The Florida light has an orange quality when you think of it. Or so it is for me. I was thinking of happiness and I thought of a deep orange sunset glow and of course it was Florida. In California it was pure gold streaming through the birch wood behind our house in (dystopic) Perris and, somewhat contradictarily, that won’t ever be beat but the beautiful glow in over the gulf Coast was also gorgeous.
I read a short story, was it by Borges or Gabriel Garcia Marques, about a little girl who burnt her grandmother’s house down. The grandmother forced her into prostitution to make money for them to live. There was a scene where she and a boyfriend she found were sitting under an orange tree. The oranges were glowing orbs. We had the most beautiful orange tree behind our house in Seminole, outside the kitchen door onto the back porch. I sat at the table in the kitchen in the evening when Alex was home and tried to write poetry while smoking cigarettes. I had a horrible smoking habit. Alex begged me to come down to the family room to watch t.v. with him and Ian but I just couldn’t tear myself away. I called it my “happy place,” and felt kind of cheap.
We weren’t wanted in that all-American service-oriented neighborhood. Alex was hi-tech and was pulling down a heavy paycheck. I was on SSDI and struggling to keep up with Ian and housework as well as I could. I wish I had had the sense to leave earlier. Alex got very sick. He had a heart issue and I didn’t even begin to think about trying to switch to a healthier diet for him. He got overweight and I didn’t even notice because I was so completely overwhelmed by my own weight issue.
What kept me there, oddly, was the heat. I just LOVED the summer heat when everyone left for the northeast and the roads emptied out. I just soaked it in. That was the problem with my life! Northeastern cynical depression. It was odd how, after 16 years it suddenly turned and I didn’t like it anymore. Maybe it was the population growth. People always said, when I first got there, that the place had grown so fast since they moved there however many years ago. But, something turned, and I wanted to go.
And Ian was on drugs and I had to get him out of there; because Alex had no options for him and I had one: my mom and dad. I put him on a plane. I charged it to Alex’s card. He was out of there. I stayed a while to wrap things up and then Alex got me out of there. Because it was wanted.
I am persona non grata in the Tampa Bay Area, Florida.
Alex is still there.
Un.Bon.Mot 