There's no such place as Florida.

Think about it. Think about every Florida Man story you’ve ever shook your head at, trying to make sense of the headline. Think of the miles of coastline covered in tanned bodies and the kind of litter you pull your kids away from. Think about the things people write about Florida, claiming that they live here. Think about the news, lately and always. There’s no way Florida is a real place.

I’m writing this from Tampa, right on the water’s edge. AWP chose this mythical place as a venue for the convention this year, so I’m surrounded by writers and poets and other agents of that which never was. We didn’t dream this place into existence, but somebody sure did.

This is just one layer deeper than the place I’ve just come from, in another dream. I was in Savannah for two weeks as part of a nomadic artists’ residency. I stayed in a beautiful old house and got to know a magical muralist and an entrancing poet and musician, who were in residence during that same time. Savannah is slow and circular, made of squares and progressive southerners and an endless elegy to the countless dead beneath her streets.

Living in California, it’s easy to forget that places like Savannah exist. But I’ve been there now. I’ve buttered and eaten it. I watched the moss blowing in the trees and I had to pull it and make it part of the mess of my hair. I had to take in the art there and show the city some of my own. I had to let the slow creep of its speech into my ears in bars and cafes and remind myself that there is more of the world than I can hold in mind at any one time. Even Florida.

I was away from home the entire month of February. At a time when I really needed a book to take me in and give me a world into which I could escape, no book I read opened its arms to me. Now accepting recommendations for a book that will love me back. It’s been a dry spell lately. Short stories and essays were good this month, though. I particularly love the one about the slaves from whom George Washington’s teeth came from. (They weren’t wood, or hippo ivory, or any of those things you’ve been told.)

I had a short story come out in the London Reader. This one’s about cats and sickness and magic, and it’s been a pet (haha) of mine for over a year now. I also wrote about reading Gone With the Wind over 100 times and coming to understand whiteness and my own racism through that experience. I’ve got lots more coming out soon.

I sent my first draft of The Book of Flora in to my editor last week. It took me far longer to write this book than I expected. I got slowed down by the election, like a lot of writers. I decided to write it in a non-linear structure, which made the whole thing much more difficult. And I wrote the book from the point of view of a transwoman, which is a thing that I am not. Flora came from outside my experience. This work has been hard but beautiful, and I can’t wait to get her out there.

Flora came from Florida, the place that does not exist. I’ve only visited before in the most limited and touristy of manners; I won tickets to Pearl Jam in Orlando a thousand years ago. I am slightly amused that I came to let go of the book here; her place of origin, my place of ignorance. What better place to be when launching something like fiction?

I can’t wait to be home. It’ll only be for a few weeks, but I intend to live deep in my bathtub as much as humanly possible. I hope you’re living deep in whatever waters you prefer.

From the fountain of youth,

Meg