Is This The Way To The Hemingway House?

Key West's #1 Tourist Attraction: The Ernest Hemingway Home  

It’s Hemingway Days again in Key West and you just can’t avoid thinking about Hemingway and what his celebrity has brought to our island city. Whenever we go out on our front porch we are asked by tourists for directions to Key West's number one tourist attraction. In fact, it’s just around the corner, but the appearance of locals, who might know the way to Hemingway's, is apparently irresistible and one or another in every passing pair or party pauses to ask “is this the way to the Hemingway House?”  Maybe they expect the appearance of something more spectacular, something like a Vanderbilt Mansion looming majestically above the modest tin roofs of the neighborhood’s wooden houses. The Hemingway House is surrounded by a red brick wall, its gates locked tight every day at 5 p.m. unless someone rents the grounds for a party or a wedding or something like that. I always tell tourists to look for the red brick wall.  Just about anytime you walk past the Hemingway House there is a crowd of people there, waiting to get in, or posing for photos, or jumping up for a peek over the wall after 5 p.m.   

Ernest and Pauline around the time of their marriage

    The late Jeanne Porter, who grew up on Whitehead Street, played with Hemingway's sons when she was a little girl.  One day she told us this story: The boys kept several raccoons in cages outside in the yard. The animals were named after movie stars. One day it was discovered that a raccoon named Greta Garbo had killed and was eating her cage mate, Harold Lloyd. Although disturbing Papa Hemingway when he was in his writing studio was strictly taboo, the children’s horrified screams brought him to the scene. When he saw what was happening he went into the house and returned with a shotgun. Then, in full view of the children, he wordlessly shot off the head of Greta Garbo and returned to his studio. Jeanne said they thought perhaps Papa suspected that Greta Garbo had rabies. But the episode shook her badly, so badly that she remembered it quite clearly 60 years later.

"That writer with the bullfights." The Hemingways in Pamploma, 1928

    I was in the eighth grade when I read The Old Man and the Sea and wrote an essay that made me very proud indeed. It may have been the first time I realized that a story can be much more than just a story, that a whole can be way bigger than the sum of its parts. I wanted to be a writer and understanding Hemingway’s brevity was a wonderful lesson. Many years later, when my son read The Old Man and the Sea, as a junior in college majoring in English, he was so swept away by the tale he said he wanted to get a tattoo honoring Hemingway. I told him he should maybe know a little bit more about the writer before tattooing himself for life with the image of Hemingway.  

Ernest and Pauline, Key West, 1930's

    Hemingway came to Key West with his second wife, Pauline, in search of a quiet place to write, it is said. Pauline was from Piggott, Arkansas. The house in which she grew up is also preserved as a museum, and in touring it you learn that Pauline grew up with many advantages. Her family had money. And connections. That’s how Pauline got a job with Vogue Magazine in Paris, where Hemingway and his first wife, Hadley were living, supported by Hadley’s modest inheritance. In spite of her strict Catholic upbringing, Pauline found herself hopelessly in love with Hemingway and soon became the second Mrs. Hemingway. Financially she was far better off than Hadley.  Her uncle, founder of the Richard Hudnut cosmetic brand, bought his niece and her writer husband the house in Key West as a wedding present in 1931. It cost him $8,000. It was the first house Hemingway owned. He was 32 years old.
    He did not live for long in the Key West house. In 1936, at Sloppy Joe’s Bar, he met the woman who was to become his third wife, a renowned journalist with a thirst for adventure. He divorced Pauline and married Martha Gellhorn, who writes, in her memoirs, that the great Hemingway was not much of a lover. In fact, she wrote, she was certain that in spite of his macho reputation, the only women he’d ever bedded were the four women he married.
    “I want to write a blog about why I think Hemingway was a lousy lay,” I told an artist friend the other day.
    “Of course he was,” my friend said. “He hated women.”
    So that’s the general take on Hemingway’s machismo around here. 

Peeking over the wall

    In the television series The Sopranos, young Christopher Montelsanti wants to be a writer. As he struggles over his computer, bemoaning the agony of creating enough pages to add up to something publishable, wise guy Paulie Walnuts warns him about the frustration of writing: “That writer, with the bullfights!” he says. “ He blew his own f’ing head off.”

