Fort Matanzas

Back to the vacation photos...This is Fort Matanzas (or, en Ingles, Fort Massacre). Here, in 1565, the Spanish saw to it that a bunch of French soldiers died. Neither of those two groups of people really belonged here - but who's to say who belongs where, right? Right. And so the waters ran red with the blood of the French, etc. etc. etc. so that, three hundred years later, the good, non-indigenous people of Florida could enjoy McDonald's and Burger Kings and affordable pastel Lustron Homes.

Honestly, this fort terrified me. And not because of all it represents vis-a-vis colonialism, but because of the fort itself - its monolithic construction and seamless, imposing form. If you ditched that flag, those two tiny windows and twin cannons would look even more surrealistically ominous, and the whole edifice like some kind of archetypal proto-geometrical shape conjured up by the insidious machine elves dwelling in the shadowiest nether-regions of the psyche. This place felt like a hall of horrors to me, the setting of some alien, mathematical psychotronic torture scene.

Notably, Edie & Jorge's little girl, Luna, found a huge rattlesnake skin in the reeds at the base of the fort. Right about the same time, the world's most insecure tour guide, in period costume, fired an olde tyme musket at the ocean. He looked like Weird Al Yankovich. High winds made the musket sound like a pop gun and poof! a little cloud of olde tyme smoke.