3/8/08 – Florida Keys

I am in a place I have never been, and I have never been in any place even like this. It is beautiful. The houses sit on stilts, with garages underneath—garages for cars, but also for boats and airplanes. There is no grass in these backyards, only cement patios and swimming pools that border canals. The backyard neighbors’ houses are separated not by fences, but by these canals, like a road between houses, into which they can lower their boats and make their way into the larger waters.

The house I am in has three stories. We are staying in the guest quarters on the lower floor. The main living area is above us and there is a master bedroom suite above that. Finally, a stairway leads to a trapdoor in the ceiling that takes you to a fourth-story square captain’s watch or widow’s walk from which you can view water in every direction 360 degrees. Today the color is where they get the definition of seafoam green; it’s absolutely gorgeous.

We had rain last night, lightning and thunder…feels like my life the past few days. Today it is windy, which somehow revives my soul. Hope arrives out of my hopelessness as I look at the beauty and know, somehow I can’t explain, that it is important I exist. We are to be here for about a week—a gift perhaps as a place to heal, to retreat, to have invisibility feel good instead of painful.

Perhaps I will find some keys here in the Keys…insights into my future work, lifestyle, the desires of my heart, the person I am and want to become. Even on this long journey I have been too busy. Perhaps now I am being slowed down on purpose to experience and appreciate the beauty around me, to reflect, and to make space for awareness to arise.