    People touring the Hemingway House often ask the guides to show them the room where Hemingway shot himself. It happened in Idaho, not Key West. Hemingway was 61 years old, and had just complained to a close friend that as a writer, he could not retire (in fact, a rather cheering thought for me). Writers have to write and produce, no matter their age, he said. And Hemingway could write no more. It made him crazy enough to kill himself. 

Spencer Tracy and Hemingway during the filming The Old Man And the Sea, Cuba 1957. Tracy was nominated for the best actor Oscar. He lost to David Niven's performance in Separate Tables.

    The Old Man and the Sea will show at the Tropic Theater tonight. Tickets are $50 as it is a fundraiser for the local suicide hot line. The film is about a Cuban fisherman down on his luck when he hooks a giant fish that pulls him way out to sea. Hemingway was at the top of his game when he wrote Old Man, his finest work, for which he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Hemingway’s story is much bigger, but every bit as sad as the old Cuban fisherman’s. Hemingway hooked a big fish, too, the big fish of fame, and that fish pulled him far out into the sea of insanity, from which he could not return.

Coma, Part 2

My all-time favorite photo of Jen

Waking from a coma is a slow and dramatically difficult struggle. When a patient stays longer than four months in a coma, medical people start looking at the grim statistics; only 15% of them will come out again. They stop looking for the miracle of a recovery. For Jennifer, nearly five months passed before she began to signal her reawakening by frantically wiggling her left big toe.

(seated) Stacy and Jen with Sophie, top: June and Valerie

    We were alone in her hospital room the first time I saw Jennifer awake. It was a few days after her birthday. She was sleeping peacefully, and then, her eyes moved beneath their lids. “You’re dreaming,” I said. “You’re snoring a little bit, too.” And then her eyes opened and she looked directly at me.  I was so stunned I nearly fainted. I knew she’d been showing signs of consciousness, but I was not prepared for the shock of the moment when she opened her eyes and gazed into mine; they were brightly green, focused, curious. They were Jennifer’s eyes. Imagine how you might feel if a loved one had died and then, awakened from that sleep to look deeply into your eyes and your soul. What would you say? What would you do? Chills zipped up and down my arms and legs. I cried. And then she cried.
    “No, don’t cry because we’re alive and we all love you so! You’re getting better. You’re going to be all right,” I assured her in a mad jumble of works. Then I laughed, while I cried. I took her hand in mine and she squeezed it and smiled, a half smile on the left side of her mouth. It felt like she was showing off.
    “Hey, look at my hair!” She lifted her eyes to my head to examine the full mop of hair on my head. I’d been chemo bald and chemo beaten when her brain exploded, back in September. To her, I must have looked like a different person. But she seemed to recognize me. And surely, I recognized her.

Baby Sophie and Mama Jen

    Jennifer’s home now, with full-time nursing care. She’s busy with therapy and learning to do all the things people do to manage being alive. After a brain trauma the healthy brain cells learn to take over the work of the injured or destroyed brain cells. This is a miracle of nature, and no one knows how it works or how to make it work any faster or better than it does on its own. Does it matter that Jennifer is an extremely intelligent person? Maybe. Does it matter that she was in prime physical condition when it happened? Yes, surely her good health contributed to her survival.  How long will the healing take? Years, probably. But there is progress, and it’s quite remarkable. A month ago, for example, Jen could hold her neck erect, her head up, for seconds. Now she does this for minutes. She turns her head in any direction she wants. She uses sign language because she has a tracheotomy and cannot yet talk. However, she mouths words, and loves to sing along to her favorite music.

