Bon Voyage

We are leaving the cabin for the Pacific coast in a few days and there is so much I have yet to discover. I have seen one full year gone by. I know how the seasons change in this oak den, I have seen how plants can thrive and be eaten by caterpillars and spiders within an hour, I have felt the blasted heat of summer insulated by plywood walls and the frigid chill of a winter with minimal heat to speak of. I received mail for a variety of people who have dwelled here in the past: underpants catalogs, knife and hunting brochures, political literature, and super savings clippers. I wonder what trace of junk mail my existence here will leave behind. I still don't know how big the Tokay gecko is really, from head to tail. I still don't know what it's like to sleep under the stars and mosquito nests here. The cabin has been a conduit for happiness, a stifling nuisance (crumbs everywhere!), and a safehouse for fun and sadness both. I don't know if I will ever experience anything close to what I have felt living here, but I know I will try for the rest of my life, remembering not to compare apples to oranges, or plywood to drywall. Most homes are inhabited as a fresh slate, even if previously lived in, they are entered as a new home with clean drawers, empty shelves, no bedding on the sheets. Matt and I began our lives here by sorting through whose things we wanted and didn't want: the former tenant left most of her belongings for us. And now we are doing almost the same, leaving behind grandma's furniture, a mattress, a confiscated mirror and half a dozen lamps, a spice rack…….and the spices that sit on it. It seems appropriate to leave in the same way we came. I cannot imagine the cabin empty. It does not befit it to have no-one living here, and as far as I know it has been inhabited since the inception of wood to nail to floor to wall, 1976, whether it be by cock roaches, geckos, or brave humans. A bittersweet farewell to Florida and the home I have always known, but a sweeter and more bitter goodbye to the cabin, the home I feel like I have always known.

Moths

Sometimes we have home invaders. Besides the spiders I have previously written about, and Pumpkin the witch cat who thinks she owns the place, sometimes moths of varying colors and sizes fly in through a crack in the porch screen that has just recently been fixed. Now that the screen is taut, the sound of the door slamming over my shoulder has a new tone, as in a drum whose skin has been wound tighter. So these moths coat the door and side panel on the other side of the kitchen wall, mumbling 'round the timed light that comes on too late since autumn dropped the sun way down low before eight o'clock. Last night as I was cozily tucking away inside a rose print comforter cocoon a small brown moth flew in but instead of seeking the moon in the form of a side lamp, like most moths would, it continually sought myhead and hair, resting here and there and I could only tell it was there because every so often Rosie beside the bed would cock her eye to face me, roll it around a bit and say small things between the cage bars. So I slept with my moth friend.

Sun Face

The morning broke twice today, as October days tend to do. I greeted the sun once while M poured mosquito ridden, rank and brackish water on steaming logs to settle the heat, and twice at midday as anxious bird reminded us that potato and eggs awaited our buds in the oven. Now we disembark beyond the bamboo gates guarded only by our spirits, sunscreen, and the promise of crab cake sandwiches.

Pumpkin

Pumpkin haunts our woods with the stealth of a panther, possibly learned from the native species, and with the curiosity of a...

She is the matron of our property, watching over the homesteads and catching mice and cockroaches before they crawl below cracks and in between wood panels to play peek-a-boo in the bathroom at 3am while our minds are groggy with twilight snoozing. This calico dashes in on occasion, dodging our legs while we scramble to secure the bird. Other times, Pumpkin just naps all day on the porch on a piece of broken and discarded furniture, beside the pothos that lives outside half the time, with her face gazing ever so daintily out to the east side of the cabin.

Cabin Cooking

This entry was written out, with lengthy lists of which ingredients I used at which intervals and in which chili, but my old computer died and in its wake comes a brand new, aerodynamic, rubber soled, streamlined macbook beside which I hawk the internet from the neighboring bagel shop.

September brought with it lovely weather, at least lovelier than usual, and we have been sleeping with the air unit off, with the windows wide open, with a strong chance that whenever we open the porch door, one of the many wolf spiders cohabitating among the nooks of screen and two-by-fours will crawl in for some homemade cooking.

Each chili is basically luck of the pot, or whatever produce seems to need cooking the most, in one I used turmeric and in another I used chili powder. Remember to put things like carrots and onions in way before pasta and leaf greens. Also I used swiss chard greens and stalks which added a lot of flavor to the broth.

Window Light

The guts of the cabin are portraits of our families, books we have read and not read and shared together, paintings done by creative friends and lovers, and a bird shrine of miniatures, oils, empty wine casks and tapestries. Similar to the insides of our own hearts, the windows into the cabin bring crucial light which forges an atmosphere conducive to napping, loving, cooking, laughing, sleeping, and holding many things dear. With the shades drawn we often sleep until two pm, not knowing how late it is until we wake to semis roaring past to the north, and the parrot squawking to our right, which sounds like chatter to the undiscerned ear but really means "where's my fruit ball and I have to poop!" Anyway, I bought a variegated vine to liven up the drabness of plywood which is mystical mostly but can become heavy when I am surrounded by it for long periods. It hangs by the window adjacent to the bed, which is connected to the living-room which has two large windows which let in minimal sunlight. The kitchen is the darkest room of the house, but we brighten it with dancing barefoot and inviting guests until late in the night when the sun has set but the overhead light still burns with shadows of spades and crazy eights. The blame for all this shade is the oak tangle looming above the cabin, housing hawks and vultures alike. Rosie likes to sit on the window panes and jabber on about the weather, and like her caretakers she loves a good westerly breeze.

