The problem is clothes

100414 The problem is clothes.

What is more glorious than the sunrise?  Or the sunset?  Especially in south Florida?  My home has a delightful patio in middle of the back, screened in, with privacy created by two oak trees, a couple of pines, and some other bizarre palms and ficus and hibiscus and oleander and bamboo and other things I don’t know the names of. The neighborhood is squeezed together somewhat so that blocks the view—I have a very dappled southerly view of branches near and far and these green beasts I’ve named.

I would have to leave the house in search of the sunrise and sunset.  To leave the house I would have to dress.  The problem is putting on clothes.

Just this morning I discovered, after living here about five years, that the best view of the skies at sunrise is out my bathroom window—the one over the toilet.  This is most unfortunate for any kind of meditative gazing.  To go out into the yard would involve shoes because between my patio and that side yard is an expanse of wet mulched ground and then the grasses on that side yard by Saturday are long a mucky with torrential rains of the night before and dew. And I’d have to drag a chair out from the inside.

Sounds like a lot of excuses.  I did stand facing the toilet this morning and looked out the window at the view between my neighbors’ house that faces an angle away from my visage, and their tree line which is quite far from their door.  They have a lovely view out their back over the corner of the rolling golf course.  No one around here really sees the sunrise, just the red lines the clouds make when there are clouds, against that icy blue colored sky so early in the morning.  It’s not long before the reds fade to pinks like cotton candy and then change to the gauzy white as the clouds seem to be left behind from the storms that tore through here last night.  They, these leftover clouds, move imperceptibly, soaking up the warming sun.

The report back from the HOA is that I have a great deal of growth (told through chuckles over the phone) growing on my roof.  I noticed that for the first time driving home yesterday.  I do have.  On the roof that’s right over my kitchen where the bay window protrudes.  The mossy green on the roof is probably about a yard by a yard and quite healthy with the bright green of my distant homeland at least four generations back.  I couldn’t help but smile when I saw it as I drove by—just a quick glimpse.  I like having a garden on the roof so bright green.  Very fetching.

How the heck am I supposed to get that off of there?  Spend a fortune for someone else to do it. The someone elses came to do it apparently but couldn’t because I have six or seven broken tiles and that must be fixed before the germicide poisoning whatever it’s called will happen on the roof as part of what the company is doing in preparing the houses to paint.

But I digress.

The point is the problem of clothing.  I sit in the mornings that I crave and enjoy, nay BASQUE in, in a large green Irish teeshirt that I cannot feel on my skin, it’s why I wear it, and my tiger print pajama bottoms that likewise comfort without really touching my skin.  I don’t even go to the mailbox in these clothes.  I certainly can’t drive out to the beach for the sunrise—plus it takes me away from the patio.  Nor can I drive out to the bridge—which I haven’t fully figured out how I would do that anyway—to watch the sunset.  I’d have to walk the bridge to see the sunset and I am just not into that at the moment.  Perhaps I will one day.

I would also love to go to the pelican or osceola café for breakfast but again, the problem is getting dressed and missing out on this holy of holies—time and space in such comfort and quiet and absolutely private surroundings—except for the mucky squirrels and the occasional rabbit and sometimes the mourning doves...the occasional armadillo and family that migrate through are perhaps my favorite.  Don’t know why.  Love their rolly polly look and their quiet foraging.  They are a vision of the ancient times when dinosaurs ruled the world and yet somehow futuristic silver armored scales so neatly laid from head to tail in that slight rounding of the back.  Their claws are beautiful, their snouts perfect, waddling along wearing their armored clothing they were born with.

They don’t have to dress.  And neither do I.  Except I also need to go to the grocery store and really should go now or 20 minutes ago when the store opened to avoid the Saturday crowds but I don’t want to pull on the undergarments that squeeze the most sensitive parts of me or have to pull on clothes that remind me of how much weight I need to lose as I head for the market where I will purchase more of what will keep the weight on me.   The hair and face would need some attention as well.  I’m not lazy, just drained of all humanity’s noise and views and eyeballs and interchanges.  I just want to sit here and read and write and daydream into the luscious healing shades of viscous greens and unselfconscious mammals and birds and color morphing sky patches and only occasional voices of walkers who cannot see me.  I love not being seen!  And I do not want to go out there where I will be seen and heard and have to see back and hear.

So it’s the clothes.  And the face.  The eyes and ears.  Overexposure sends me to retreat in my open and glorious cave...  But I miss out on the sunrise and sunset and I’m hungry.  But I just can’t miss out on the even more precious quiet hours of sunrise and lingering in the words from books and emails and online readings and my own words clicking across the pale icy lighted screen....  I only wish of the two—sunrise or sunset—I could at least fully absorb one from my home.