11/16/14
Norman Manley International Airport, Jamaica
And so our brief time in this little piece of paradise has come to an
end. In 24 hours, I will be at the cigar
store, telling my friends about an amazing trip, in stark contrast to my mood
of last night. It is amazing how 8 hours
of sleep in a real bed, a cool breeze, and some shade can work as such a
panacea. I will be back to my daily life
in New York, probably not leaving the island of Manhattan until
Thanksgiving. Our jovial driver for the
day kept telling us all the things to do the next time we came here. We smiled and nodded along. There will be no next time, not here, or at
least not for quite some time, not the way I travel. There are too many islands in the Caribbean,
the South Pacific, the Mediterranean, and all around the world. There are too many other wonderful places in
the world to visit. It will be a long
time before I return to this particular paradise.
We allowed ourselves to sleep in, not getting
down to breakfast until after 10 AM, and we were a little worried that we were
too late. We were not. After a delicious breakfast consisting of
fruit, coffee, eggs, and jerk sausage, we went back to the room to relax, and I smoked my last H. Upman. We got a
taxi to take us to Fort Clarence and got some fried fish and lobster. Our driver was all too happy to show us
around Kingston, including stopping somewhere for me to get some Blue Mountain
Coffee. I lit up my OpusX, and we worked
on the rest of the rum as we ate our meal.
After the meal, I finally allowed myself to relax. It was not too hot, and I had nothing in the
world to bother me. Gone were the
stresses of work, the typical stresses of travelling, my worries, everything
was gone. I was in paradise with someone
whom I loved very dearly and one of my closest friends. Nothing else mattered. As I saw her frolicking in the ocean, I remembered
the vision I had of Fiji a few months ago, and, for the first time in six weeks
(the night we planned this trip), I was truly happy. Yes, reader, there have been plenty of things
in my life I have been happy about, and I have thoroughly enjoyed almost my
entire life, but that is not what I mean.
What I mean is that I was purely happy with not another thought on my
mind. I have a very active mind, and it
is so rare that I can shut off the rest of my mind to focus on one emotion like
that. There is always some negative
emotion or stress or worry permeating my mind.
At that moment, there was not. Or
I am checking my messages or Facebook or Instagram. My phone was in my pocket the whole
time. We were in paradise.
I soon came back to reality, realizing we
would be leaving in a few hours. Sure,
we would be going to Florida in few a weeks, and there would be plenty of great
trips in our future. After my OpusX, I
joined her in the water, getting my feet wet.
That was when she splashed me. At
that moment, I remembered exactly why I wanted to start dating one of my closest
friends. We started splashing each
other, and I didn’t care that my clothes or the things in my pockets were
getting wet. I was happy again, nothing
else was on my mind, but the water soon started to bother me, so I left. I moved my towel into the sun to be next to
hers. I lit up a Cohiba, and I dried
off.
After the cigar, it was time for us
to leave, and our driver took us back to our hotel. I washed my feet and changed into my
suit. The driver took us to Port Royal,
a place I knew very well from Pirates of the Caribbean, and we saw the
remnants. We could have stayed longer,
but I was nervous about getting to the airport with enough time to write this
entry. We got some coffee to drink,
checked in, went through security with minimal problems. They made her deflate the soccer ball she
bought for her cousin, and they almost took away the bottle of rum that I had
filled with sand at the beach. I got three bottles of rum at duty-free, and then we found some
seats. I proceeded to write this entry, which
I will now close since our flight is about to board.
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