Perennial

Apparently, a Delicate Bloom of Learning is a perennial not an annual. I tried to end it, to stop writing. But it is impossible. The need to write comes on like a fever, usually on Sunday mornings when I plan to go to church or have a day out in the country. The only way to get well is to sit down and write it out.

The Smell of Orange Blossoms

Writing seems to emerge from a conjunction of diverse inputs combined with personal experiences. A new friend recommended that I read Diane Ackerman’s A Natural History of the Senses (1990). Just three pages into the book, I was transported into memories of the past.

Ackerman starts with the sense of smell. She recalls how her mother told her about driving through the Indian River orange groves of Florida when the trees were in blossom and the air drenched with fragrance. When challenged to describe the smell, her mother could not do so, nor can I. But I know Indian River and the heady fragrance of orange blossom.

Back in the 1980s, when I was working on my MA in English at the University of Wisconsin, my housemate and I headed down to Sugarloaf Key in Florida for Spring Break. We were not the Fort Lauderdale partying type (or at least I wasn’t). Our time was limited, so we did the 25-hour drive nonstop. This was not our first bout of insanity—we had driven nonstop from Chicago to Los Angeles (that is two sunrises) so that we could spend Christmas with our families in the Midwest then get to the American History Association annual meeting for his convention job interview.

It started with the smell of orange blossoms. When we crossed the border into Florida, I was driving. Sometime in the middle of the clear night, I drove through groves of darkly delineated orange trees on either side of the road. The orange blossom fragrance flowed through the open car windows, as I was listening to the American composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk’s lively “A Night in the Tropics” (1858) on a cassette tape player.

I hear the church bells ringing as I write this and wonder if God is better served in passive worship or in writing.

The turn to our campground was at Mangrove Mama’s Seafood restaurant. At that time, it was a counterculture hippie restaurant serving food comparable to what you would find in Anna Thomas’s The Vegetarian Epicure (1972). We set up camp next to a couple who seemed to be long-term residents. His full-length olive drab army coat hung on a hanger beside their outdoor kitchen. I imagined that he was a Vietnam vet and that they had chosen to drop out of the system. Already, Sugarloaf Key seemed like a magical place to me.

That night, my housemate went off to Key West. I needed some alone time, and being a diligent student, I decided to do some assigned reading for my James Joyce class. (I had just two weeks to read Ulysses.) At night, the breeze off the Atlantic is incessant. I could hear the rope of a flagpole lashing and lightly clanging the metal, as the side of the tent billowed and swayed. Then by lantern light, I opened the book and began reading Ulysses. In this magical spot, this happy moment of solitude, a door opened. The paper I wrote about Ulysses became my first academic article. That article became a chapter in my dissertation. That dissertation led to a fellowship in Zurich at the James Joyce Center. Then everything dispersed.

My father moved to the Indian River area of Florida after he retired. He would send me crates of grapefruit at Christmas from the Indian River Fruit Company. When I visited my cousin a few years ago in Sebastian, Florida, I wanted to buy some fruit at the Indian River Fruit Company. I found the old packing center. It was boarded up and falling into disrepair. Citrus was no longer grown in the area because of citrus greening (Huanglongbing), a bacterial infection. Florida citrus production has declined by 75% since 2003.  My father is gone as is the smell of orange blossoms.

All That Is Sacred

Yesterday, I read John P. Weiss’s blog "A Diminishing Portfolio of Enthusiasms." He writes, “Recently, a thoughtful reader of my work sent me an email with a link to a documentary titled, ‘All That Is Sacred.’” The short documentary is about a group of writers and musicians in Key West in the late 1960s, including Tom McGuane, Jim Harrison, Richard Brautigan, Russell Chatham, and Jimmy Buffett.

As I was thinking about the Keys (and because I once owned a copy of Brautigan’s 1968 book In Watermelon Sugar), I watched the film. Here is full version:

The film moves back and forth between footage from the 1960s/70s and reminiscences by the people who were there. Transitions are marked by natural scenes from areas in the United States where the writers have now dispersed. After watching the film, I wondered what powerful desire could have ever taken me away from the heart-aching beauty of my native land.

I knew that my youngest brother liked Jimmy Buffett, so I sent him the link to the film. I was completely surprised when he sent me a long email saying that he had wanted to see the film and that he was friends with Cap’n John Kipp, one of the tarpon fishing guides. At dinner at Kipp’s house, he had heard stories about the glory days of Key West from the writer, Carl Hiaasen. By the time, I arrived in the Key West in the 1980s (and my brother in the 1990s), the vibe had dispersed.

As I said earlier, writing seems to emerge from a conjunction of diverse inputs combined with personal experiences. I have taken the inputs of a reading recommendation from a friend, Weiss’s blog, the link from one of Weiss’s readers, my brother’s email, and my own personal experiences to create this post. I hope that it will be an input for you and that you will add your experiences to it in the comments.