Give thanks

For clear sailing, for health, for family, and for
views like this from Mallory Square Wednesday.

Blog forecast: Patchy, At best.

Malinda, Esmond, E.A., Michelle, Fletcher, Crawford, Natalie, Ari, Aiden and Addison arrive Wednesday and stay until Sunday.

All but three of them are sleeping here (we've rented the guest cottage across the street for the unmarried adult kids). The two little boys are on an inflatable queen-size bed in the loft, where my "office" used to be but now reminds me of the Hindenburg hangar.

Robert's sister and her brood can be quite a handful, and Robert (and I) have spent hundreds of hours over the last 10 or 12 weeks planning their every step and nibble. Executing the plan is likely to leave me not a huge amount of time to check in here, for which I apologize in advance.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Dazzled

We made our way up to the Waterfront Playhouse the other night, where my socks would have been knocked off if I hadn't been wearing flip-flops.

It was the season opener -- a benefit to show off the new lobby and the new landscaping (done by Jon, our plant guy) -- and between goosebumps I kept reminding Robert how amazing it was to have so much talent on an island of 24,000 people.

About 30 singers did "A Lot of Night Music," a revue of Sondheim songs culled by Danny Weathers, the playhouse's artistic director. Carmen Rodriguez, who's glittering in the picture, did "Being Alive," from "Company," and was absolutely electric. I've never heard anyone, anywhere, sing better, which is saying a lot, and she sang the song as if she owned it. When I told her later how much I'd loved it (think the affect of Cyd Charisse, and the voice of Barbara Cook), she cried and I cried and we were both alive indeed.

But there were so many others with great passion and talent, too -- from Clinton Curtis ("Joanna") and Bruce Moore ("Something's Coming"), both home for a few days from Broadway, to Laurie Breakwell ("Some People") and Mary Falconer ("Broadway Baby") and Vicki Roush's "The Ladies Who Lunch." ["I don't call him Sondheim," Vicki said later. "I call him f-ing Sondheim." The song is hard, though of course a show-stopper.]

Randy Roberts, who appeared in full fig, brought down the house with a boffo belt-out of "I'm Still Here."

After the show, at the reception in the sculpture garden, Robert gasped when Mike McCabe, the strapping, bearded hunk who sang "Barcelona" with the tiny Nulita Loder, ran across the pavement to kiss his boyfriend hello.

"Oh, thank God," Robert said. "He's one of ours!"

Togetherness

Slowly but surely, the plumbagos on the street side are poking through the fence to bloom on the house side. Meanwhile, the hibiscuses inside are poking through to the street side.

Altogether they're making a little wall of colorful blossoms, soon I hope to be a continuous thing, which is the best kind of wall I can imagine.

On closer inspection

There were a few artists at the Armory and elsewhere showing pictures much like this. I need to get a better printer, and a better-developed ego, and then learn matting and framing.

Sighted

Is that a pistil in your pocket,
or are you happy to see me?

Mixed messages

Our friend Ferron, the itinerant artist, pedaled up last week.

"I've been thinking about you," I told him. "There's a little something I'd like to commission from you."

"And I've been thinking about you," he said. "I'm going to be at Night on White tonight, in the Armory."

Night on White is a gallery walk up and down that street, on the east edge of Old Town, and the Armory, at the corner of Southard, is the home of the Studios of Key West, which provides work space for artists in a variety of media.

I told him about my "commission," and said we'd see him that night.

Well, he hadn't set up in the big downstairs space by the time we were there -- there's exhibition space downstairs, and studios up -- so we went on down to the Harrison Gallery, where we saw some great chickens by Cindy Kulp, then to the Red Ribbon show at the new appraiser's space, then on down toward Moe's . . . .

Nice night. And the next day Ferron pedaled up to tell us he was sorry to miss us, to have a couple glasses of tea and to deliver what I'd asked for: a thick, old shutter slat with one message for afternoons, and another, garnished with plumbago, for every other hour.

Here and now

I walked up to Wal- green's to pick up some eye meds, with double sunglasses and a cap to keep the sun under control, and when I came back down our street the light was just right. . . .

It's a far cry from where we started. The bougainvillea is getting established, the plumbago along the street is blooming in riots, the other plantings are filling in, the new palms are vigorous and happy.

And so am I.

