Miami Visit OVER! OVER! OVER! OVER!

If there is any man on earth who is happier than I am right now, I pity him, because I doubt his body and mind can stand the joy. I had to visit Miami, and now I am HOME.

I can’t describe my hatred of Miami. I don’t mean I hate the people, although I don’t want to live around people like them. I hate being there. I hate the thought of being there. Miami is disgusting. Every visit is an ordeal. Every departure is like being lifted out of a septic tank.

I had to go to Miami for business reasons. My dad died in March, and his real estate belonged to a corporation. For this reason, the estate was not supposed to go through formal probate, which is even worse than a visit to Miami. In order to prove the property belonged to a corporation, I needed recorded deeds. The recorder’s office rejected one deed over and over, incorrectly. I had to drive 600 miles, drive to the recorder’s office, and record the deed in person.

The lady who recorded it gave me no trouble at all, and the reason is that there was nothing wrong with the deed. I had submitted it multiple times electronically, and whoever looked at it had rejected it every time. Bureaucracy is always frustrating.

His estate now contains some used furniture worth approximately $200. I think it’s safe to say formal probate will not be needed.

I stayed in my dad’s old house. I don’t think I should do that next time. While I was in town, I picked up my vertical band saw and my Rockwell drill press, plus a bunch of other junk the movers left. I have been giving away and selling things worth considerable money, just to cut the stubborn cord. I would say there is still a pickup load left, plus my machine tools.

I prayed all the way down and all the way back. I asked God if he could arrange it so I only had to go to Miami one more time IN MY LIFE. I believe he granted that request.

My strategy for Miami visits is to go on Sundays. That way, I am less likely to face unbearable traffic on the way in. It’s terrible to get stuck in traffic while visiting Miami, because when you’re done, you don’t get a reward for your suffering. You’re punished…by arriving in Miami. I don’t mind traffic on the way out, because it feels so nice when I cross the Dade County line into Broward.

The drive down was very unpleasant. There was a traffic jam up here, on I-75. It added maybe 45 minutes to the trip. Then I discovered that my electronic toll pass had been stolen. I took my truck to a Firestone location for an alignment on Saturday, and since then, I’ve found that I no longer have the toll transponder or my phone charger, and 4 lug nuts are gone. I live alone in the woods, and no one would dare come to my house to steal a phone charger. No one else drives the car. Naturally, I suspect Firestone.

I stopped at a service plaza and bought a new transponder, and I tried to use their kiosk to activate it and kill the old one. That didn’t work out. Government computers aren’t set up by the best bidders. The jobs go to minority businesses or companies owned by transsexuals or companies that belong to political donors. It’s always social engineering or corruption, not meritocracy. The kiosk was, for practical purposes, useless, so my long visit to the service plaza was a waste of time.

It was dark when I hit town. What an experience. I felt as if I were in a simulation, like the Matrix. It didn’t seem real. It also felt repulsive. I felt the way a former convict would feel, visiting his old prison. Also, and I don’t know why, I felt as though I were driving through my sister’s heart.

My sister is full of hate. She lives in the past, embracing and caressing imagined offenses other people have committed. She is constantly embroiled in drama. When I write these things, I’m assuming she’s still alive. Anyway, I seemed to feel her energy all around me as I drove through the city.

Traffic is worse than ever. The city seems to be significantly more crowded every time I visit. It must be illegals and South American immigrants. I don’t call illegals “immigrants.” Immigration is something you can only do legally. Someone is filling up Miami, and it’s not people of American ancestry. We have been leaving since the Sixties.

While I drove, I rooted for the people who were moving to Miami and building things there. They’re increasing the value of my real estate. “Turn it into Hong Kong!”, I said, aloud. I don’t care if it’s a bad place to live. I don’t have to reside there. I just want to sell at high prices.

Miami is changing, but it’s looking more like Rio de Janeiro or some other South American pit of urban misery than Hong Kong. Very tall buildings with tacky architecture, jammed up against each other. It’s a very Latin thing. That’s fine. Keep it up, my friends. Build it to the sky. Then buy my properties. Cash me out!

My friend Travis is house-sitting for me. The house is peaceful because the only person there is a Christian. It’s not peaceful like Ocala, but it’s an oasis in Miami. Travis helped me load things up.

There are a few big photos and pictures in the house. I was thinking I would grab them on the next trip, but increasingly, I feel like putting them on the trash pile. Sentimental value is a funny thing when your family is highly dysfunctional. The china that reminds you of your mom may also remind you of the time your dad chased her with a butcher knife (fictional example).

