sad to be home

I felt it as soon as I stepped on the airplane. The feeling was something like a virus, like my head was slowing being filled with concrete. I couldn't smile anymore. I didn't want to talk. I couldn't do anything but sit there with a blank expression. The fun was over and it was time to go home. Goodbye Jamaica. Goodbye paradise. Goodbye to the perfect culmination of things: the friends new and old, the blurry late nights by the pool, the slow breakfasts. the ocean. the women. the wedding. the party. the day after. the goodbyes.

The pilot said it all when he said: "This is a non-stop flight back to reality." And while other people situated themselves for the ride home with books and laptops, ipods and magazines, all I could do was sit and think about what I had and what I was losing.

I took pictures of the sun setting through the window. That's how I passed the time.











































Then I saw the lights of Metro Detroit and in a moment it was officially all over. Like Adam and Eve's banishment from the Garden of Eden, I was home.




















I got home late at night and unpacked the luggage. All I thought about was the next morning and how it was back to work, it was back to the typical and maddening predictable. It's back to CNN, Sportscenter, Jay Leno, Google, e-mail, crappy pop music, Applebee's, the high gas prices, commuting, alarm clocks, concerns about the Middle East, and all the like.

Don't get me wrong. I don't want to live in Jamaica. This isn't really about Jamaica. It's about the way things could be versus the way things are. Over there, I felt a wholeness. Here, there is an absence.

And now I'm left with this vacation remorse. I'm left with a need to change my life. Maybe this is a common disorder after a good vacation. When my family returned from a trip to Russia many years ago it was not long after that we moved to a new house. Something about traveling made us restless about staying the same. And I find myself going through something very similar right now. I felt it the moment I stepped on the airplane. I knew that something was gonna have to change.