Sailing away

These have been a few rough days for eyes -- or rather eye, since the right has been signed and sealed as healed. It's been enough to keep me from reading, which discourages me from writing, and the camera has been mostly a paperweight.

Light is unpleasant. Still, the vision when I do look! And with those birds in the sky. . . quite truly hundreds of buzzards and hawks perning in gyres all day, to get all Yeats about it, and above them a frigatebird or two.

Must have been an adventure for them: The World Cup fastboat races have been in town, and with them a squadron of photo helicopters swooping over the harbors and near-shore waters, and then roaring low over the town, and around the giant wheeling masses of birds, to get back to the airport for refueling before roaring back to the action.

Turns out they're turkey buzzards on their way from Ohio to Central America, waiting here for the right breezes to blow them south (at 6 feet from tip to tip they're great gliders, but not terrific fliers).

As usual, The Citizen's Rob O'Neal came through with a spectacular shot -- but not as breathtaking as watching a hundred or more slow-swirling around an aerial drain.

So I lift up my eyes, and and then close them and think of Byzantium and Yeats:

O sages standing in God's holy fire
As in the gold mosaic of a wall,
Come from the holy fire, perne in a gyre,
And be the singing-masters of my soul.
Consume my heart away; sick with desire
And fastened to a dying animal
It knows not what it is; and gather me
Into the artifice of eternity.

Catching up

It's not fair to have snapshots of Fantasy Fest and not post them, so here are the four of us decked out for the Masquerade March.

The year's theme was "Gnomes, Toads and White Rabbit Tea Parties," which Robert took seriously, going as a gnome with frogs all over his drawers. (If you're planning early for '08, the theme will be "Pirates, Pundits and Political Party Animals," given the election -- though this year's parade already had a rolling mensroom cubicle.)

Ben wore a many-colored coat. I used the big coq-feather mask for the first time, since I don't need glasses anymore (the bikini top and coin belt were leftovers from previous years; theme schmeme). And Ken found a gnome suit on markdown somewhere on the mainland.

Good time had by all.

Bird of a different color or two

This one, on the Clarks' side of the driveway, started doing its thing just before Ben and Ken got here -- and it's still lovely two weeks later.

I'm fascinated by the contrasting intensities and gentlenesses of color, and of course by the shapes. Art Deco can eat its heart out.

I'm also fascinated by the birds around here in general. For the first time in many years I can actually see them in good detail, from the hummingbird perching in the deadwood on our sapodilla to the little yellow-breasted warblers that seem to think of our palm trees as home and the squadrons of pigeons that make wide arrows against the dawn sky.

Such a blessing actually to see.

High drama

There was scuffling in the Clarks' palm trees next door. An arboreal rat? A cat?

Then a short sighing sound, and the hawk rose out of the fronds to take the killed dove to the top of the power pole across the street.

He plucked it, spitting feathers on a VW parked below, ate half and took the leftovers off for later.

Remains of the day (or night)

For a while, during Fantasy Fest, the house looked like an explosion in a glitter factory.

Beads, bangles, funky threads everywhere -- plus the odd leopard lampshade hat or rice-paddy topper.

I'll fill in some blanks in the coming days.

Ephemera

I've been spending a lot of inward time, probably too much, so I'll point you toward this hibiscus along our front gate -- intense color, perfect shape, a vessel for images of passion and joy. And I'll reflect on the fact that it blooms for one day, one short day, before withering. So. In the last week:

-- Steve invited us (Ben and Ken, too) for a gathering he was having at the Chinese place near his house. It was a fine group -- the guys who founded Fantasy Fest, the 50-year couple from across the street, Nick's best friend from San Francisco -- and we talked and laughed and gorged. I'd taken Steve some brownies: "I can't do much for your heart, but your stomach I can handle."

-- We saw B&K off at the airport, teary to see them go, and the weather instantly changed, to the mid-70s, so the doors and windows came open and the AC went off. Perfect island living.

-- Robert finally came in first in a bridge game here.

-- With gold at a 20-year high, I finally sold another part of Dad's stash and got the money into Mom's investment account, where it will generate income after all these years fallow.

-- Jimmy Weekley lost the runoff for mayor, by 56 votes.

-- I appreciated everyone's thoughts and prayers more than they'll know.

-- Several dozen more hibiscus blossoms budded, grew, did their thing without a lot of fuss and died.