Jen with the Bunnies, Tessa and Sophie

    From my reading about recovery from brain trauma I know that every accomplishment, no matter how minute, is particularly exhausting for Jennifer. That includes receiving visitors. And so Jen pushes herself when she can, and rests often. Recovery continues, day by day.
    “Inch by inch, it’s all a cinch,” I tell her, repeating something she often told me. She smiles. She remembers.
    Yesterday I visited Jen and her wonderful nurse told me she wished she’d known Jennifer before her accident. She wanted to know more about Jen’s personality, what sort of a person she is. And so, with Jennifer nodding to confirm the finer points of my personality portrait, I told her nurse these things about Jen:

Somebody's birthday. Jen, June, Stacy, Whitney

Jen loved burgers at the (sadly defunct) Deli on Truman

    She doesn’t like strong perfume. She is allergic to eggs. She loves make-up, lipstick and clothes with just a bit of ruffle. She prefers her hair short and low maintenance. She eats like a bird. She is tall and regally trim and has always been so, built like her grandmother. She used to drink Coca-Cola, I always kept some in my house for her, but then she decided it was not good for her and quit. She is a minimalist and likes her home simple and serene. She is a poet and a writer. She is a graduate of the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU in New York. She grew up in New Jersey. She is a certified lifeguard. She loves to swim. She is Catholic; she prays; she goes to confession. She has two daughters, beautiful and bright and well-raised as Jen takes the job of motherhood very seriously. She is the kind of mother who gives a toddler a leaf of fragrant basil to keep her entertained while Jen cooks dinner. Six years ago she went to a monastery in Kentucky and prayed, in total silence, for a week. When an ambulance drives by she pulls off to the side of the street and says a prayer for the person being transported. She loves gardening. She loves cooking. She loves coffee. She loves apple pie. And she loves me. I know. Yesterday, she mouthed the words and told me so.



Need a little cry? Cry to the good stuff. This always works for me.

Coma, Part 1

June and Jen. Before cancer. Before coma. Spring, 2006. 

“Something terrible has happened to Jenny,” Michael said, bounding up the stairs, the ancient steps creaking beneath him. We were in Nova Scotia, on a mission to scatter my mother’s ashes in the places she’d loved growing up there. We were recovering from Mother’s death after a long and difficult illness, and from my four-month long bout of chemotherapy—two dramas that weirdly zenithed at the same time. We were stunned and weary from the rough summer. The day was overcast. I was in bed, staring out the window, gathering together the strength to face another day.
    “Something terrible has happened to Jenny,” Michael said, plopping down on the bed beside me and opening his computer. My heart slowed in that horrible thudding way it does when you hear terrible news. My mind darted desperately about, imaging what might have happened to Jennifer. I’d received an email from her a day earlier. She’d written happily, and funnily, about applying to a graduate program in creative writing. Her health was sterling, from regular swims and walks with her dog, Stella. A car wreck? No. I remembered that her husband Joe had insisted on Jennifer driving an industrial strength SUV. I thought of Jenny’s daughters, Sophie and Tessa, “the bunnies” she calls them. But it was Jenny. He said Jenny. And then he read aloud from an email from Key West in which we learned that Jennifer had collapsed at her home as a result of what appeared to be a brain bleed. She’d been flown to Miami. She was in a coma.
    It’s a silly term, best friend. But Jen and I are each others' best friend. Her daughters call us “BFFs”, best friends forever, I think that means. Recently someone asked us, “how are you two related?” Jennifer thought for a minute and answered, “We’re related . . . but not by blood.” When Jennifer took me to my chemo and radiation treatments, people thought she was my daughter. And she could be, as she is nearly twenty years younger than I.  I love her as if she were my daughter. She calls me “Mama” and I often sign off my emails to her as “your fairy godmother.” She’d even promised to take care of me when I am old.
    “That old woman there?” she’d say, laughingly imaging a time in the future. “That used to be June Keith.”
    And we’d laugh, because we always laugh. We share a sense of the absurd, of the sweet insanity of life on this earth. Jennifer knows my weaknesses and my strengths; I like to think I know hers, too. True friendship, they say, is loving another in spite of what you know about them. It’s a true friendship. 
    One day I introduced Jennifer, a uniquely intelligent person, to Joe, a man I sensed to be of the same beautiful brilliance. They fell in love. They married. They moved to a house in new town. Things changed.
    “I’m glad you two are so happy,” I teased them, “but I’ve lost my best friend!”
    It is unclear just what happened to Jennifer’s brain on that day, just as the brain’s myriad functions are largely a mystery. She was preparing dinner when she announced that she was having the worst headache of her life. She collapsed. Fortunately Joe was at home—what if he hadn’t been there when she lost consciousness? But he was there. Against all odds, Jennifer made it to Ryder Trauma Center in Miami. She survived two surgeries that night. And then, a coma.
    A person in a coma appears to be dead, but for the gentle in and out of the breath. Nothing moves. It is a state of suspended animation, a profoundly disturbing thing to witness. As she lay there, her serene beauty utterly still, I thought of a thousand conversations we’d had, the many what-if’s we’d explored together. One thing we’d never considered was this. Never anything like this.
    As the months went by, and Jennifer’s coma continued, friends urged me to come to terms with the idea of her being gone.
    “But she moves her eyes,” I said.
    “Only reflex,” people said.
    “She yawns,” I said.
    “Reflex,” I was told.
    Joe never gave up, and being a physician, a psychiatrist, he knew as well or better than any of us the gravity of the situation.  But Joe believed in Jennifer’s power to recover. If she’d given up, he said, she would have died at the beginning. She wanted to live, he told us. She was fighting to live. It might take a very long time, he said, but she would heal. She would be back, he promised.
    For months I cried at the thought of her. People wanted to know how she was. I had nothing to tell them, but that we hoped she’d regain consciousness soon. Michael and I cried together, and he always said “she was such a great mother,” and I’d admonish him to rephrase that to “she IS such a great mother.”
    We ached for Jenny’s daughters, beautiful babies we’d known since the days of their births. The bunnies.
    “They must know something we don’t,” the bunnies’ father told me one day. “They are confident she’ll get better and come home.”
    I read everything I could about comas. Everything. I learned that when a coma lasts for longer than four months, it is most likely to be permanent. Doctors and nurses I know well gently urged me to face the fact that Jennifer was gone. And so, as Jennifer’s birthday approached, I began the process of grieving the loss of her.
    And then, she woke up.

