"High Water Marks (Keystone Heights)" in support of Central Florida Mutual Aid’s Trans Safety Fund
Florida.
It’s a state of both wild beauty and astonishing heart break; a place I love and hate in (sometimes) equal measure; and as the fates decided, it's the state I was born in- on this day, 43 years ago. Florida is a magical, fucked up, perpetually weird place. It is both this and that. And more often not, it’s either/ or. Ground zero for the Apocalypse, and a wellspring of grassroots resistance that draws energy directly from it's endless aquifer.
A little over a decade ago, my wife, our pug Jaxon and I lived at her family’s lake cottage in a small rural town called Keystone Heights. It was in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy- which had left our apartment in Gowanus, Brooklyn a putrid, unlivable mess. We were soon to move out West, so that I could attend Graduate School at UC Santa Barbara and build a new life in California. To say the very least, it was a time of massive transition and uncertainty. Gumbo Limbo. Gumbo Limbo. Gumbo Limbo.
I knew nothing of Keystone Heights, so for the next few months I walked, hiked and trespassed everywhere I could. I also documented everything I saw. The area’s identity began to reveal itself to me. A tiny community whose once thriving lake system had been devastated by local mining industry. There were ghosts were everywhere. Dry docks. Abandoned boats. Souvenir shops turned into mausoleums. Hand painted signs reading: SAVE OUR LAKES.
Seven abandoned boats and one dry dock. Keystone Heights, Florida 2013
And yet, Florida’s bizarre ability to turn everything into a hallucinatory two-sided coin persisted. Embedded in every overlooked space was clandestine opportunity- The type that develops when no one is watching. The landscape became filled with latent possibility. Objects became less abstract, the local culture less menacing. I was still years away from redirecting my art practice towards explicit social justice and environmental service work- but looking back there are glimpses of where I wanted to go. Who I wanted to become. Somehow, it was in the state where I had started.
It’s is wishful thinking to imagine all the mind-altering change we face today may also mean that possibilities we could have never imagined are just around the corner? Perhaps. But it’s my birthday, so I'm gonna blow out the candles and get back to work.
Florida’s trans community is in a state of emergency. The un-natural disaster that is Ron DeSantis and the Florida legislature have passed several anti-trans laws. Many healthcare providers have dropped their trans clients and left them without help or recourse. As a mutual aid organization committed to centering the needs of LGBTQIA+, BIPOC, disabled, and femme people, we launched the Trans Safety Fund – an emergency fundraiser to help our trans friends get to safety.
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