Those pictures make me think of the times when I hid behind the bedroom door and listened to my dad abusing my mother. They make me think of the times my sister and I had to check into motels with her. They make me think of the many times my sister got other kids to exclude me from things and call me names she had made up. They even remind me of the times when she got very upset because I was allowed to ride in the front seat of the car. That kept happening well into my forties. Can you imagine a grown woman getting upset because her brother wouldn’t get in the backseat?

When I was about 6, my mom paid a photographer to take a couple of big pictures of my sister and me. I feel obligated to retrieve them, but in all honesty, they disgust me, and I have a strong desire to throw them out.

There are a couple of professional shots of my sister. She would love to have them, I’m sure. She and my dad had a break in their estrangement, and she used that opportunity to comb his house for family photos (and silver). The photos she wanted were all pictures of her. She talked of one particular photo she missed. She said, “I looked so beautiful in that picture.” No sign of awareness that this was an odd thing to say.

This is the person who let junk removers take her college and law school diplomas to the dump, even though they were set out for her so she would not forget them.

While I was loading the truck, part of her inheritance was destroyed. My dad’s mother was a very cold lady who had no interest in my sister and me, and when she died, my dad’s sisters and their families cleaned out her house. We received two objects they chose for us without consultation: a Baccara angel and a porcelain horse. My dad had bought them for her. I threw out the angel not long ago, because it’s wrong to have an idol in your house. In Miami, I set the horse aside so I could save it, but Travis knocked it over and broke it. I was upset for a minute, but then I remembered that it wasn’t mine anyway. And I didn’t really want it. I just felt obligated to take it.

The horse and the angel are all my sister and I inherited from my dad’s mother.

She sent us a couple of afghans long ago. One was a sort of olive drab green. It was depressing to look at. I threw it out before I moved to Ocala. I found the other one on this visit. Olive drab, dark green, and ivory white. Synthetic yarn. Probably flammable. I brought it with me, thinking I might offer it to my cousins, but it’s going to the dump. I don’t want it around me.

I don’t hate my dead grandmother, because I don’t know her well enough to be angry at her, but she had an air about her which was disturbing. Dismal. Empty. It seems to stick to things she owned. Can’t have that. Won’t.

I don’t think there was much to her. She was polite, and she didn’t cause problems for us, but I don’t think it would have meant anything to her if my family had disappeared into a crack in the earth.

The things I recall about her aren’t heartwarming. On one occasion, she called my dad and said she needed money. He sent her $3000. Someone asked her what was wrong, and she said, “He’s got all that money, and I love spending it.” She just called because she wanted to shop.

My dad’s older sister was cruel and sick. I found a framed family photo she sent my dad. It was very small and therefore not expensive. The sister, the husband, one daughter, the son-in-law, and I forget who else. I didn’t recognize my cousins, because I don’t know them well. I picked the picture up. I put it down. I thought. I wanted to take it because it’s natural to preserve things like that, but then I imagined this unwanted picture, sitting in my house on display, full of faces I will never see again. People who might as well be strangers.

I don’t know if I’ll retrieve it on my final visit.

I found a folder full of documents related to a car lease. A letter congratulated my mother on “buying” a Honda. I couldn’t figure it out. Did she have a car I didn’t know about? Not possible. Then I remembered: she got my sister a car to drive to law school. My sister used to park in the school’s handicapped spot, and my mother paid $250 each for the tickets. She paid a lot of money to keep my sister in an apartment, which my mother cleaned, including copious dog poop that littered the carpet.

Sometimes throwing something out can bring you more pleasure than getting something new.

My dad’s other sister died in April, one month and four days after he did. She was okay. I knew her a little bit. I don’t know what her surviving child looks like. She was a math major, so we had that inclination in common. She also created some artwork. I suppose she was a little like me. My dad used to have one of her pictures in his bedroom, on a desk across from the foot of his bed.

I hated that picture. It was a sort of silhouette. It was a young girl sitting on the ground with one knee up. It wasn’t badly done, but the girl was looking down, and the drawing was all black shapes. I thought it was like a demon that stared at my dad while he slept; a succubus. Lilith. I always told myself I would throw it out after my dad died.

I retrieved it on an earlier trip to Miami, and a week or so ago, I found it here in a box. I took a look at it. The only thing I had from her, other than some pictures. I took it to the dump. It was just too creepy.

I tried to pull it out of the frame, but it was glued in, so the frame is also in the landfill.

My aunt seemed to have a darkness inside her. Maybe she did. My dad said that when he was a kid, he and his older sister would fight, and the one who did the drawing would cry.

In the weeks before he died, he started asking about her, over and over. He called her by a nickname his father had made up. “Palsy.” He called her “Palsy-walsy Cat’s Paw.” Very odd. Before he became demented, he didn’t talk about his family much at all.

I found a porcelain owl my dad bought for my mother. I was very glad to find it. I had had a dream in which demons that looked like owls were dancing in my dad’s bedroom. I threw the owl out.