The Long and Winding Road

It’s been almost one year since I finished my fourth round of chemotherapy. Since then I’ve been feeling well. My test results are all good. Last fall, I went back to work. I even feel great at work. Clicking-my-heels-great. Staying-up-all-night-barking-at-the-full-moon-great. On December 31, 2010 I had my feeding tube removed. Happy New Year!  No more liquid diet (we called it “tube food”) for me. Back to eating solid food. My hair is chemo curly and my eyes are still blue. My husband still loves me like he used to do. I am cancer-free. And the best thing that any doctor can tell you about cancer is this: the further away you get from cancer, the closer you get to being done with it. So, I’m well on my way.
    Then I got this belly ache. In the past two months it’s been a regular event. Nothing truly awful, just a little belly ache that comes and goes. And since things seemed to be moving along more or less as well as they ever did, I figured I was all right. I didn’t worry. I just walked around saying “I have a belly ache.” Denial is not a river in Egypt, folks.
    My husband says that when old people say to each other “how’s it going?” they are really asking “are your bowels moving regularly?” When I was a kid whenever somebody didn’t feel well my Nova Scotian grandmother would ask “have you moved your bowels today?” and if you hadn’t, you were ordered to report to the bathroom and not come out until this movement had been achieved. We kids would gigglingly oblige, tickled by her very proper choice of words, and half crazy with the fear of having the dreaded enema, which was generally applied while brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts and uncles waited for news just beyond the bathroom door. Oh, the shame. No wonder I was in denial.

Depression-era photo of Gramma and her daughters, Mom (R) and Aunt Phyllis. The economy may have been sluggish, but not their colons, by God. Gramma saw to that.

    No one likes to hear they’re full of crap. When your own doctor tells you that, right to your face, it really hurts. It hurts almost as much as being full of crap, which hurts really bad. If you are one of those people who says “please, I’m eating!” when those of us in the medical field begin discussing the darker side of human physiology gone awry, this is the time for you to butt out. No pun intended. 
    As it turned out my colon was on strike, backed up so badly that my stomach wasn’t even emptying any more. The emergency room tests showed a sad and painful truth. Even a couple of shots of something really strong for pain didn’t eliminate the pain from my lack of elimination. The situation had gone on for far too long, but like I said, feeling so good in so many ways had trumped that little old belly pain for quite a while. My stomach was like a little voice moaning softly into the darkness: “what about me?” it growled. “what about how I feel?” I was ignoring that voice. Having no appetite was a good thing, too, as I’ve grown very fond of my favorite 1969-era jeans. Quit your growling, flat stomach!

