Hidden Lagoon
Well, the course has been rough as expected. Everyone’s limbs still accounted for thus far? Hope that’s affirmative. It’s been a trying time for every single person I know. Let’s not linger on facts, but instead get straight to insecure forewarnings: I got nothing planned up front for this entry in regards to theme or resolutions (maybe I’ll fix that in an edit, but doesn’t look like it), updates’ll take a bite out of me this month too, but I got the emotional bandwidth for one atypical sorta entry - and fortunately that was already the plan. So don’t let me waste any more of your precious, nigh-infinite void time, let’s get to them updates.
This is one of those monthly reports that just kinda sucks. Several months back I wrote an entry entitled “Slow Mode”, and I need to rely on the wisdom I espoused there to overcome all the wonderful shades of self-doubt I’ve encountered during this time, which as you can imagine, has turned out to not really be so cool for productivity very much after all if you can believe as much. It took me the entire month to compose and polish a new first chapter for Shelle’s Island - a manuscript, I’ll remind, that I’ve once already written. I had expected to clear the first act this month - but reality is an ever entangling bundle of Other Plans growing like the ball wires I’m sitting next to at time of writing. Real life sucks, I won’t complain about my blessings online, even the ones that can be double-edged swords within the armory of self-actualization. So on to the bright side: it takes longer because the output is better, and that’s also simply a fact, one I’ll take credit for because I’ll take what I can get. I don’t want to make the mistake I made in the end of last year with Codetta; good craft can’t be rushed, it’s up to me to estimate wiser deadlines now that the tools in my toolbox are more numerous and intricate - but that’s a whole other entry.
I’ve not done well setting up this entry, I wanted it to flow naturally, not be a Thing but a simple, novel exercise worth sharing with you. Escapism has always been my wheelhouse, so to roll with it this month, I simply want to tell you about a favorite place of mine, and that’s really it. It’s a weird place to be among one’s favorites, but if you’ve ever read anything I’ve ever written, I’m sure that’s what you’d be expecting. Just don’t expect much beyond that, except maybe bonus ramblings that won’t add up to a rewarding revelation - that’s just a heads up. If you’re in for that, I’ll start now (please forgive the second intro):
Again, if you’re a reader of mine, you’ve likely picked up on the fact I got a thing for the ocean. I’ve written much in this blog about my time spent along the Gulf Coast; I’ve at least two separate pieces of work conceptualized within different series outlines, and at least one old partially completed screenplay that are all set within a fictionalized versions of the type of locals one might discover along the Panhandle. The touristy strip, with all it’s shimmering lights and distractions, set against the natural backdrop of the beach and all it’s coastal beauty, was nothing short of paradise to baby-me to the point that anything I strongly associate with my memories there, be it music, games, dreams, adventures, so on, become linked to that network of feelings that were me at my most joyful once upon ago. Then of course, like many who grow up vacationing to places verging on tacky or shady, I briefly grew disenchanted in my angstiest years with the area and the memories associated with it - as for awhile there, it seemed like there was nothing there for me to find but childhood memories crumbling in the Florida weather as the coastline was devoured by condos. Then drinking age happened, and the old times came back somehow.
The Gulf Coast (all along it, but with some special, southern reverence for PCB) is still home to many of my happy places. It’s hard to say the area is a paradise of mine with a straight face, since I wouldn’t really ever want to live there. Works out though, because the romance holds up great through the years when the special places are sprinkled about here and there - I find it makes them resonate more potently with memory the way an entire place can’t, given how the world manages to change.
On the strip somewhere (lots of places actually), there’s a particular mini golf course - you know the kind: we’re talking ideal mini golf, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave-level mini golf. Like many places of this sort that stubbornly remain upon the coastal scenery, it invokes a strange feeling almost akin to a wistful pang, and like many surviving neighboring operations, has been scrounging off lower middle class southern families keeping the traditions going for decades. Some seasons it’s been clear the owners put in the work restoring some of the more garish and eye-catching statues (that horrible giant monkey for instance), but once you start playing along it becomes easy to spot where it’s falling apart - which is the look. The memory always manages to be worth the eighteen hole ritual in the end. There’s a couple spots at this particular mini golf course that resonate strong for me, but one spot in particular has an energy like none other - one spot captures the essence of this place and where its imprinted in my psychology more than anywhere else that’s still around.
If you’re looking at the entrance head-on with your back to the ocean, go with the course on the left. Somewhere after the haunted house but just before the rocket ship, there’s a little path that goes off to the side of the course. If you follow this area, please be mindful of the families playing through (but if they have an edgy teen, maybe talk loudly enough about the spot to keep the magic going), but you’ll shortly arrive at a concrete structure in the process of being devoured by the surrounding greenery, which looks a bit like the start of a bridge-to-be. From this vantage point, you get the perfect view of a gorgeous lagoon right in the shadow of the mini golf course. Hopefully this little nook never becomes a problem for the owners from a legal perspective, and I hope I’m not making those chances worse now by romanticizing it on the internet like a crazy person (you roll your eyes, but there is one long abandoned icon of the coastline I can recall being removed after it was featured as a destination in one particular GPS phone game - yes, you know the one… That same summer was the time I first wrote Shelle’s Island… I’ll have to write more about that time soon, the last great summer, as it were). I know it’s weird, probably sounds like I’m deriving this from bullshit - but that spot looking out over the lagoon, I look forward to seeing it in the shades of early twilight once a year.
I’ve written about how my dreams once strongly influenced my writing, and I’ve also written about how these specific memories influenced those same dreams. I can remember countless individual dreams of beaches and coastlines that have resonated into my work over the years, I’ve visited those dream beaches more than all actual beaches in my entire life after all - but there’s one that stands out in particular when I think about this lagoon: In this particular dream, it’s night on the strip, the main drive is alive like a festival; the sky shimmers as rides from the nearby amusement park spin in the dark blue twilight, but I’m off to the side somewhere, in the overlooked areas between attractions where nature peeks through, riding a turtle through a dark, yet tranquil lagoon and watching fireworks overhead. That concept and feeling of the natural world off aside the glowing lights and celebrating people - I don’t have a good name for it, but it be a vibe, and one that is invoked acutely by that spot overlooking the lagoon behind the old mini golf course. It’s somewhere I like to go that I hope is still there every year, and that’s really all.
Seems I went long again, reader. Maybe I needed it, hopefully you need something to fill the space too. Hopefully you’re making time for yourself too, and not just letting it wash over you, tricky as it can be to wrangle. Whatever happens, the world will move forward in one manner or another, so be ready to wake if opportunity reveals itself in the cracks between the shifts. Thank you for your time reader, hope it’s been well spent.
