Augury

This is an iPhone pic through my Rollieflex viewfinder.  Morning after drinks for health and hydration.  We bled money.

"The Breakers.  It's The Life You've Earned."

No shit.  That is what the in-room t.v. ad tells you.  But it is all very nice.  More than nice.

I wanted to show Ili where I used to stay on old Singer Island, a quiet little jewel, uncrowded, tropical, wonderful. . . .  I hadn't been for years.  Something happened though.  It has been discovered.  I took her to the old Sailfish Marina where I had been going since the '60s.  Now it is an ugly Jimmy Buffet TGIFridays sort of mishmash.  All the charm and beauty are gone.  In its place are jackasses.  Sorry.  But I couldn't stand it.  Loud tattooed people with motorboats and liquor tearing up the waters.  The beautiful reef fish were gone.  All the things that must have brought them there. . . but no, they probably brought one another.  They come for that, I guess.  They come for the crowd.

And so, the quietude of the Breakers was wonderful.  The rich are different from you and me.  They are more beautiful.  They are quieter and better behaved.  They don't move in that herky-jerky aggressive way of the hoi-poloi.  They hardly look around.

And so we paid for beauty.  Chairs beneath large, sheltering umbrellas on the beach overlooking the clearest of blue waters.  A birthday dinner at the Flagler Steakhouse, the most expensive meal I've ever been a part of.  Twenty-dollar in room movies.

We stood a foot and a half apart in waist-deep water.  A four foot tarpon swam between us.  A wonderful surprise.  I show Ili all the magnificent creatures that live in the bits of floating Sargassum weed (but I never do find a seahorse).

Once we made a mistake of going off property.  It was a terrible shock.  The weather was awful, the roads and sidewalks and buildings worse.

It takes tremendous effort to make beautiful things.

Back home on the Fourth of July, hamburgers and hotdogs with mother.  Just as I begin to grill, a storm begins.  I put the hamburgers on the grill but the rain comes down in sheets and there are giant lightening strikes close by so that we clench with each bolt.  The wind blows in gusts, sixty miles per hour I guess (confirmed today in the paper), tree branches breaking, trees coming down.  The power flickers.  Then there is hail.

A reckoning, I guess, a sort of welcome home augury.

I guess.  Today it is back to the factory.