The beautiful and deadly croton plant grows right here in Key West. I wonder if they have one behind the hospital emergency room? 

    My doctor finally told me, as I shivered on the rock-hard gurney in the ER, that my stomach was the size of a football. It should be the size of a baseball, at most. My daughter Susan wants fruit analogies always. So I told her that my stomach was the size of a large papaya when it should be the size of a small mango.

Croton seeds contain oil from which a potent laxative is made. Remember in John Steinbeck's East of Eden when Kate slowly poisoned Faye, the owner of the whorehouse? She used croton oil. Way too much of a good thing. Ugh. Imagine being Ex-Laxed to death . . .

    I once asked a surgeon what thing he did to his patients that he dreaded most. The naso-gastric tube, he quickly answered. The tube threads down through a nostril and into the esophagus and then down to the stomach. The tube is hooked on to a suction machine which empties the contents of the stomach with great efficiency. You’ve heard of having your stomach pumped? That’s what happened to me the other night. Like most people, the thought of the nose-hose, as the set-up is slangily referred to by medical personnel, is horrifying, about the worst atrocity imaginable. But guess what? It wasn’t that bad. True, it isn’t nice. Yes, it feels weird as hell. You should never underestimate the power of modern sedating drugs to render you remarkably tolerant to the poking probes of tubes sliding into places the good Lord never intended for them to go. Cancer survivors know this.
    It takes about an hour to empty the contents of one football-sized stomach. Then they replace all that sludge with a laxative, right down the same handy tube. The result of that laxative is a most impressive purge, the details of which I will spare you. The next morning I awakened nose-hose free, clean and warm in my cozy bed, with vaguely disgusting memories of an awfully crappy night.
    Two things you should take from my story. One: eat your fiber. Try for 25 grams a day. It ain’t as easy as you think. Look on labels. I thought a bowl of oatmeal every morning was all I needed to keep my fiber quotient up. Hell no. You need a whole lot more fiber than that. Like most parts of the human body, you can get away with abusing your colon for many, many years. But when your very tolerant body can take the abuse no longer, it rebels with pain. And that means you’re in trouble. Don’t ignore pain. It means something. Especially when it goes on and on and on. For weeks. Or months. It means you need to find out what’s wrong.
    Second: once again I have witnessed firsthand that the most merciful people on this planet are nurses and nurses assistants. In the past two years I have been through some of the most distasteful procedures imaginable, and at every event, there was a nurse, or a team of nurses and assistants, urging me through the rough patches, assuring me of my ability to cope, ignoring the distasteful by-products of my ever more tenacious grasp on life as this and all human bodies grow weary of putting up with our abuse. If you’re digging your trip on this long and winding road, don’t forget the care and maintenance of your vehicle.
    Happy trails to you.

Love on Two Wheels

Mario Sanchez's 1964 painted wood-carving: Colorful Conchtown. Notice the bike is unlocked.

I have a friend who moved to Key West based on her one-time experience, during a visit to the island several years ago, of riding a bicycle to the Tennessee Williams Fine Arts Center to see a performance by the Key West Symphony Orchestra: recreation and culture all together on one starry night. Life simply doesn’t get any better than that, she decided, and set her sights on a life in Paradise.
     Long before I set foot in Key West, I heard stories about the place from Ft. Lauderdale neighbors, a hard-drinking shrimper and his equally hard-drinking girlfriend. They described the rough and tumble island of Key West where a sense of community prevailed. For example, a bicycle belonged to whoever wore it between their legs at the moment. If there was a bicycle leaning against a pole, untethered, and a person drunk and tired happened by, that bike had a new owner. At least temporarily. To my own hippie-basted consciousness, that sounded reasonable. Love the one you’re with. I was interested in that kind of freedom. The promise of the endless party caught my attention, too. So, when I got the chance, I took it. I came to Key West, and found the place to be everything—and more—those shrimpers had promised.  

When we owned the streets.

