I dreamed I saw St Augustine (Florida)
By: Chris Chandler and Lisa Stolarski 4 24 02
It was somewhere between the beginning of time
and
Well...
...the end of time (a little closer to the end, I think,
though I cant really say for sure.)
Ya see I have been to St Augustine, Florida. And, I have
drunk from the Fountain of Youth. I did. I stood in line for
over an hour and paid eleven bucks for the experience and that was with the Triple A discount.
The water from the Fountain of Youth was served to me in a disposable cup by a well-tanned
teenager dressed in a red and gold conquistador outfit.
I didn't think much of it until afterwards, later that afternoon. I was at my friend's place in the suburbs - and I found myself sitting by his pool - and there was that same kid the well tanned
teenager still wearing his red and gold conquistador outfit - with all its shiny brass armor
sunning himself in the water. He was held buoyant by a U shaped flotation device - a life-sized
inflatable alligator - actually. The tail wrapped around one side of him, the mouth around the
other. In its snout was a yellow beer coozy maintaining an ice-cold Corona.
He looked like an advertisement. "Got limes?" I started to say but that just sounds so Twentieth Century.
This kid seemed to be one of those people who never get off work... as if he actually enjoyed
being employed by the chamber of commerce as if he had posted his list of hobbies to monster dot com, it matched him up with a conquistador suit and he recognized this as his
true destiny.
"Welcome to St Augustine," he said, like the voice on the other end of the line when ya call
information.
"The oldest City in the Western Hemisphere It was here that Ponce de Leon and I looked for the Fountain of Youth I was only 19 years old at the time."
"This guy has taken his character a little too far," I thought. "Like George Bush thinking he
really is the president."
"I know most people think the Fountain of Youth to be just some foolish Indian myth."
"I don't," I thought. "why else would they buy all those ads for Minoxydil, Viagra, and silicone
breasts implants but that's another story."
As for me, I keep my viagra right to my Prozac, and, ya know, if either one of them worked I
wouldn't need the other.
He continued. "Ya see, we Europeans didn't discover the fountain of youth any more than Dr. Ruth discovered sex. You see, we could only hold in our peacock consciousness the bits and pieces of Calusa Indian myth that they were equipped to understand at the time."
"This kid's got his pointy iron helmet on too tight," I thought.
"There must have been some language barrier because the Calusa weren't talking about a a fountain of youth that could melt away cellulite or prevent gingivitis. They were talking about the youth of the species not the individual."
"It is why when the Spanish came here in search of decent Indian food and most importantly
gold and fresh slaves to build there new settlements - all the free black sailors that came over
with them started putting two and two together that they might just become the slaves the
Spanish were in search of. They built a fort for their own protection. Right here.
"Yes, the first American slaves were not black nor were the first blacks to settle in America
slaves. This was well before Plymouth Rock landed on the Indians. Mention that the next time you meet some Boston blue blood boasting of how long ago their ancestors on the May
Flower landed here."
"There seems to be something in the water here," he said leisurely paddling across the swimming pool.
"Those African Slaves I mentioned before knew this too. They adopted Christian stories about
crossing the river of eternal life. Or at least crossing the rivers between slave territories into
free ones. It is kind of ironic that the mythology of their captors helped the slaves to escape
the well, the mythology of their captors."
"The Seminole took these former slaves in, gave them room and board, gave them jobs in their casinos. The Indian cultures and the African cultures mixed. Together they invented menthol cigarettes."
"Le me tell you when Col. Sanders settling just north of here heard about free blacks living in
their own community, he tried to put a stop to it. But Uncle Ben and Aunt Jemima teamed up with the Florida State Simonole--Andrew Jackson surrendered, while slinking back to Washington, D.C., to declare victory and become president. It's not the only time defeat in
Florida has led to becoming President but that is a different story."
"As for the Seminole, they remain unconquered to this day. Think about that the next time you go down to Hollywood, Florida and feed a picture of Andrew Jackson into a slot machine. Perhaps the Casinos are the Indians way of paying white people back for bringing them the 40 ouncer."
I wonder why he didn't tell us all this back at that tourist trap.
"And I won't bore you," he continued. "With all the history about the first slaves to be freed by
the emancipation Proclamation or the first big race riot that eventually led to the end of
segregation all happening right here I'll just tell you that it happened and that in the end A man named Martin Luther had a dream that came true."
"That's not to say he was the only one to have this dream, nor that the present is particularly
auspicious. In fact, today many of the descendants of those former slaves are working minimum wage jobs using the water from the fountain of youth to water the emerald lawns of
the Raddison, Ponce de Leon Golf and Conference Center."
It's a glass half empty, half full question really to which, I say, get a smaller glass.
There are millions of problems in this world, a million of them right here, right now. But that
means there are also a million answers, a million voices and a million dreams.
and every dream comes true it's just all in the way you interpret it.
Ponce de Leon, too had a dream he just didn't interpret it right, and his quest in the wrong
pursuit wound up getting him killed, about a hundred miles south of St Augustine.
And last night, a hundred miles south of St Augustine, in a place now known as cape Canaveral the roosters said it best.
They were confused.
They began crowing, as roosters do - but the thing is - the dawn was not yet upon us. Yet, the
whole horizon bloomed at once. A misty blue light filled our lungs as the horizon hurled yellow
rage across the water's edge. Thousands of miles an hour - a blue grey ribbon suddenly streaked toward the open arms of heaven. The air rumbled. Canada Geese honked across the water, befuddled.
Then - a long trail of god's own cigar smoke was all that remained. The sky went dark again.
It seems the Hubbell Telescope was again in need of repair. Our pictures of the universe had
become blurry. The space shuttle was making a house call this morning. Three astronauts with a bottle of Windex had been deployed to clean her mirrors. The infinite is smaller somehow. Yes, I said. Get a smaller glass.
From up there - Florida might look like the a giant limp dick hanging flaccid from that beast now known as The United States. But if ya think about it from that drooping penis man kind ejaculates into the cosmos - shooting the seeds of the fountain of youth to swim the heavens in search of eternal creation.
We have walked on the moon, satellites do probe the galaxies. There is a Fountain of Youth - which has nothing to do with Monoxadil, or Viagra or silicone breasts.
And as I thought about that, (the Fountain of youth, not the silicone breasts) I found myself
drifting back into consciousness, held buoyant by an inflatable alligator in a swimming pool in St Augustine Florida - my Corona no longer ice cold - wondering how do I interpret this dream
