It’s 3:30 in the morning and the rain has woke me. I can’t help, but hear it’s relentlessness, on my tin roof. The sound of the rain brings joy to my heart. It promotes contemplation. It heals me. It washes the earth.
When I was young, on a Saturday afternoon, in the middle of this neighborhood, looking to score, at the local tavern, The Island Bar, I found myself surrounded by police cars, I was shocked to be white. It was so obvious. They were there to break up a fight, I was really wishing I was a different color. They looked at me, cutting their eyes, saying, “what the hell are you doing here?”
Anyway, things have changed here drastically. I’m fortunate to have bought this little house, when the white folks were scared; terrified actually. They couldn’t see it, for the jewel that it was. They will never know what beautiful people they missed out on meeting.
Currently, my neighborhood is mixto; blacks, latinos, (from many countries, though white people, often, think all Spanish people are from Mexico), whites and no Asians that I am aware of. When I first landed here, it was all Black (African American), dark skinned, locals of Amelia Island. It’s a neighborhood that was not white, and then black, and is now gentrified. It always belonged to the black people.
The guy that I let stay here, who was probably, 6’2, 180 lbs., muscled and a hard worker, when he wanted to be. He was so scared, that he cut all of my jasmine, off of the fence. He thought the greenery, would enable a marauder, to hide behind.
I’m so glad he’s out of my life.
So many people are out of my life, these days.
Some of them, I just quit talking to. When people drag me down, I cut ’em loose. They are a weight, that just isn’t worth it. Who needs that? I thought it would be hard to let them go, but it wasn’t.
Today, I will visit my daughter in the hospital.
She has cancer. When people ask me what kind, I tell them; the bad kind.
I don’t tell them, the kind with pain. The kind that kills you. The kind you wish they didn’t have.
I have flowers, for her room.
She is a sweet heart.
I will hug her, and kiss her and rub her feet.
I never thought it would be THIS way. but that has been a truism, of her whole life. Our lives together.
I have refrained from writing, the same way, I have cut people out of my life. But I like to write. Writing is my favorite friend.
*There are constant changes in technology. I use to want to keep up. Now, not so much. One day, I’ll find the “more” line again. Until then? I found it.
Fish Eye Farm 