www.johnmartini.com

Yes, Key West is different in a multitude of ways. Much for the better. Some is crippled.

After Hurricane Irma the population were billiard balls in all direction across the harvest felt that is the Veldt in the late summer of south east America. Some stayed while others dispersed. Some fell into trouble. We lost a fawn to the jaws of a big city. There’s plenty that will never be the same.

And then there were the ‘blessed’, those who tumbled into each other’s arms. Saving one another and, in so, heightening the senses of their romances. Flimsy foundations.

I rolled like a stone. I traveled light and I traveled solo. I did my Kerouac and every night I wrote my thoughts, my On The Road. It helped me download the stresses. 

I had experiences. I rented a dollhouse in Bay Saint Louis, Mississippi with views of the Gulf of Mexico and houses swaying on stilts forty feet high. I drove the back roads to New Orleans, I heard the music. I kept a diary and I would have published it. But I lost it. You’d think it impossible these days. It’s not.

I lived in uncertainty, often in great comfort, but always distracted by my circumstances.

My travels ended six months from the night the hurricane decimated my house and things concluded oddly peacefully in a spot downtown Key West, a place I love, found by a friend. Thank you friend!

For the ‘panic romances’, those I watched from afar, I wondered which would gel. One could have. I watched it from start to teetering end. It began in a syrupy swirl, she’d saved him, she flew him out of danger, and it might have worked. But six months later and they were done. 

‘You owe me’ she wheedled, playing a weak hand.

‘I owe you nothing’ he trumped, and he was free.

Hurricane Irma shifted everyone’s life. Mine for the better. Check the weather and pray for luck.