Bananas and Spiders

Spiders rule these woods. In order to do laundry we must walk down a sandy, often flooded path to a wooden hut which enhabits a washer, dryer, the neighbor's motorcycle, and sometimes her dog. Along the way, I must dodge webs of varying height and size, and of varying occupants. Usually I run face first into elusive small sticky webs that are microscopically small and give me tingles long after I wipe them from my head. Other times, I carefully detach a banana spider's spindle from a single bamboo branch to minimally disturb my poisonous wood-mate. The other morning I looked out my bathroom window to find the largest aracnid yet, spinning a web the thickness of my pinky, I'm sure, connecting the roof to the window to the porch but avoiding the path, thankfully. The second image is of what I'm pretty sure are brown recluse which have been laying eggs outside of the window adjacent to the closet, where we put Rosie to stare at the spiders and try to bite them through glass. This particular window is missing a screen. Needless to say I will not be opening the window anytime soon, or venturing anywhere near the web. The photo of them was taken through glass... at an uncomfortable but supposedly safe distance. We also get what I tell myself are wolf spiders in the kitchen above the sink. I pretend they are harmless and am grateful that we have only killed three cockroaches in the house the duration of the summer.

Forest Floor

The woods surrounding the cabin and property is a diverse display of fungi, native florida greens, lush trees of varying heights and ages, and composting browns. I have always loved the landscape of undeveloped Florida, but living so intently among it makes me appreciate so much more the magnolia trees stretching all across my yard, and the fallen oak leaves that create a swamp of a forest floor. I have seen the wildest species of fungi, ranging from bright oranges and red clinging to the edges of rain soaked logs, to spongy yellow and white ones coming off the sunniest point of the armadillo-proof garden, to white and

spiky small-capped fungi emiting snowy powder in the compost
garden. Growing anything that is not already established in the ground has been futile. I had 25 heirloom tomatoes in separate pots that were frozen over the intense cold of the new year, except for one which has now died from lack of sun. I have had celery, leeks, and green onions that produced for 2 weeks before withering. My intentional garden is now only plastic bins filled with drenched compost soil. The compost pile sprouts new greens every day from the bird seed we throw in it, and has begun imploding on itself from soil overnutrition. It is ten degrees cooler inside the bamboo gate, except for one sunny spot that grows nothing. My garden is now the entire forest, and I prune wild plumerias and water tiny grass shoots as if I planted them myself.

Rosie Modelo

This is Rosie Modelo, aged 7 mos and some odd days, who has been residing in the cabin for two months since M calls me one day on my way home from work that he's an hour away driving home with a conure on his shoulder.


He is a bird aficionado, I myself have never cared for a perching pet before but fell in love the moment she clamped onto my finger. She knows some basic commands: "up" to perch on a finger, and "down" to go back into her cage (that one she's not as good at). She also knows "unko" to poop (in Japanese) when we tell her to - useful for when she wants to cuddle in M's beard but has just had an entire blackberry....

Rosie loves cuddling in bed with us, tumbling over on her back on the couch and kicking her legs up in the air, bananas, sunflower seeds (junk food), The Who, The Beach Boys, and especially sitting on my head while I wash the dishes. Some busy days we put her cage outside in the shady part of the cabin porch and she watches the other birds play all day - unfortunate to keep her caged but there are so many hawks and owls in the trees on our property that she would get snatched up in a second with her bright feathers.

Colonel Popcorn

Since January of this year I have been living with Matt in a small cabin made entirely of wood, lacking insulation and proper drainage. My life has taken on a sort of mysticism that I don't recognize until I examine my daily experiences from a bird's eye view.
Like clockwork, nearly every two hours a Tokay gecko that lives in the rafters between our porch light and tin roof makes a noise that sounds like uuuuh-ooooooh. Our landlord has a long history of taking care of animals, including a stint raising these South American foot-long dinosaurs in the cabin prior to renting it out. According to myth, they escaped one day and have now become an integral part of the ecosystem of the property, feeding on June bugs and the giant moths that swarm our outside lights. Unfortunately, Colonel Popcorn lost his mate in Winter when she tried to warm herself on a lightbulb. Ouch.
On a rafter above our home-made wooden bed you can see white deposits that once clung to gecko eggs.
Our conure Rosie Modelo turns a curious ear to the kitchen corner each time the gecko crows but has yet to imitate his calls.