    You really cannot talk about Key West life without discussing the bicycle. The bicycle is elemental to the island experience, essential to the island process, deeply rooted in island legend and lore. I did not steal my first bicycle. I bought it, from a dancer at the Esquire Lounge who’d upgraded her ride to her new boyfriend’s moped. I re-connected with my inner child on that bike, riding for hours around and around the labyrinth of Old Town streets. I wore a bikini and enjoyed my newfound breezy freedom as well as the appreciative looks and comments of my fellows on the road.
    I married a man with a red bike, and together we biked to the M&M Coffee stand every morning for breakfast, and then on to the beach, or just around and around. It seemed to me then, as I watched his long body leaning languidly into each turn, that on a bike he was no longer a man, but a fish, undulating gracefully through the rippling sunlight, sleek and beautiful as a shark. We spawned, that man and I, and our baby boy loved being our passenger in his little bicycle seat. Often he fell asleep back there, and I reached one hand back to hold his nodding head, steering us home with the other. 

Sabrina and Baby Miguel on the bike she bought for me when mine was stolen.

    We went though a few bikes back then. My girlfriend came by and asked to borrow my bike so that she could show up for a downtown date fresh and not sweaty from walking. I gave her the bike and the lock, making her promise to lock up before diving into the night’s festivities. She vowed to lock. But somewhere along the way, she was distracted from her mission of returning my bike to me, and the following day she showed up on my doorstep, hungover and apologetic.
    My brother-in-law borrowed my husband’s red bike, and lost it under similar circumstances. Who remembers the realities of chains and locks when deep in the thrall of partying in Paradise? The red bike was gone. I was working at the Miami Herald where a freelance writer showed up every day on a red bike very much like the one lost by my brother-in-law. I didn’t expect he would be willing to part with such a treasure, but I offered to buy it. He sold it to me for $25 and a big smile. My husband was thrilled. It was almost exactly the same as his stolen red bike . . .

I'm not quite ready for the Tricycle. But I like it.

    Lately, as I grow older and less slippery in the joints, I’ve considered a tricycle. I envision a broad seat, a bohemian display of plastic flowers in the basket, and myself pushing the pedals real slow, moving through the streets like a lazy snail. But when I am driving my car, and come upon such a vision, I find myself thinking “poor old thing.”        
    The woman who once owned the shop “Among the Ruins,” retired now, rides her bicycle though the streets of Key West, garbed in chic clothes and always a jaunty hat. My Nova Scotia neighbor Enid, rides her bike in a Tour de France-inspired outfit, and a helmet. She’s 84 years old and fit as a fiddle.
    So no, I won’t succumb to the tricycle just yet. But we don’t ride our bicycles anymore, either. The traffic is too dense. It’s too scary. And riding on a busy sidewalk, yelling ahead to pedestrians to move aside, goes so appallingly against the spirit of the thing. I can’t do it.

Bicycle with Baggage. Sometimes a whole life story can be told by a bike.

    My baby Conch, now a man, uses his bike almost exclusively. He rides without a helmet, and without the slow and sinuous grace of his father. He drives fast and purposefully. When I fear for his safety I remind myself of his ancestry, deeply rooted in a society of free bicycles.  He is in a bigger hurry than his father, or anyone, ever was back in the day. Nowadays, everyone is in a hurry. 
    Today our bicycles sit motionless on the front porch, posing in the tropical sun for tourists’ cameras, tethered securely, mostly retired, waiting and waiting to be taken for a ride around and around the island.

Imagine

The Beatles were scheduled to play at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, Florida, in September, 1964. Florida was still segregated at that time. The Beatles refused to play anywhere that was segregated so the venue was desegregated for the concert. But the arrival of Hurricane Dora cancelled the concert and sent the Beatles to Key West to wait out the storm.  

