericordia.edu//davies/thomas/Trans.htm
I do not attempt to tell the God's own truth here because I don't know what the truth is or hardly ever. I try to capture the drifting thoughts that randomly appear in my imagination for reasons I may not understand. I don't know if the content I capture with these words is true or false. The Comments settings are turned off to prevent me from having to defend what amounts to little more than fanciful, sometime crude speculation. Great moments in our lives never return.
