Laughing en route to death

I’ve had to write a couple of obituaries in my time, an experience that is both inspiring and morbid at the same time. It comes with the sensation of wanting to ask the thousands of questions that you didn’t have the opportunity, or the desire, to ask when there was still a chance. The post begins with the simple phrase “Javier Ortiz died this morning”. From there it takes us on a journey through the obituary that Javier Ortiz wanted to be published after his death.

Also present in the post is what has been named a declaration of principles entitled Sueño con Jamaica - I dream of Jamaica. In the words of Lorenzo “It is worth reading. It seems he knew how to live”. I leave you with one section (excuse my translation):

“Maybe this Jamaica I dream about doesn’t exist. Maybe all of this that I am telling you is a product of movies and tourist brochures pinned up on the windows of countless travel agencies.

I’ve never been to Jamaica and it is most probable that I never will. I don’t care anyway. It’s better that way.

My Jamaica, that Jamaica I dream of today, serves its purpose because it is an illusion, because it occupies the “not-here”, because it helps me to imagine that we could be other than we are.

And I dream. And I go to Jamaica to be able to distance myself from what I see around me: grey streets, sad people. I dream about Jamaica to force myself to demand more happiness, to enable myself to believe that we can break with everything surrounding us, to believe that we are capable of not being on time, to laugh at sociological studies that explain away death, to believe that the future that awaits us is not destined to be forever a time of weeping”.