SCORPION

CHAPTER ONE Seeds 2012-EULOGY, TWILIGHT-1: Shah Carlos Calusa is the name, if you please kind little friends. As eldest sons of Carlos, tribal chief of the Estero Bay Mound Key located on the delta of the famous ‘River of the Calusa,’ the ‘Calooshahatchee,’ we announce our claim to authority. Eli, a Calusa brother of Medicine repute is the tender and my companion for our evening memorial series in behalf of the beloved departed brother, the Reverend Paul David Sinn, 1941—2012. Eli, please nod a greeting to our fine group of Pauline disciple families from the EYE in faith of their respective Lord. All are friends of the great family of Sinn. A nod will suffice Eli, nothing more is needed. Fear reigns that a handshake and a ‘genuflectio’ might take too much time brother, maybe even usher a ‘metanoia’ experience. We both know the mystic EYE of all deceased elder Calusa beckons us from our legacy cemetery mounds of sand, disapproving of such a loutish protocol exchange. Nod only, please Eli. Obviously, age has ripened the pupils of yours truly now nearing a hundred formulate years. This flesh-originally nourished and sustained by crustacean morsels from the sea-hangs loose on a tall and bent skeletal frame. Later gringo associated years and a wayward path allowed for a disturbing diet,—-a bowel burning routine—and although the flavor tantalized the taste buds while pleasing the palate with less than sympathetic effects blunted the normal process necessary to achieve contentment. Our ancestors, fierce canoe warrior descendants of South American Maya, Arawak, and Carib hunter-gatherers, traipsed into Florida thousands of years in advance of battles with the Spanish war ship galleons of the colonial invaders from Europe at the time of the monster armada intrusion of our waters following the 1492 Columbus debacle. Our relatives did their deed with fierce energy. They did so in skirmishes until a score of years passed to the arrival of the infamous Ponce de Leon infamous invasion in 1520. Our Florida Calusa descendants used their South American most horrid roots against the Armada thrust, a finicky equation regarding the acceptance of the imbalance in change, a metanoia that is, so to speak in Calusan speak. Regardless, we Calusa killed the ruthless Ponce de Leon, or so many Calusa as well as invaders said as such,—dear friends, does the smile on Eli’s face betray his disposition. Not withstanding our presumptiveness, nevertheless, we acknowledge that, although gallant, we lost the war! (STOP! Halt your blabber, Shah Carlos Calusa, so you say!) I fear that I may be about to spin-off a sequel into self-serving behaviors. Such detail is fuel for another story for the telling at another time, in another setting. Maybe brother Eli Carlos Calusa will share his tale of our beloved great-great-great saviors from the south at a more propitious occasion than that which brings us together at this memorial repast. Still, (...look at the smile on Eli’s face...) it needs stated for the record; the nasty invaders did not win great treasures at the time of their conquest adventures. They won palm frond shelters built on cypress and buttonwood pilings, wooden canoes carved impetuously from cypress, mound cemeteries scraped from the beach sand, and a few delicate blue, hermit, and stone crabs scampering sideways straight, so to speak! Hardly seems worth the effort from our historical viewpoint. Nonetheless, young friends, our heroes maintained their dignity. Even when wrapped in the bacteria and viruses imported upon the shoulders of their captors, diabolical germs that eventually eliminated many of our heritage from the sand mounds of their values, sprinkling them across the land of the warm waters, occasionally unrevealed and hidden, but always available to rise again as witnessed in the evidence of our presence tonight. With such a parallel in thought, we suspect that you are wondering why we are on the beach, fireside, facing the great blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean off Marathon Cay, listening to the shore lapping of majestic waves as the robust fireside sparks burst into color against a darkening twilight sky splattered and specked with white weird wandering wonders. Please, let us begin with the telling of our tale by sharing the core reason why we gather as a community, fireside warm yet resting on damp sand. .