Back. Rested. Sober. Still plenty white. Funny. the thing about Florida is it wants to seduce you. It wants to keep you around. The whole state has this tremendous self esteem problem. Florida thinks that by inviting all its friends over to play in its sandbox and with its toys, that it can forget about all the character flaws that make it a house of dementia and dysfunction. Not that that’s bad. In fact I find it most endearing, the same way I do a friend who comes over for one drink and ends up draining my liquor cabinet and keeping me up till 3AM with the drama of a difficult day. It’s not boring. I think that’s why I like L.A. so much too. It’s pretty fucked up. But once you realize THAT, the spot becomes easily navigable, humorous and beautiful. It’s familiar territory. I suppose it’s like most things, if you realize your being seduced and there’s nothing more agreed upon, no further deals struck, than it becomes easy to enjoy your time and take it for all it’s worth. And we took Florida.
Kelly and I stayed in a swank gated community. Crescent Oaks. With a most amazing dynamic couple and their son who have also learned to take Florida for all it’s got. But they did it one better. They found out how to do it full-time. Truly a gift. A life of sunshine, pool-chilling, flip-flopping, golf, guests, flowers, gators and the good life enter the possibility of every day. It’s a minimalist and wonderfully simple approach, that receives grand applauds from me.
Crescent Oaks offers you about 6 different house models to choose from, and about four Florida colors to decorate with. You have Florida pink or “salmon”, a dusted and washed out sandy yellow, a light gray, and of course white. It’s very common to have the same color house neighboring on another, sometimes three or four in a row, and with almost identical floor plans, it’s easy to walk straight into the wrong house.
The Geckos are everywhere and their larger cousins populate every little body of fresh water that invites you in when it’s 90 degrees out. They say that during the heavy rains even some of the puddles have gators lurking in them. They’re not the only hazard though. The woods are poisonous as well with two or three little types of snake that give you a slight 20 minutes to live once bitten, which makes great fodder on the Crescent Oaks golf course. Each story begins: “My cousin Stan came down for a spell. He hit this shot of the 13th that hooked right into those trees over there…”. And those trees are something else. Straight out of some Tolkien novel. Uneven canopy. Twisted and gnarly. Droopy webs of moss. It’s the darkest place in Florida. I would resign a lot of golf balls.
Photos coming. Stay tuned.