June…now July
As a fellow mid westerner, I was unaware that summer is the winter of Florida. Go out on any day and the local park and public areas are a ghost town. It’s a dreary bright cycle of sweaty mornings, noon showers, and sitting in your cold bedroom for the remaining hours. Your eyes are closed in bed for a second only to open them again to what looks like 1 pm sun shining through your windows, when it’s only 8 am in the morning. The nights are an equivalent to a dark humid day, with the temperatures not going below 80 until the early morning hours. Any night on the town is a wet greasy slog through thick air and tired crowds. Even the local bands feel its slow punch. Starting May, they meander confused between their sets, only to end up with their singers cracking out a few heat stricken lines that become more fragile through the evening. This leaves the average central Floridian with few options for outdoor recreation.
Other than a late morning run and light shopping I’ve chosen to surrender to the daily 90 degrees. My daily schedule is reading, movie watching, writing, a dab of schoolwork, and mostly spacing off. The cycle will likely continue till August. At that point I’ll be long gone. Driving back up North and possibly out West. While the ride was fun, I feel over acquainted with Florida. I’ve been to just about every city, venue, beach, and landmark that piqued my interest. I feel its time to move on for a while and learn some new places. While this is my current path, I must recognize the reality of leaving behind my few Southern Friends.
Out of state college life is a recipe for disconnected gems of friendships. When you’ve met a few college students here, you feel met about all of them. Most of them are too openly pleasant and nothing like you. As incompatible as salt and soap. But then by some strange miracle you meet a person or too that lives elsewhere in the state or you can’t believe actually attends the school. Soon you have several people you all know and none that know each other. That’s just how the cookie crumbles. A group of miscellaneous folks you like soon going their separate ways, dispersing close and far in a disorder that you can’t waste your time to remember. As pessimistic I may be about it, I must remember that I’m part of the disorder and will be for a long time.
As my last personal ties with the school return to their home towns or travel across the pond, I’ve been trying to seek some closure. I like to think what people paint on the local sidewalks and walls is an accurate amalgamation of community personality. There’s a tunnel on campus where students can freely paint its interior. It’s sides under the tunnel are covered with graffiti marks, most of them some sort of logo or Instagram handle. Some of the bigger painted features are crude marvel characters, harry potter references, or advertisements for frat parties. I want to spice the place up with some standout but simple paintings until they are inevitably spray painted over in the next few months. There was a really cool anthromorphic mushroom meditating right before the outside of the tunnel. Was covered in a week. A bummer.
My university was always weird with artists. They’re about as inconspicuous as green anoles on school grounds. You know they exist, but your not going to see one outside of the department. The only time I ever met one was when I cleaned up a beach with a group of students and brought back trash that someone wanted to make a sculpture out of in the department studio. Perhaps that explains my love hate relationship with the place. So many people too many gates.
All around I can never decide what to think about college or school in general once I finish it. Bored, indifferent, unperturbed. They are all the same to me. It’s time to learn on my own. And that’s probably the best way forward.
