OK, time to ‘fess up. This dispatch is from really from further north, Silver Spring, MD,  and there is snow on the ground and the tropical grace ( and squalor) of the Keys  is but a collection of languorous memories.  

 

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And happy memories or so I thought until I began to look at the photographs. Apparently once I raised  camera to my eyes another photographer emerged, one perhaps influenced by a daily reading of the New York Times in which  day after day, clouds of doom and gloom hung over every page.  In any event, most of the photographs are on the melancholy side, a mood completely absent when I didn’t have a camera in my hands. 

 

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In fact, to be in the Keys was to be in denial. Key West seemed little unchanged from years past; roosters strutted the tropical streets, happy tourists filled every restaurant with their margarita-fueled laughter and conspicuous consumption glittered from every window. 

 

 

 

Tourists of another day: “Instant relatives for a dollar”. 

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We were particularly taken with the window of  the Duck and Dolphin antique shop in Key West, where all the cultures of the world seemingly came home to roost.

 

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I had my eye on  a art deco crucifix, memorable if only because it was so far removed from the original: a persecuted Jew destined to change the world, hanging from a cross of wood.

This romantic Christ, the creation of a French artist in the late 20s, was gold plated and cost about $2800, way over my crucifix budget. I will be happy with a framed print on my wall, conscious that like many of us, I am settling for less these days. 

 

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The sun worshippers were out in force, gathering in Mallory Square to salute the descending globe every evening surrounded by court jesters and jongleurs that probably aren’t much different from their counterparts in medieval days. Cats leap through hoops, clowns totter on stilts, pretty women eat fire, a turbaned fakir shuffles his cards. It would not have surprised me to see a few Egyptian sun gods strolling through the crowds,  golden orbs sitting atop their jackal heads. That would have tempted me to raise my camera but in lieu of gods I found myself photographing bare walls and a lone rabbit in a setting as artificial as a Hollywood set.

 

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And back on Cudjoe Key, after spending days fishing or lolling in hammocks and reading Ken Follett and Tom Clancy ( I found his detailed descriptions of weapon systems to be oddly soothing) my Other Self rose up and decided to photograph along Route One, the one hundred and fifty mile long snake-like highway that connects the Keys to the mainland. I began in color but it was the kind of color that soon faded to black-and-white.

 

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As I said it was as if someone else took these pictures because when not photographing, I couldn’t get enough of the balmy air, the wild palms, and the emerald sea stretching as far as the eye could see. But as Fellini once said, I don’t direct these movies; they direct me. 

 

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