Passage! . . .

. . . Immediate passage! the blood burns in my veins!
Away O soul! hoist instantly the anchor!

Cut the hawsers -- haul out -- shake out every sail!
Have we not stood here like trees in the ground long enough?
Have we not grovel'd here long enough, eating and drinking like mere brutes?
Have we not darken'd and dazed ourselves with books long enough?

Sail forth -- steer for the deep waters only,
Reckless O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me,
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

-- Leaves of Grass

For all good little reef fish

Chasing Orion

It's the hour when Orion is plunging headfirst into the Gulf, chased by a solstice moon, and I'm packing to chase him west, too.

We're going to the Yucatan for Christmas, slow-sailing from Tampa Monday night, so Robert's nephews can clamber around Chichén Itzá, and I can once again climb a ruin instead of just feeling like one.

We'll be back in about a week. Hasta luego.

New kid on the block

Until last week or so, he patroled one block south, but now he's strutting up and down our street, too, doing his call-and- response with the other early birds you can hear from 5 a.m. or so.

His "Ai-a-raii-oh" is a far cry from cockadoodle-doo (where did people come up with that, anyway?), and quite distinct, once you become a rooster connoisseur, from the calls coming from Duval House down the block, or from over on Olivia.

It's a pity Katha Sheehan's Chicken Store has flown the coop, replaced by a condo, of all things. She had a ton of things themed to our fowl climate, including the phenomenally popular "I like cocks" and "I like chicks" bumper stickers.

She did not, however, carry the sticker I've seen around town and now want for myself: "I love Key West's chickens . . . with black beans and rice."

Season's gleanings

Janie -- the former Janie Loomis, whom Robert took to the prom in the Dark Ages -- came over for dinner the other night, along with Paul the audio guy and his partner Steve, who's the head of gay tourism here, and Robert thought we should have a seasonal centerpiece.

So instead of flowers, we went over to MARC, where they'd just sold the last of their 1,800 trees, and pulled a few huge remnants from the trash pile. Then on to Albertson's for fresh fruit and nuts. Then Ben Franklin for some little skewers. Then home to the drill, to get a few dozen nuts ready for sticking.

And a few hours later, voila. Martha Stewart, eat your heart out.

Karma bandit

Yes, that's St. Peter's behind him, and a sign from the city that reminds people to pick up their dogs' waste.

I'd noticed him before, of course: the guy who brings his pit bulls down our street and checks around to see who's watching. If I'm behind some foliage, the dogs poop at will. If he spots me, he makes a big show of stalking over to a waste can, rummaging for paper or a plastic bag, picking up some of the mess and dropping it loose into a can.

This time Linda, who runs the guest house just up the street, had spotted him and asked him to do two things: bag the waste and drop it in his own can. And I could hear his top-of-the-lungs profanities three houses away, so I grabbed my camera and went to her aid.

By the time I got there, so had the priest and sexton from St. Peter's, all asking him in normal tones to pipe down. So he got louder, dared us to take a swing at him and called the police, saying we were threatening him and restraining him unlawfully.

Our white-haired vicar meekly pointed out that he beat us in height by several inches, had a distinct advantage in age and had two hefty and surly dogs to boot, which inspired a bit more invective in the minutes until the two cruisers pulled up. The lead cop, a woman, spoke briefly with us and asked us to leave, which of course we did.

Not five minutes later, he and the pit bulls retreated down the street, apologized to me briefly over his shoulder in quite a lovely tone, said the cops had told him to bag and tie his waste and carry it home, and that I wouldn't see him again. And I haven't.

First thing in the morning

Nothing exceeds like excess

We went to MARC -- the daycare and learning facility for the developmentally disabled, with the best plants in town -- for a wreath for our door a few weeks back.

It was a lovely little thing, in fraser fir that smells quite wonderfully out of place in the tropics.

But then there was Wednesday. La Te Da was having a wreath auction benefiting AIDS Help, and one thing led to another.

Actually two others, after a few cuba libres. We picked up JT Thompson's lovely eucalyptus wreath, which is now scenting the entire house from its spot above the flitch beam, and this from J-Ho, with his signature starfish, plus sea urchins, balls and deely-bobbers we had to wrestle into place to get the damned front door to close.

The well-tempered chime

Linda, who owns the guest house just up the block, has been enter- taining her best friend for the last week.

Vicky had been scheduled to fly home to Missouri on Monday -- but then the ice came, and she couldn't get a guaranteed flight until Thursday morning.

We had her over for drinks Tuesday night, and learned more about university politics than we might care to remember. But one thing was hard to think about:

With the Glass Reunions wind chime tinkling in the high-70s breezes, ice seemed so far away.

Sparkling

We went to Alice's to celebrate our 30th -- we'd gone there for our 29th, too -- and though Alice had the night off, the kitchen was in top form, and of course Tony provided his usual wry but perfect service.

So we feasted on two kinds of duck (Shu-Mai, and glazed with cranberry), coconut shrimp and the velvet robe of perfect night air.

We were about to go when the guys at the next table, who'd been together 38 years, sent over perfect little glasses of bubbly moscato to toast our little celebration.