Lately people have been luring me into conversations about religion -- as in why their faith is the true faith and someone else's is not. Frankly, the subject leaves me queasy. Personal beliefs about good and evil and the meaning of life are very deeply personal after all. So I say “my mother always told me a lady does not discuss religion or politics.” I’m reluctant to discuss the dynamics of my own religion, a faith based on the power of creative recycling that we practitioners call Recyclism. I have no desire to recruit; no Recyclist does. Recyclism is something one finds on their own. It’s a private thing. Lately, it seems, people are more hungry than ever to lay their religious cards on the table, to announce their goodness, renounce evil, and to praise God. This patting of one’s own morally superior back is amusing. As a follower of Recyclism, I respect the soul’s yearning for a spiritual foothold. It is only through seeking, after all, that we ultimately find our way. But please, let me eat my lunch in peace.
    A fundamental belief of Recyclism is reincarnation, but our understanding of the way to rebirth is what separates our creed from others. We believe that spirits are energies that cannot be created or destroyed. The spirit, on its infinite journey through space and time, takes a variety of forms, enabling it to visit a number of planets and universes. For the visit to Planet Earth, for example, our space suits are human bodies. On this planet, as on all others we visit, our space suits are destined to become obsolete, no matter how sincere our wish for it to be otherwise. We die. Our time is very limited!  The human body is particularly frail and subject to a vast number of maladies. Being born is like sailing out to sea on a ship destined to sink. On this planet scientists and technologists work madly at outsmarting nature, their goal being what? Eternal life in these flimsy space suits? We Recyclists shudder at the thought. 
    Recyclism believes it is counter-productive to live in the same house for too long, or work the same job for too long, or even follow the same TV viewing schedule for too long. We encourage change, movement, variety and exposure to the greatest number of experiences and adventures. We believe there is nothing new under the sun, only new arrangements of what already exists, and new ways of viewing the same wisdom and truths. Our hope is that salvation will come from accepting life on life’s terms, and from acknowledging that everything in this universe, and every other we suspect, is temporary. Here today. Gone tomorrow. Our ultimate goal is to be free of the space suit, on an eternal space walk as it were, cruising with God, or the Gods who have already learned to Let Go. But that takes a long, long time—believe it or not, thousands of lifetimes!

The Beatles stayed at the Key Wester motel. Water from the motel
pool was gathered into tiny bottles and sold for $2 as "genuine
Beatle water." A boy from Key West High School broke into their room
and stole a Beatles jacket and pants. He was quickly busted when he
wore his Beatle clothes to school the following day.

    Perhaps Recyclist George Harrison expresses it best in his song, "My Sweet Lord," when he says: “I really want to see you. I really want to be with you. I really want to know you, Lord, but it takes so long my Lord.”  The song “Imagine” by John Lennon is, of course, our favorite anthem to enlightenment. Yes, all the Beatles are Recyclists, a little known fact.
   We believe it takes thousands and thousands of lifetimes, doing the same things again and again, to finally recognize ourselves for exactly what we truly are: Recycled versions of each other, different, but the same.  A feature of Recyclism is our belief that intellect, talent and genius is recycled from one incarnation to the next, but not necessarily into the same package every time. When the spirit is free of the space suit, or body, it goes into a debriefing mode, where, for a while, it exists as pure spirit, no meat. No Recyclist knows how long this period lasts. No one has come back to say. Naturally this is our goal, to walk with the Gods. But before that can happen, we believe the disembodied spirit is dumped into a sort of spirit hopper, a cosmic blender if you will, the “frappe” button pushed by the finger of God. (Yes, we believe in God. We don’t not believe in anything. Who are we to judge?)  And then, those spirits, the saints and sinners, the good and the evil, the dark ones and the light, are disassembled and reassembled into new material, newly arranged souls, to be fitted with new space suits and sent to whatever place they will go to learn their next lessons. That is . . . the same lessons. This process goes on every day, has gone on and will go on. And so we meet the array of personalities who travel with us and beside us through whatever strange realm in which we find ourselves. All of us different. All of us the same. You know how it goes: you meet someone new and after ten minutes you feel as if you've known them forever. You have! You know all of us. Everybody knows everyone.

Today you can sip a cocktail and eat a snack where the Beatles once slept at the Abbey Road Snack Shack at Hyatt Windward Pointe Resort, which was once the Key Wester.  The massive rehab of the property changed everything but this historical building.

