One Particular Harbor
Jimmy Buffett
“One Particular Harbor”
One Particular Harbor, 1983
“Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
I know I don’t get there often enough
But God knows I surely try
It’s a magic kind of medicine
That no doctor could prescribe
I used to rule my world from a pay phone
Ships out on the sea
But now times are rough
Oh I got too much stuff
I can’t explain the likes of me
But there’s this one particular harbor
So far but yet so near
Where I see the days as they fade away
Finally disappear
But now I think about the good times
Down in the Caribbean sunshine
In my younger days I was so bad
Laughin’ about all the fun we’ve had
I seen enough to feel the world spin
Mixin’ different oceans meetin’ cousins
Listen to the drummers and the night sounds
Listen to the singers make the world go ’round
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Lakes below the mountain
Flow into the sea
Like oils applied to canvas
Oh how they permeate through me
But there’s this one particular harbor
Sheltered from the wind
Where the children play on the shore each day
And all are safe within
A most mysterious calling harbor
So far but yet so near
Where I can see the day when my hair’s full gray
And I finally disappear
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
Ia ora te natura
E mea arofa teie ao nei
(Ua pau te maitai no te fenua)
(Te zai noa ra te ora o te mitie)
(Ua pau te maitai no te fenua)
(Te zai noa ra te ora o te mitie)“
What a great song to start off a first entry. I let itunes shuffle decide what I should write about today and I couldn’t have picked a better one myself. This has always been a favorite one of mine and I think everyone’s got that one place they can call their “one particular harbor.”
Up until that point, A1A was just another Jimmy Buffett cd, I had no idea what the seven mile bridge was and Key West was some far away place that seemed painfully out of reach. Really, how was a working college student susposed to find the time or the money to even consider making the trip down there. Not to mention trying to do so on my own because parrot head friends are hard to find where the weather’s cold 9 months out of the year and the ones who might consider going, are in similar situations. Although thinking back I’d like to say I would have gone on my own one way or the other and knowing me I probally would have. I never was one to be uncomfertable on my own, orwhere I didn’t know anyone and I’m sure I wouldn’t have let that stop me from getting to a place that I desperatly wanted to see. However, in March of 07, was it 07? Oh well, I’ve never been able to keep dates and years organized…I found myself in an airport waiting to get on a plane for the first time since I was a baby to fly into Miami and then travel via rental car to Key West. Now, let me back up a little since I was just saying how impossible that idea seemed. 3 months earlier I had met Seamus, in person that is, we had been emailing for maybe a month or so, and in those emails I had mentioned wanting to go to Key West. Hitting it off instnatly when we met in person, a first date turned into more of a weekend then a night (now don’t go getting any ideas, it wasn’t a random hook-up nor did it turn into anything like that, we had just met!) but after the Toby Keith concert, sitting on the floor of my dorm room (which had no heat because I didn’t know how to turn it on…yeah go me) he asked if I had wanted to go there for my Spring Break in March. Now as if the fact that I really wanted to go, and the room was freezing, plus the snow and ice outside from it being a typical Janurary day in New England wasn’t enough to make me say yes, this was a whole week with him. I’ll admit it was a little crazy, making plans to spend a week alone with someone I had just met in person and had only been alone with for the hours leading up to that moment. I mean how did I know if we would get along or be able to find things to talk about just the two of us, together the entire time? That question didn’t once cross my mind and it wasn’t until I was telling a friend about this and she asked if I had even consisdered that before accepting. Honestly, no I didn’t, blame it on the excitement of a first date or how well it was going, or how everything just felt right but the thought never even crossed my mind to say no or to think about my response in the upcoming weeks before leaving. So it was a little crazy, but to quote Jimmy, “if we weren’t all crazy we would go insane.” Now back to where I was, we landed in Florida and I instnatly fell in love with it. Not only was it warm and sunny, but there were plam trees and everyone knew who Jimmy Buffett was. As we crossed over the seven mile bridge into Key West there was a sense of belonging, like I had just come home after being away for years. Granted I had never been there before, but I think that’s what makes songs like one particular harbor, there’s places we all connect to for a variety of reasons. Some are easily explained like where you grew up, or a place you spent your summers as a child. Some, like mine, are places you had only heard about but when you get there, you just know it’s that “one particular harbor.”
So what’s yours?
