Death of Old Florida

First allow me to address the fact that I have not posted for some time now. I have been somewhat caught up with life and the intertubes come second to my immediate perceived reality that brings me pleasure and pain. So there.

I find myself in St. Augustine Florida. My grandmother is in a rehab facility here. She is 89 years old and beginning to loose her mind. Her body is likewise going to hell in a hand basket. She is one of those cranky trailer park ladies that used to dot the northern Atlantic coastline of Florida. Much like her the coast line is likewise going the way of the ghost. The shellshops and reptile farms are gone. The mom and pop ice cream parlors and biker bars are shambling wrecks waiting for a dry summer and a good spark to set them ablaze.

The vast expanses of sawgrass, palmetto and Spanish moss are fading. Their replacement is a fungal infection of overpriced yuppie habitrails, condos and hotels. Gated communities to keep out the riffraff with names like Hammock Dunes and Island Keys. Even sadder is the disappearance of Marineland. It's tanks destroyed and torn down. What was the birthplace of dolphin behavior study and the first live porpoise birth is now marked only by the statue that stood in the front. I saw my first dolphin there when I was probably 10 years old. One more nail in our coffin driven home by our abstraction from science and the natural world.

Frankly the whole thing pisses me off. I'd like to grab the fuckers that are doing this by the balls and slap them around a little. Why do we have to do this in America? Why do we have no respect for things that are older? Why don't our elderly look to us for support? Why do they push us away? Demanding to remain in their old homes long after they are safe.

This situation is untenable. If we are to continue to exist as a nation we need to stop throwing shit away as soon as it has become worn. We need to stop creating shit that won't last. I will eat a pile of my own shit if any of those fucking condos and gated communities have even a half occupancy after the baby boomers are gone and buried. There simply will not be enough people. Not to mention the fact that a modern house falls the fuck apart if it is neglected for more than a year or two.

America needs to stop living a throw away life. But for more reasons than just the environment. We will eventually have no sense of self. We will have no capacity to look back down the generations for a foothold on how to handle the now. We will have only Coke, McDonald's and Visa. And when they are done with us. They will throw us away. Because in a consumer society you are the disposable item. When you are old and incapable of buying their shit that will break they will throw you away because there's another standing in line behind you.

Florida used to be the wild place with the boars and snakes in the bushes. Now it's just another prepackaged destination for people to have lives. But those lives aren't the real thing. They are commodities just like any other thing in our rotten sugar coated society.