The Palm at the End of the Mind

Florida—America’s problem child, God’s waiting room—hangs down at the bottom of the Eastern Seaboard, priapic and slightly obscene. Through its lands and waters roam alligators, manatees, flamingoes, iguanas, and all manner of colorful characters: hustlers, tricksters, exiles, swamp dwellers, and RVers, as if the country were tipped forty-five degrees to the right, and all the pure products of America, who had nothing to hang onto, wound up there. Like Texas or California or Louisiana, it’s a country within a country. An invisible republic, whose presence hangs heavy in the air.