Beaches

At the intersection of Atlantic and 1st, right down near the One Ocean Pavilion and a handful of other beach haunts, there is literally a Starbucks on either side of the road. Of course, this is along the Jacksonville pilgrimage route to the beach; Atlantic Boulevard used to be the only road running out here, which is why the founded-in-1939 historic Beach Road Chicken restaurant is on this road instead of the now-parallel-running Beach Blvd. This is how people used to get from the rivers and the center of commerce, over the Intracoastal Waterway, to the beach, and this is the way I have decided to ride today.

Getting out to the beach via Atlantic is a hard 18 miles of box stores and fighting with cars, even though every mile contains a few of the diamond-shaped yellow signs that show a happy bicycle on the street with the words "SHARE THE ROAD" beneath it. Today, this bicycle is feeling dichotomous: happy to be free and off to exciting places, annoyed as I pass another of these signs and a motorist honks at me in chastisement for taking up three feet on the rightmost of three lanes. Yarg.

Getting to the beach, though, is a sort of haven. Suddenly the environment shifts in a bunch of ways. Obviously the cars can't keep going East--there's an ocean in front of them--so they peel off down A1A to Ponte Vedra or Mayport and I hop two blocks deeper into the beachy pink and yellow color scheme to 1st Street, one block from the water, nestled among beach houses, with plenty of palm-tree roadblocks to stop cars and keep the street open for walkers and cyclists like me. After feeling I had to suck in my stomach to make room for these cars, here I can ride with no handlebars.

The beach also has a change in populous. After seeing relatively few young people in Jacksonville proper, young folks simply walk around at the beach. Couples walking and tanning at the same time (no one bothers to wear a shirt), a beefy terrier on a leach pulling his owner behind on a skateboard, etc. And everyone, everyone is in beach shape.

But back to Starbucks. Why one on either side of the road? Why one stand-alone, ostentatious drive-thru store looking across the divide to a little one in the mini strip-mall, the signs in the window and the words "Starbucks Coffee" overhead the only proclamations of its true purpose from its diminutive, cookie-cutter strip-mall frame?

I am feasting upon words; excuse me. Suffice to say, I've filmed in front of this stand-alone Starbucks before, spent hours here, and had no clue this other one was across the street. It reminded me of an African watering hole: all of these animals migrating across the Serenhgetti when the rains shift elsewhere, all stopping at the few watering holes available between points A and B. This leads not only to dangerous cross-sections of the animal kingdom--with lions and elephants and stuff drinking at the same bar--but also leads to a few packed tourist establishments along the way. I can't believe that the giant oases we see on Planet Earth are the only ones along the way, and can only picture the local lemurs, standing by their own lemur-sized Starbucks with teacups in their hands, looking out at the crowded commotion across the street and tsk-tsking as one of them squeaks; that is to say, as one of them says in the bemused language of their kind: "Tourists".

these animals migrate across the plain when the seasons change, because water dries up in one place and pours down in another. But in order to get there, they have to cross vast spaces, finding whatever water they can along the way, which leads for dangerous combinations of animals in one place. Lions and elephants and such crowd into one Starbucks, while you know the locals, the meerkats, or something, have this tiny waterhole all of their own that nobody seems to notice, and just laugh, in their meerkat way

Manservant

This becomes my name as I scurry around the two-tiered deck that, a day ago, I finished painting. Tonight, I am opening wine bottles with one eye, letting the other linger at the oven over the creamy artichoke wantons and its neighboring hors d'ouvres. I've come to serve, and I am doing so in the most traditional sense of the word, topping off glasses and refilling plates at the farewell party for my dad's much-beloved coworker who has left his department with an awesome promotion. Turns out my parents have wanted to have dad's small team over for a while, but couldn't do so until they had someone to help clean the house. Ta-dah!

Yet, in all of the preparation for the evening, I find that I can so easily escape from the gloominess of the house and the never-ending demands of cleaning by hopping on my dad's bike and cycling off into abundant life. I think the challenge of being here is the overall sameness of it, especially when working in the house or novelizing my play, my latest endeavor to re-enliven a four year-old script that's still not done. Nothing really changes here, a sense of constancy that probably really helped me growing up: heading home from work, for example, and knowing that one won't bump into a protest and have to take a different route; or, in a daily sense, if one has a car, one can drive everywhere, be in control at all times, never have to deal with the random conversations while killing time at the bus stop.

At this point in my life, I don't want the constancy. I want a place to lay my head, and I want a task to perform, but I want to be held up by the Burmese monks going to protest in front of the White House, I'll even say I like seeing older, white people walking around with tea bags dangling from their hats, because that's poetic material one can sink one's teeth into. A crowded subway is simply oozing with characters for plays, several different people, on one stage, having one shared experience. Here I am left to my own devices, to think up these characters on my own, to have little outward stimuli except for the study of film and books. I feel much more actualized on a subway reading poetry, or with the wind whipping by me on my bike, than in the car, bumper-to-bumper, as the radio puts on another commercial.

Conversely, there's something to be said for the business partners laughing and cajoling over a bottle of wine and good steaks, lifted up above the wetland scene of our backyard on the white deck. In an era when we let culture isolate us more and more, when we turn to our TVs for interaction instead of our neighbors, this sort of shared experience is, in fact, countercultural. And in the middle of all of this is Sarah, these people's old coworker--and a twentysomething--smiling and laughing like a wedding day, as a bunch of people take time to sit with her and tell her what a blessing she's been to them.