There’s something quietly radical about stepping out of the noise. Not escaping it entirely—Miami does not permit such illusions—but placing a gentle distance between oneself and its glitter, its urgency, its practiced performances. At Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, the mind loosens its grip.
For a few hours, thought becomes less angular. Trees soften it. Water absorbs it. Mist dissolves it.
The Japanese have a word—shinrin-yoku—forest bathing. But here, in this curated Eden, it is less a technique and more a surrender. You sit, and something ancient in you remembers how not to strive.
And then, as often happens in these states of quiet receptivity, perception sharpens rather than dulls. The trivialities of daily life—the small vanities, the rehearsed frictions of work and social theatre—return, but altered. Not diminished. Exposed. Their pettiness almost theatrical, their distortions exaggerated, as if seen through a lens that refuses to flatter.
It was in this peculiar clarity that I noticed them.
Two palms. Still. Upright. Watchful.
Sentinels.
Not merely botanical specimens, but presences. And in an instant—without hesitation, without doubt—you recognized them: Copernicia fallaensis. A recognition not of intellect, but of memory lodged somewhere deeper.
And then Cuba returned.
Camagüey—an airport once improbably new, almost untouched by the world’s traffic. The rented car. The long drive toward Minas. The finca—Perú—spoken of in low tones among those who cared about such things. And there, improbably, in the yard of a farmer bemused by decades of foreign fascination, the great palm. His yarey, your pilgrimage.
1997 A different tempo of life. A different version of yourself.
Back in Miami, you walk among companions of that memory—Coccothrinax crinita, delicate and fibrous, and Copernicia baileyana, austere and monumental. Cuba, scattered and replanted, yet still intact in essence.
And perhaps this is what such places offer—not escape, but continuity. A thread between geographies, between past and present selves.
You leave with a small decision, almost incidental, yet quietly firm. To return. Not as a visitor, but as someone who knows the path.
A short drive. A familiar table at Daily Bread. Gyro, Hummus, Taboule conversation, the ordinary made sufficient. And the girl behind the counter, who studied dentistry in Guantanamo, Cuba. Hope the memory of her native landscape comfort her during this exile
And somewhere within, the stillness remains—like those palms, standing, patient, untroubled by the passing theatre of human concerns.
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