The Analog Kid
#1 of Signals
It was just another one of those boring, endless summer days where nothing important ever seems to happen for the young fox. There was a wind blowing in from the Atlantic Ocean, the luxurious, almost motherly, warmth that only comes to the lucky denizens of Florida and allows them to grow the most wonderful oranges known to humans. And the wind of the Atlantic makes life equally sweet for the people of Coral Gables, where Stephen Martinez, the aforementioned youngster all of 11 years old and his family lived. This entire summer vacation had been one long day after another after another, filled with all kinds of meandering around the summery city known as Miami.
"Another day in paradise and not a thing for a fox like me to do, Mom," Stephen said, clad in an ill-fitting Dolphins uniform, as he walked in from the backdoor veranda. In his 15 years, he had seen more of Florida than most in the Sunshine State see in their entire lives- Disney World in Orlando, of course he'd been there, in fact, he'd been there a dozen times before. He truly enjoyed his trips down to the Florida Keys where Ernest Hemingway lived, the spring training in Sunrise with the major-league teams who would practice there in preparation for the season and the son Cubano bands who played in Miami's Little Havana (Stephen's last name could be traced to his father's Cuban heritage.) So with nothing better to do, he came to his mother looking to be entertained on this hot and windy August afternoon.
"Here, I picked this up for you. It's something called a book- I know kids these days have their TV and video games but there was something that I did when I was young and bored just like you were. It was called 'reading'- here, you try it," his mother told Stephen handing him a book called "Moving Pictures: Highlights of the Guggenheim Museum in New York". How could anything from that cold northern city compare to this Florida paradise, he thought?
"Maybe the pictures will give you an idea of what it's like to be an artist, the dream I never could fulfill," she said, as she put on her wide-brimmed hat, adjusted her sun dress, and put on a pair of shades to hide her eyes from the bright Florida sun. She went outside with her son, where the grass on the lawn grew long. (Tomorrow, the lawn people would come and get rid of all those weeds.) Stephen took a blade of grass and stuck it in between his fangs, thinking that he'd look somewhat like Tom Sawyer as he stuck the blade of grass between in and had it stuck between the cuspids.
"You have no idea what that blade of grass has touched," but Stephen simply ignored her.
"Oh, Dinah, there's nothing for us to do until my father comes home". His father of course was a journalist for the Herald, a job which provided enough money for the fox family to live in Coral Gables in their beautiful home and Dinah's trips to New York to see her family. Her story was like many of the "snowbirds" that call the Miami area home- Jewish woman escaped the cold and misery of Brooklyn for paradise in Florida. She never figured on marrying a Cuban fox, who covered Hispanic issues for the Miami Herald, and who owned a sexy Cuban accent she could not help but love. The two lived quite comfortably but no amount of money in the world could help Stephen with the fact that he was an only child.
There would be no drives down the palm-lined streets of Florida today, no trips to Little Havana or the beach and there certainly would be no Disneyworld at all this warm afternoon in Florida for the little fox. With nothing better to do on this endless summer day, Stephen cracked open the book, doubtless a souvenir from the trips to New York to see her family and the art museums she would visit.
Instantly, the pictures transformed Stephen's boring world into one of bright colors- Picasso's geometrically-built Cubist cities were listed in the section marked "1920's" with Matisse's portrait of his wife- a human woman with a green stripe down her face. Next, he saw a woman wearing a white dress staring over the bow of a ship on the Atlantic, followed by Van Gogh's incredibly famous "Starry Night". That was followed by pictures of New York City itself, a huge and sprawling metropolis which celebrated the grandiose. One intrepid photographer had taken photos of the entire city from the top of the Empire State Building- the cars down below were microscopic and the whole framed picture made one feel meaningless and small in the grand scheme of things.
"What do you think of that panther girl, Rhonda? You like her now that's she in choir", Stephen's mother said breaking the fox's concentration for a moment. He silently nodded, giving his tacit approval to what Dinah had said. Someday, he reasoned, Rhonda would be an awesome singer and she would marry Stephen. The honeymoon would be in Jamaica, he imagined as he lay down on the grass in a state of peace and tranquility, looking up at the sky, which did not possess even a single cloud. The fox started to fall asleep with those images of beautiful artwork and his girlfriend still stuck in his head.
"Would you look at that- it's a hawk", Dinah said as a gigantic bird came in soaring cutting a majestic silhouette against the Florida sun. The only way for Stephen to see this bird was to wait for him to swoop out of the intense sunlight and even then, he had to adjust his baseball cap, covering up his eyes from the light to see it. "That's wonderful- you know I really like birds. Perhaps in my art class, I'll start drawing them. Not the everyday birds like robins, grackles, but majestic ones like hawks and eagles and falcons," he responded as the hat now temporarily drooped over his snout. He adjusted it again and got back to reading the book his mother had given him, looking once more at the cities and oceans and people the great masters from before his time painted and photographed.
Nowhere near graduation and already he was thinking about artists, colors, and everything from Postmodern to Dada. Soon, Stephen would go to a college and move into painting or design, whichever offered more money and make a fortune. And he often thinks back to that lazy afternoon when a bored young fox looked at a tome borrowed from his dearest mother which taught what he wanted to know about art. There's too many people demanding too much of his time for Stephen Martinez, whose work now hangs in museums the world over to return to Miami but he wishes he could come back.
When he left, he did not know what he was hoping to find
And when he left he did not know what he was leaving behind.