The time has come. Boxes have been shipped ahead. The Lighthouse Condo #1, once home, sits by the sea, empty and lifeless. Everything has been sold or given away. A few people are still arguing about who gets my silly U.N. helmet.

I have retracted into my shell, a protective bubble that insulates me from the insular world which used to flow through my veins. The sea has become a distant element, the reef an abstraction. Dive boats are passing by offshore in a never-ending ballet, right, left, out and back in. They illustrate perpetual motion.

I find myself backing out of conversations, fading into the background, letting the words buzz around me and blend into white noise. Their meaning no longer matters, for they speak of the sun and the weather and the sea and the gossip. They won’t reach where I’m going, or if they do, they’ll carry news of a foreign land.

I’ll be airborne in two days, and arrive in Canada in three. Now is the time to wish me Godspeed!