Me and the Miccosukee Embassy I was having a slow day at the Miccosukee Embassy where I am doing Sanctuary when I began surfing the web and read a post on Brain Pickings about the poet John Keats. Dead by 25-- a year that is racing towards me-- he was writing about his relationship with solitude, something that he came to embrace, something I'm working on putting my arms around and pulling it closely. Although I have been blessed with a beautiful little girl who is as sharp and single minded as Greta Thunberg, I still yearn for the company of my husband Nokosee Osceola, the "First of the New Seminole." I think my love for him keeps me from fully embracing Keats' "sublime" surrender to Solitude. But I'm working on it. Looking out the windows of the Embassy over the rush of traffic on the 836, I close my eyes and remember when it was just Nokosee and me deep in the Everglades where its eternal silence is only occasionally pierced by the sound of a mosquito's wings as it rushes by your ear to get to your blood. I took that special time all for granted, thinking it might last forever. But if you read my books you know it didn't. That great silence soon exploded in a war with the Outside and we were on the run, always looking over our shoulders, wondering if Uncle Sam was still hunting us down.
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