5055 Collins Ave, Apt 6N

Fire. Hot blazing red light floods my aperture with a sudden zeal; light from violently piercing gently closed eyelids closed across a backdrop of capricious serenity. I rub my eyes upon to witness a daily spectacle - Apollo rising against an ocean that had minutes before reposed still in a posture of mock sanguinity. The ball of fire rises creeping over the edge of the blue sheet of metaphysical transpose, shining a torrent of orange upon a domain of aqua, interspersed with spectacles of dancing red. This gentle and then dramatic morning of the universe both offering and foisting itself upon me with all of its splendor and terror had been a daily occurrence of mine since I moved myself into Crystal House, my first Miami residence. Built in 1962, it was both cutting edge and archaic - at the time, it was a pinnacle of modernity in Miami Beach, with tall slabs of navy glass. Its wear showed through in the rusted steel joints and comically absent balconies, but its milieu a simulacrum for what it and Miami offered its residents: a clear and clean yet enduring second attempt at life. Crystal House though stately was also modest - and so were its first residents. Occupied initially by Holocaust survivors, they represented the elegance and tranquility of Miami Beach when it was primarily a Jewish respite. Deemed “Shtettle by the Sea”, old Jewish refugees flocked to the Florida sunshine to live out their final years in a peaceful Yiddish aria where dreamy sunsets in glass towers told their tales of yesteryear in a sleepy virisimilitude. I walked within these halls of speaking walls and gentle thralls of old in what to me was also a new lease on life. Instead of the chaotic deluge and assault of reggaeton, 5am clubs, and being in the scene to be seen, I experienced sunsoaked afternoon poolside gossips of seasoned Brooklyn yentas and the quiet stasis of a beach without waves or boomboxes during shomer shabbat. There wasn’t a day that I didn’t look at the piercing navy blue sky, aqua blue ocean, and pearl white sand and sighed, though a new arrival, “home at last.”