It was the year the Beatles first came to America, and they had just been to Miami for the first time. For those lads from Liverpool, I've seen the shots of them in the warm sea, and I know they'd not known anything like this.
I know, because it was the first trip I remember to Miami: I was just old enough to have memories, that stay with me, like songs, all my life.
We spent day at the Deauville Pool, guests of a man (a friend of my dad's?) who was staying in the same suite the Beatles had just vacated. Telling stories of girls knocking on the door, crying, kissing the walls.
But of all those memories, staying with our friends who are like family still, and trips to Monkey Jungle, Parrot Jungle - kids stuff - there are none that compare with Venetian Pool, in Coral Gables. And going back with my husband, after all these years, seeing a little girl who looked like me, who was exactly my age when I was there, playing with her brother being watched over by her father.. swimming in the same natural spring waters (it's the largest man made natural pool in America). Knowing it hadn't changed - that these were the same coral shapes that my father, living, had touched, and the joy that it was every bit as beautiful as I remembered it - a Hollywood vision of Italy, created from a coral quarry, dug to create the homes in this incredible place, just south of South Beach, Miami. It opened in 1923, the Gatsby era, and the ghosts of that time - and of my family, as children - haunt it today.
I have mixed within my photos, two shots by my father, Art Carin, the top shot, and the one of my sister in her blue swimsuit. His legacy - his eye - watches over me, informs everything I do.
And this is a song that has played ever since, which I offer to you, as the sound track to my life.
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4 comments:
This looks so relaxing and serene. It makes me want to go on holiday right now.
Aw, thanks Milena! If you live anywhere near South Florida you don't have to travel far. And it's not expensive - something like a few dollars for the whole day. We even left and came back on the same little paper ticket. Charming, magic place.
Just paradise.
The older picture of you as a child slipped in so well with the newer shots that I was confused for a few seconds. I suppose that is very fitting in a "time flying/overlapping" sense.
Jill, I'm sorry if I missed a post in which you already mentioned it, but I'm curious about your blog title renaming. It's funny, I've apparently been staring at your new "Road Trip" icon above for a few weeks now but it just didn't register. Then I tried to jump from Roz's blog to yours the other day and couldn't find your link... and then I realized.
Your blog has had a new baptism!
-Leah
Hi Leah, thank you.
I hope you see this - I don't have a link for you to reply to, but I haven't really posted about it - promoted it - so I hope it's not too confusing, but you can still get to me via http://streetstylelondon.blogspot.com (or is it .co.uk?? ) - the same one - but my www.polkadot.tv is gone. It's a crazy story but I only discovered it when trying to add www.roadtrip23.com - which I hope to be sharing with my friend Sophia, once her other exciting things like moving with her boyfriend etc get sorted.
All these years, I've been telling people that www.polkadot.tv is my other address, not realising that someone who we were involved with had bought the domain for us - and closed it down. It's crazy, but I only just discovered it recently.
You should still find me thru streetstylelondon - that's still me, and it's still the same archives. I wonder what Roz has for me? I should really check.
Anyway - yeah - time to let the next generation have fun with streetstyle. I still might shoot some - never say never - but I'm much more interested in so many other areas, especially travel, architecture, the arts, film, etc. Culture, basically. Culture & nature.
good to hear from you, Leah, hope you're well!
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