I didn’t know my aunt well enough to grieve when she died. I was a little sad, but it was about like finding out a neighbor had died. This is why I didn’t write about it.

I like her husband. He’s a former NASA engineer, so we’re both STEM guys. I always enjoyed his company. But I could only get so close to my dad’s people. I texted him after she passed, indicating I didn’t want to intrude with a call. He called a few days later. He said things making it clear that he understood that we probably would not see each other again.

I felt genuine sorrow and compassion for him, but that’s not the same thing as grieving for my aunt.

In addition to taking things from the house and recording the deed, I closed my safe deposit box in Miami. Glad to have that over with. One less reason to be there. When it’s time to get rid of the remaining bank accounts, which contain nearly nothing, I can do it from here.

On Monday night, Travis and I got together with a young lady we knew from our old churches, Trinity and New Dawn. That was great. It was nice to be with two young people who are doing things right. I’ll call her Condi. I hope she doesn’t read that. I may get an earful.

Condi is some sort of therapist. I can never get it straight. She’s a professional. Takes care of herself. Isn’t part of the BET/BLM/Kanye West culture. Loves God. Enjoys spending time with the Holy Spirit. She’s also fun to be around, even though she’s a vegetarian.

I know a number of women like Condi. Young, attractive, successful, connected to God, and still single. South Florida seems to be a terrible place for a young black woman to find a husband, especially if she’s a Christian. The culture is just too gross.

I was thinking about it this morning, and I felt like God told me the problem was that the best men had left South Florida. Men have to be leaders. It makes sense that good men would leave a hellhole like Miami before women, in order to set up their lives elsewhere. God can move men out to create Christian homes in other places, and women who are blessed enough to be delivered can then follow them.

Lots of men who love God have left the area. Look at me.

Maybe God wants Christian men to pull women out of cities. It makes sense, because he pulls men out of cities. A man’s behavior toward his wife is supposed to be like God’s behavior toward the man.

It’s very strange, seeing so many extremely eligible women becoming spinsters. It’s like a plague. It’s even worse when they settle and try to turn sows’ ears into silk purses. Missionary dating is like welding yourself to a sinking ship. One of my best friends has two kids now, and the father still hasn’t married her. That’s a terrible situation. Continuing in a sin can send you to hell, and it’s also a recipe for dysfunction.

Trinity Church had a lady who gave up a great deal to serve the pastors. She was a former Alvin Ailey dancer. She was very good-looking. She took care of herself. She was always impeccably groomed. She was pleasant. She was a hard worker. She was pleasant. She loved God. No suitable men in sight. She spent long hours creating costumes for Trinity’s plays. She was an armorbearer and unpaid assistant to the pastor’s son’s wife, whose ministry amounted to nothing. It was as if she had married the church.

She’s in her 50’s now.

It would have been nice if a husband had come along and led her into God’s blessed life. He could have freed her from the Wilkersons and their manipulation.

A man needs a woman to be a helper, and to have someone to practice God’s love on. A woman needs a man to be a leader.

Making it back to Ocala and my home…I can’t make you understand how wonderful it was. My beautiful farm. My beautiful Christian home. Cleanliness. Order. Peace. No traffic. My own shower. My big, clean bed. My tractor! My tools! My wonderful neighbors.

English!

I feel like going to Chick-fil-A for lunch, just to intensify the experience. If you don’t understand that, you haven’t been to Chick-fil-A.

I want to lie here and bask in the relief. I feel like I’m drinking cool water after a month drifting in a lifeboat in the burning sun, surrounded by salt water. But I have to get up and do things.

Ocala is phenomenal. If I move to Tennessee, it will be even better.

I’ll tell you what I think is happening. John the Baptist said Jesus would baptize us with fire and the Holy Spirit, but churches have failed to tell us what baptism with fire is. I believe I know how. Fire burns away impurity. It represents God’s anger. The fire of hell is God’s anger. Sacrifices were burned as though they were guilty people. I believe the baptism with fire is the gauntlet of bad experiences you have to go through in order to become like God.

Receiving salvation isn’t enough. You have to be filled with the Holy Spirit. You have to get rid of iniquity and give up sin. You have to set yourself apart from the world and be changed. Before you turn to God, you burrow into trouble and sin. Afterward, you have to dig out. God will tell you to give things up. He will tell you to take up new things. Do it quickly, or else he’ll bring chastisement.

I believe I have suffered because I was so deep in the world. Chastisement helped me burrow back out. I think my life is more pleasant now that it used to be, because there is much less burrowing left to do.

Miami was in the depths of filth. Ocala is much better. If God sends me to Tennessee, it will be because Tennessee is better than Ocala.