"I Am Afraid of What I Can Imagine — Not What I Can See."

Our Journey into the Marsh, How I Drown My Phone and Hope to Find Something Else but I Am Stranded.

"If at least there were wind. Wind is rage, rage is life."
                            -Clarice Lispector from An Apprenticeship from the Book of Pleasures

By the edge of Strazzulla Marsh at Loxahatchee Preserve in Florida, pecked a pair of friendly birds with bright red-orange beaks and chartreuse legs and feet. Now that I am home I could learn their name in a few clicks, but I’ll hold off for now. The native Floridian who rented us the faded kayaks chattered about the well-fed birds then mentioned babies in the marsh whom I assumed were the same species as the couple entertaining us. “Are there any creatures keeping us from going into the water?” I asked. “No,” she said, “But don’t go into the water.”

When it comes to Florida, my imagination is stifled. I know it as the state for rehab and retirement. All gated communities and strip malls and flat, flat, flat. Our first road trip with the camper a few years back revealed how very wrong I am, but it is a hard slog through thick and sticky preconceived notions. When we arrive in Florida by plane — despite the immediacy of the other-worldly flora — my body calibrates to melancholic, with a bump upon seeing spun-around Pop and teary-eyed-Judy, even without the heat this time.

We arrived late because of a plane delay and I was dazed from looking at my phone too much and for no reason — despite having my journal and a book. I felt drugged. We had a too-late dinner and settled in for our short adventure.

Come morning, in an attempt to clear cobwebs, we walked a mile and a half for acai bowls and a mile and a half back, chattering all the way. When we returned, Silas was snagged by the wall-sized telly with Judy. Søren, Pop, and I headed to Loxahatchee Preserve. I was determined to give myself a good rinse in nature during our short stay in the sun. Florida is spectacular when well-approached. Turning off of the many-laned road, I immediately felt a gigantic warm and wet hug from the landscape with its green-blanketed water, red-lichened bark, eerie dripping moss, and tentacled-trees. Not too far in we heard whispers about a Coopers Hawk who just left the stringy waters to hunt and dry off in a tree. To be so close to a winged-creature is mesmerizing, we watched the small movements in near silence. Then began the strange dance; Click, click, click camera shutters shudder with long lenses extended, turn, turn, turn the yellow eye, still hunting, preening, drying. Click, turn, click, turn.

Søren, Silas, and I found the marsh in the same preserve the following morning, beneath glowing, heavenly clouds. I bellowed with bliss, arms open wide. Everything was magical and illuminated in perfect light and I had to capture every second of it. I took out my phone and the wind pushed me sideways into the saw grass. Snap, paddle, snap, paddle — that strange dance again. I had two Florida oranges in my lap that needed opened, boots and socks that needed off, and fragments of the world that needed captured. I texted Walter one of the many quickly accumulated photographs from my snap, snap, snapping. I opened the oranges. I took off my boots, my phone went overboard and I didn’t even know it. I didn’t feel it jump, I didn’t hear a plop or a gurgle. When I saw a small bent tree against the glorious sky, I instinctively reached for it — and it was gone.

I’m free!

Despite the cost and the agony of getting and setting up a new one, despite the littering in the marsh, I continued to rejoice in it’s absence and wondered what the next picture-perfect 5.5 miles would look like on the water without the camera. I lamented one possibly forever lost recorded conversation I had with my mom not long before her death — but was otherwise relieved by the unexpected bailing. My boys were confused and even a bit annoyed by my carelessness and nonchalance.

Silas shrieked “An allligator!” I thought it a joke until I saw the long armoured body parallel to my own and so close. “Photograph!” I said, and pushed my index fingers and thumbs at 45 degree angles into a square like my old Hassleblad I was never without. “Gah!” The energy and a few unintended splashes led Silas and I to soaking one another and euphoric from our recklessness. We paddled against the wind and I started to sing like I used to — meaning, I started to sing. “A minor thing a broken string…” I imagined going home and trying to find the song on the guitar again, recording it even. Lost I was in that old place in my head. And every time I saw something to photograph I shouted “phone!” with fake effervescent despair and I burned the framed image into my mind. Not visually — I don’t see things in my head — but in words or feelings, much lighter than the amassed endless images. I ‘see’ the fluffy cloud-filled sky and the golden saw grass and now and again its purple flower. I can see or feel the lily pads and their glowing white flowers and yellow middles. I smell and hear the displaced marsh muck occasionally ended up in our laps. I remember the curly dead sprigs against the sky. My goodness this place is beautiful without the distraction of the fucking phone, phone, phone and yet I cannot help but to write about my loss. My singing carried on. My guys didn’t complain. I saw the snake right by Silas’s elbow. “Look at the snake! doing — upward dog?” "Silas’s eyes grew wide again — baby alligators — not birds! The mom!” he paddled franticly, the babies scurried, and I cackled. I felt it all because I didn’t have a phone between us. Would it feel different if a bulkier camera took its place? We paddled for three hours and none of us were tired.

By the time we returned to the scene of the unheard plunk, we looked through the still water to the bottom of the marsh again. If we saw it I’m sure I would jump in. But without it I cannot search: “Will an alligator eat me if I jump out of my kayak quickly to retrieve a possibly drown iphone in Florida?”

“I’ll go in.” said Silas, “I’m scared of what I can see — not what I can imagine” “I’ll go in — not you. I’m scared of what I can imagine — not what I can see!” I said in return. Fortunately, we didn’t see the phone. My imagination ran wild with with us and the alligators — we saw six! — in the water at the same time.

I don’t intend to abandon journaling or drawing or photographing. I don’t want to lose podcasts and music that isn’t me singing. I don’t want to not talk to my friends and not have a flashlight in my pocket at all times. I want to find my way to places efficiently with maps. I want to film small moments. I don’t think I want to carry around a camera and film again. Life is complicated and abundance can be tricky. I wade through my much heavier journals in search of a poem to finish my story. The connection isn’t obvious today. Everything is murky.

“From outside, a tap, tap, tapping on the shop window. An old Amblerite is telling Bjorny again and again what a good girl he is whilst Nina Simone sings “poppies, poppies, poppies!” Inside the shop someone click, click, clicks the CDs, searching. The combination of sounds soothes. I had another version of the good dream and I wonder if it is coming to me, or if i am going to it. Storm. Huge. Thunder and lightning. During the storm, I was moving bricks all over Ambler.”

10 May 2003 from inside my record shop in Ambler, Penna

I got a new phone. Do I need to live without it? I don’t. Not at all? Out of the hundreds of voice memos lost, there was one that showed up on my new, otherwise blank phone — the conversation with my mom. I looked up the bird with chartreuse feet and if I found the right one — Purple Gallinule — the chartreuse isn’t showing up anywhere. I may lessen my phone use, I may not. I am already a few podcasts behind and longing for some time to catch up.

May I always look through windows, frames, and lenses. May I always have a story to tell or to write and to experience. May I always have heavy things to move. May I never run out of adventures and soothing sounds. I wrote about the sounds often then - I now know them as asmr. What is life, without first pressing it through our individual sifters, lenses, or filters, and to investigate the bits that make it through?

Small Notebooks I made the first night in FL. I filled them with plants and notes and peculiar things. I had Loosen Stuck Things on the kayak with me!