Florida

I love how quiet and empty the streets are in Coral Gables, which is where I am and where I have been talking to students at the University of Miami about my writing and what I think about queer life (marriage, bi-sexuality, writing objectively about sexuality, sex and friendship). I've been to various "phases" of Florida (which I think they are rather than places because the Sun is the real place down here), and the University of Miami campus is very beautiful because it is so circuitous, and there is a lake and little bridges and dorms that look like old motels and there is a swimming pool in the middle of the campus where, in the middle of the day, people are swimming. How strange it is to see people swimming on a college campus -- a real like-in-a-movie moment. I was hit in every direction by how outside life is here and how cinematic.

The fact that all the architecture feels a little soul-less may be due to the presiding fact that no one spends anytime inside -- except to sleep, which is still not really spending any time inside.

Inside the hotel where I am staying, there isn't nearly as much pubescent youth as I have been seeing streaming through campus. It's families, mostly and pre-youth swimming in the rooftop pool, and downstairs, a woman sitting at the grand piano in the lobby eating a sandwich. I suppose she'd strayed in from the street. She looks like Bette Davis in "Pocketful of Miracles". And compared to all the vigor of campus life, she's a reminder of the second fact of life in Coral Gables and southern Florida in general.

The sun sets.