Perfect.

At the center

Robert talked me into taking a dozen images into the art shop and seeing if they'd translate well into large- format prints, so I've spent the last few days looking at pictures and culling some we both like.

This one I took this morning, looking down into a licuala palm next to our front steps. The big, ribbed leaves are quite remarkable: The texture is like thick, green parchment.

It's a little abstract for him, but I like it.

Our tastes on things like that differ a lot, but it seems to work anyway: We met 30 years ago today.

Hole in the wall

That little stump you see behind the garbage can used to be a schefflera, and the schefflera used to fill that gap in the green wall -- and camouflage the can pretty well.

But Arthur, our next-door neighbor, hacked the plant up a few days ago. He and Franka probably want a little more light through that jalousie, with the thready days of winter coming on. It's their plant, after all.

When Jon did our plantings, he asked whether we wanted to cut out the random stuff hanging over this edge of our lot. Absolutely not, we said, and I still tend those plants as well as I can, taking yellowed leaves off but still leaving as much of the wild look as possible.

Scheffleras being what they are, I expect to see a dozen tiny umbrellas springing from the stump in a month or so, and a full growback in about a year. I'll keep you updated.

All aglow

The old harbor, stretched out from the Pier House, had a glow I could feel Thursday night.

We'd gone there to give me a one-night-early birthday present: Carmen Rodriguez singing in the Wine Room, whose huge doors open onto the patio where I got this shot.

She was in fine form, and so was Donna the bartender, radiant in anticipation of a move to St. Thomas.

The night was balmy -- as was my birthday itself. To my mind, weather doesn't get better than southerly breezes in the 80s, and I couldn't stop smiling at the palms swaying and flags snapping around town.

We ended with a glow, too: Vie and Mike from the Flamingo came over for drinks, and closed a perfect day.

Might as well make the best of it

I've been watching the financial- market mess with dismay, of course -- and not a little anger.

It's tough seeing your portfolio melting like ice on Higgs Beach, and maddening to know that the markets are just now tumbling to lending practices that are both stupid and greedy.

I reserve a special place in fiscal hades for the ratings agencies -- Moody's, Standard & Poor's and the like -- that looked at crazy "packages" of loans and blessed them with AAA ratings, which in some cases have soured to no rating at all in weeks. These people get paid for that kind of judgment?

And then there are the direct perps -- agencies like Freddie Mac that were foolish enough to embrace a category of borrowers known as NINAs and brazen enough to value their debts Grade A. NINA, after all, stands for "no income, no assets." These are creditworthy?

And as the credit market sneezes, Wall Street catches not a cold but pneumonia.

So the other day, when the market laid yet another egg, I had only one response:

Make a frittata.

Shine a light

Old Sol is almost at his weakest, and yet. . . .

There are a few golden moments every day when the chandelier lights up and sprinkles a thousand prismatic glimmers around the dining room -- even painting spots in the den.

Click on the picture and you'll see the tiny rainbows.

Sometimes I feel as if my eyes are imitating old Dom Pérignon's tongue: "I am tasting stars!"

Another fine mess

The yellow elder at the corner of our front fence has been particularly glorious this year -- I think it liked the trimming Jon gave it when he put in the rest of the garden.

But those hundreds of globes of bright-yellow flowers have their downside: down under, there's a mess of dead and dying flowerets that coat the lower plants and of course our parked sedan.

It's one of those price-of-paradise things, trading one good thing for one not so good.

This morning, for example, we had the second day of blooms from a slew of hibiscuses -- they usually last only a day -- because it had been so cold overnight, down into the upper 60s. We broke out the fleece slippers for our coffee on the porch. Not to worry about cold toes too long, though: It flirted with 80 this afternoon.

You do the math

{[nAG + (nCG x CGF)] x nM x nD} = HEQ

where AG is the number of adult guests, CG is the number of child guests, CGF is the Child Guest Factor [CGF = (16-n)², where n is the child guest's age], M is the number of meals, D is the number of days stayed and HEF is the Host Exhaustion Quotient.

Don't get me wrong. It was terrific to have Malinda and her brood here for the better part of the week around Thanksgiving; just exhausting. Here's Esmond giving Addison a taste of mango sorbet at a lunch we had on the beach after parasailing, one of Addie's quieter moments at a res- taurant. By the end of the visit we were eating mostly at home.

The morning after they all left (biscuits and gravy for 12, plus a few dozen scrambled eggs), we were just starting to clear debris when Roy came by. He was Nick's best friend, and it turned out that that night was the only chance we'd have to cook dinner for Steve, Roy and Roy's partner, Ken, who was going back to the West Coast the next morning.

So we did a rapidito total-house cleaning and served up a very garlicky tetrazzini (Steve hadn't had turkey yet), a little salad and carrot cake.

After that, we pretty much crashed for a few days, aside from an opening night at the Red Barn Theater, the Christmas parade, bowling at the Monkey Bar. . . .

Until now.

Self-referential

The Iguana Cafe, leveled by Wilma,
is on its way back. Me, too.