I am still living with your ghost
Lonely and dreaming of the west coast

Can your spirit be split between two homes? I like to think so. I felt a very profound and real connection with Seattle the first time I went there. Of course, it was also the first place I ever really went. Before that, my travels were limited to the east and mainly the south. I’ve pretty well made up my mind that these are not places I would ever want to call home. As much as I love my little corner of the universe, I’m surrounded by places I can not stand. Jacksonville is somewhere I can barely bring myself to travel to every day for employment. Unfortunately, unless I want to wait tables, deciding to stay in St. Augustine means I’ll be commuting the 70 mile round trip to Jacksonville every day.

The states around Florida are dumps in the truest since of the word. Take the dental hygiene of 17th century Britain and combine it with a culture fixated on Civil War era politics and you have the situation in most states around this place. Florida itself is only hanging by a thread in my book, because Orlando is hollow and soulless. Miami might as well declare itself a separate country. The Keys are beautiful, but to live there, you have to have at least 3 jobs and every one of them will involve tourists. Tampa and Jacksonville have a long way to go before they are big cities, but they have the traffic and crime of one. The panhandle could break off for all I care. So here, in a very small part of a fairly big state, is what I call home.