Fire Walk With Me

Although going by my pictures Miami is empty except for me and my cats. Actually I just photograph it that way - perhaps because I would prefer it to be so. In fact you are never far away from some gobshite American talking 20 to the dozen about nothing and loudly. 'So I was like, yeah so that's like a  problem? And he was like yeah cuz ...' I wonder about going over and letting them know that they are using way too many words to convey the point - as though they have one. I wonder about the people who play ball on a huge empty beach near  to the sunbathers. I kind of want the ball to hit me so I can vent my rage on them, so I can explain that to play 'football' although they don't use their feet near naked relaxed people is aggressive and ignorant. I feel that the fundamental difference between English and American people is that Americans want to be noticed and English want to be left alone.

So I walked up to North Point and watched the ocean hit the rocks for an hour or two. It is a full elemental experience, Earth, Air , Fire & Water all coming on strong at the same point. Its transformative , I feel really happy here. It's not that I don't want to come home its just that peace is so much harder to access in London. I feel brittle  in the city, held together by Starbucks and chocolate.

I see a man standing on the rocks. Probably homeless, probably from Haiti. They have a difficult time settling in by the sound of it. He is looking out at the ocean. I was reading about Vodou the other day about the elemental gods and the guardian of the crossroads Legba. The writer was talking about the gods revealing themselves to us in nature and that Legba could be anyone and about the importance of recognising god in all things and all people.

There is beauty everywhere and its easy to notice here, since I am not rushing around avoiding it like I can do at home. 

I like to walk home along the boardwalk. I need to see another sunset before I leave on Thursday.

A Question Of Priorities

On the subject of death, ever cheery, I was pretty healthy in my eating today. No ice cream just Green Juice and salad. In the meeting some women were talking about food and one was saying that she thought that an apple that was not organic was not worth eating because of the pesticide. The other was agreeing talking about the dangers of the sun and  how important it was to avoid it as best you can (fairly impossible here.)  The thing was that she had about 2 litres of saline in her chest and probably some sort of webbing in her lips and it just fascinated me that people (myself included) can be so selective about what we accept as dangerous. I have sunbathed most days since I got here. As far as I am concerned in Miami its dangerous not to have a tan because a pale person would fry just nipping out for a Starbucks.

Day Trippers

Ryan texted me and we decided to go to the Design District for lunch. We went to this little Argentinian cafe called Lemoni. It was really pretty, and friendly and nice.

It felt like it could have been anywhere, the area is strange, you feel as though you could be on a highway running through Texas or anywhere in the US. I had a soy burger panini and Ryan has quesadillas.

We went around the corner to see a girl Ryan knew, she has a whole house with a garden near by. It was amazing, she made us English tea from Harrods, talked a lot about working with ancestor spirits and had two really happy little kittens. The garden was full of lizards which the kitten chased and spider webs which I like somewhat less.

We stayed quite a while and then popped into Marni as our friend works there. On the way back to South Beach we went back to Lemoni to share a Brownie A'La Mode (that's American for with ice cream) and drink coffee. 

We drove back over the Causeway - its great as you can see all of Downtown Miami over the Biscayne Bay. 

Just go to the beach

Yesterday was really overcast. 90 degrees in the shade but really cloudy so I stayed at home. I read and wrote and even went out to get coffee and cake but I was miserable really because I felt cooped up at home and exhausted when I left the apartment. I was BBMing Richard this morning and he said he wanted to go to the beach on Saturday and I said Of course but you know it's really cloudy. He said that its ok that we should still go. His actual words were ' you can burn like fuck through the clouds' so today I went anyway.

It was amazing. The clouds move faster over the sea so you are not really aware of them as much. Its far cooler to be by the ocean in fact in this heat it is actually pretty unpleasant to be anywhere else. There is plenty of sunshine coming through all the time.

It was really lovely. I normally don't go all that near to the sea when I am laying on the beach but today I had to as it was really too hot to stand otherwise.

There was a really nice cool breeze coming in off the water it was perfect and I managed to stay for about 3 hours.

It was a really nice peaceful afternoon although proper thunder clouds were gathering as I walked home.

Its as though the weather can change between one block and the next.

This is the last day of our aquaintance

My last day on the beach, my last walk past the Loewes Hotel.

Usual appauling weather

I thought I would walk the whole length of the beach from the breakers at the Southern Point to the breakers at the North. Effectively it means I walked it twice as I hit the beach at 16th St.

I walked in the water, it would be too hot otherwise

Got to the Southern Break and went into the ocean for the last time

Then I turned around and walked to the furthest point - which as you can see is super far! I listened to the Sinead O'Connnor album - I Feel So Different . I starts with The Serinty Prayer - you can run but you can't hide.

I played the album a couple of times along the way, but I made it.

I lay down at the northern point but my skin has had enough, I was feeling the wrong kind of pain so I kept walking instead. My friend John always talks about the wrong wrong choice. Like sometimes you can make a 'wrong' choice where you can see that the alternative would have been better but it works out eventually anyway. Other times you make the wrong wrong choice and things get extremely messy.

I don't know no shame I feel no pain, I can't

I found lots of Sinead O'Connor tracks on Richards IPOD today. Love her, when I was younger I shaved all my hair off like that, actually I let some skin head boys with tatooed faces do it for me. Self care was not a feature of my earlier years.

The high life in low heels

Its good to be running around in flat shoes as well. The heat means that you dont need to wear many clothes and there certainly isn't any need to wear heels. South Beach is very laid back, its like a subsection of Miami, seperated from the glossy water front towers of downtown both by the Bay and general pace of life. Although there is an awful lot of money in South Beach, there are very expensive hotels and homes to the left of Lincoln Road. There are private islands, The Shore Club, branches of Nobu and cars that cost more than apartments on the road, there exists also the option of living a simple life in a beach community.
It heaven here, we go to meetings in the SOBE rooms, eat inexpensivley and hang out on the beach all day.

Behind Me Gabriel

Richard told me I should go to Southern Point but it was a whole 17 blocks away. The blocks are wide here and at the time it was very hot so I decided not to bother. Today however, was a cool 72 degrees so I decided to walk along the beach all the way to the end of Miami Beach.

I walked along the sea edge for about 2 miles. I was walking in the water to get a bit of resistence on my legs, its too warm to walk far normally and I am getting scared that I will end up putting on weight due to lack of excercise.

The old pier marks the place where Biscayne Bay joins the ocean, The Bay runs behind the South Beach penninsula and it is on the edge of the bay that Downtown Miami is built.

While the pier is all broken down it is possible to walk out into the ocean accross a man made rock reef.

I just sat on it for a while and drank Coconut Water which I buy everyday and take to the beach.

I watched dark storm clouds rolling in from The Caribean. They didn't stop, it didn't rain, they made the ocean look a deeper blue and rolled on by.

I saw some Love Graffiti while I was there. If you have to vandalise things then its important to deface with love.

Its good to take a few moments of stillness from time to time. Its good to become aware of the beauty that surrounds us.

Nothing lasts forever

A state of independence

I love my life at home. I have the best friends in the world, a wonderful son and an incredibly rickety Chihuahua called Chilli.  I have a brilliant home in the West End of London that I really should decorate at some point. I have everything I need and more than I could want but sometimes its good to just walk away. It's good to be alone, its good to be silent, its good to worry about nothing and spend time with myself.

I read the other day that self knowledge is knowledge of God. That through coming to understand ourselves we better understand God. That there are clear parallels between pychotherapy and religion. When we discover the divinity within ourselves we are then free to see the divinity in others.