    As for our moral values, they are the same as every great religion: do unto others as you would have done onto you. Love thy neighbor as you love thyself. The Ten Commandments make good sense to us, as do the twelve steps and traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous. To Recyclists, the message is the same: Be Nice. Maybe you’ve seen our bumper stickers.
    We don’t discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or color or age, mere features of the space suit and ultimately of no consequence. We oppose and fear discrimination and cruelty, but not much else. We like music and dancing, and all the arts. We’re into expressing ourselves.
    Our Higher Power is the same as yours. We believe in everything -- astrology, palmistry, tarot cards, extra sensory perception and deja vous.  Who are we to deny the truth of any of these things? We believe in seeking the high road, the higher calling, and the day when all our spirits will live as one.
    Like I said, we don’t do heavy recruiting But if you’re interested, I’ll tell you where you’re most likely to bump into Recyclists. We’re usually the ones laughing, or smiling, or involved in something fun. We love fun. We shop in thrift shops and prefer maintaining long friendships to darting about in search of newer, flashier ones. We prefer the mountains or the sea to the cities. We believe in giving peace a chance. We work at not taking this life, or any other life, too seriously -- why should we? We’ll all be leaving soon. That’s what Recyclism says. Imagine . . .

Things That Go Bump in the Night

What I did on my summer vacation. August, 2009

Cancer changed me. But it doesn’t have to change you, or the lives of your children. There is a vaccine out there now to prevent the kind of cancer that side-railed my life for the last two years. The vaccine guards against human pampilloma virus (HPV) which is transmitted sexually. I know that your daughters and sons are far more virtuous than I was, but know this: sexual transmission of HPV can occur with beginner stuff—French kissing. The latest research suggests that boys should be vaccinated, too. HPV most frequently causes cervical cancer in women, but has now been clearly linked to throat cancer in women and, more often, in men.
    It has now been established that the path that brings people to oral cancer contains at least two distinct causes; one through tobacco and alcohol, and another via the HPV virus, particularly version 16.  Evidence shows that two-thirds of cancers of the tongue and tonsils are caused by HPV—and 80% of these cases occur in men. My cancer was at the base of the tongue. According to the Centers for Disease Control the HPV positive group is the fastest growing segment of the oral cancer population. That’s scary.

The morning after four hours of surgery. April, 2010. Thanks Dr. Arnold.

    This research and new information has been unfolding in the two years since my own cancer was diagnosed. Because I am not a smoker or a drinker I figured my cancer was probably HPV related, and this week I learned that my tumor did test positive for HPV 16. That’s good news. Such good news that when my surgeon, Dr. David Arnold, talked to the pathologist on the phone, I cheered when he confirmed HPV 16.
    “Yaaaaay!” I yelled.
    “That’s the patient cheering,” Dr. Arnold told the pathologist, smiling broadly. Then he hung up the phone and smacked me a big high five. Like I’d won the lottery.
    What I’ve won is a better prognosis. HPV-related throat cancer in people who don’t smoke or drink responds well to treatment. One researcher says that the survival rate for people like me is 85%. That’s big news. That’s a high five for sure. 
    People sometimes talk about a cure for cancer as if it will be a whiz-bang thing. Instant. But I think that curing cancer will continue to come in little ways, a tiny bit at a time. My Key West radiologist, Dr. Sandy Shultz, says that cancer is every bit as cunning an enemy as Al-Qaeda.

Our beloved friend, Eileen Reeve, RN. August, 2010

    If you have a lump or bump that doesn’t go away in 21 days, you need to tell your doctor. The bump in my neck was painless, tiny and deadly. I mentioned my bumpy lymph node to my doctor only because I figured after so many years of sterling, and therefore boring, good health, I owed her something. I wouldn’t be here today had I not brought it to her attention. She saved my life. We saved my life. Don’t ignore stuff that wasn’t there before. Don’t expect cancer to offer any clues. Remember, it’s cunning and often silent until it’s too late.
    Second, please do some research and decide whether or not you see the value in vaccinating your children for HPV. Scientists are now concluding that boys should be vaccinated, too. Ask your doctor. Go on line. Check it out. You might save a life.
    As my wise son said, when I considered whether or not to have the just-in-case chemotherapy after my cancer was surgically removed: “Mom, why wouldn’t you?”