As You Set Out For Ithaka ...

Ithaka

BY C. P. CAVAFY

TRANSLATED BY Edmund Keeley and Philip Sherrard

As you set out for Ithaka
hope your road is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians, Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbors you’re seeing for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn't have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

"Hope your road is a long one ...."  These words struck me today, heading as I am to a new place and a new life.  It wasn't so long ago, maybe six months or so, that I found myself thinking just the opposite, that I was tired and done, that if my heart took me again to the edge, I might cross over, wanted to.  The thing was, it didn't scare me, this waiting for death.  300,000 dollars plus to fix my heart, months spent recovering, a second chance, and  I wasn't grateful, I wasn't hopeful, I wasn't happy.  I wanted to lie fallow; I wanted my end to be a great nothingness, and I wanted to find my way there sooner as opposed to later.


Today, fallow is the farthest thing from my mind.  I've been fallow for too long and I am ready to bloom.  I want my road to be a long one.  I want to wise, so full of experiences I will at last have understood what all my Ithakas meant, all thanks to this one Ithaka which has done what I thought impossible - made me want to live.  I leave this afternoon for the Virgin Islands.  When I head there again, it will be for discovery, for wandering, home everywhere because I'm at last at home in myself.  I at last have faith in the basic kindness of life.  It wants us happy although like any good parent, it guides us as best it can and then lets us find our own way, there when we need it, even when we think we've been completely abandoned, when we think there is nothing ahead, when we dream of fallow instead of bloom.  

Baggage

Baggage is a loaded term.  The nicer word is luggage which despite what's at the core of it, that short rough root, lug, is a word polite enough to pretend when we use it we're just talking about travel.  Baggage tells it like it is, suggests we've got things that need to be handled.  Beyond it's literal meaning, there's the psychological implications of the things we carry around with us, some of what we need, and much we don't.

Not all of us have luggage, but all of us have baggage.  I realize this as I pack for this trip so far out of my comfort zone that I can hardly imagine it, to what will be my new life.  When I traveled to Santa Barbara, or flew to Alaska, my usual trips, coming from Sacramento and returning there, I knew who I was, knew that woman's life, and so packed carelessly knowing that I'd never be gone for long and knowing exactly what I'd return to.  This time, when I return to Sacramento, it will be more as a visitor than as a resident, my time left here short, my foot already out the door.  What I take with me this trip and what I leave on the boat for the life I'm sailing into, well, that requires careful consideration.  I can't have my closet full of clothes, nor do I want to.  The task then becomes culling, sifting, the dilemma, what to keep and what to leave behind.

Now ordinarily, on a typical vacation, I'd fuss and worry over how much to take, what comes and what gets left behind.  I'd winnow things into as few bags as possible, bags as small as I could get them.  I'd make sure everything was essential, hard enough when you know you're coming back, when decisions aren't so final.  What I take with me this trip holds profound meaning, for what will stay on the boat will be what I need for that life and not everything i have will fit and not everything I have belongs.  Packing this time becomes an act of discernment in a way it's never been before.  This is not just a week trip, but a life.  This is not who I was, but who I'm becoming, who I will be.

Now lightening doesn't bother me.  After my heart attack, letting go and lightening up became an obsession of mine.  I felt weighed down by all the things I had surrounded myself with.  And I lightened some, but to be honest, after a while the things wore me down and I found it easier to let them stay.  It all seemed rather pointless to let go of so much and yet find myself where I was, where I thought I would always be.  There was resolution and resolve in that thought, but little joy, and I wondered sometimes if what my husband had said about me through the years, that I couldn't be happy, was true.  I had these pictures that said no, happy was possible.  I had these moments of such profound joy, but moments only.  Could I be happy though, day in and day out?  Could I greet every day with a "yes, yes, yes," taking life by the hand and co-creating with it, something marvelous and magical and full of joy?

With this trip, I'm betting against the house and the naysayers with a resounding "yes!"  I'm saying more than the pursuit of happiness, joy is my birthright.  I'm not quite the Fool of the Tarot, stepping off the cliff, oblivious to the chasm below, his knapsack over his shoulder, a dog, symbol of domestic life nipping at his heels.  No, I see the chasm.  I know what could be.  My knapsack is overstuffed, not a steamer trunk but damn heavy.  And despite all this, I'm taking the leap, not because I'm desperate, or mad with love, although I am deeply and peacefully in love, which is a new and wonderful state for me.  No, I'm leaping because it's time and it's right and if I don't say yes to life and living, then life certainly won't say yes to me.  I want to live.  For the first time since my heart attack, my body and heart agree - life is beautiful and I want as much of it as is my lot.

Which leads me back to baggage.  Of course, for all my good intentions, I'm still taking too much this trip.  And I could beat myself up over it, or I can do what I am doing, allowing myself to take everything I've packed and to evaluate it there, after a taste of that new life, and decide then whether to keep it or let go.  I'll bring it back and after a while, pack it again or give it away.  Discernment, I am learning, can occur over time.  This is new for me, this waiting and seeing, this enduring to and through.  There's no particular right or wrong, no mistake that can't be rectified, or rather, given the enormity of what I'm doing, what clothes I pack and what I store, what treasures I take and what I leave behind matters very little.  Somewhere, somehow, in the last ten years, I've gained some perspective, and while I still have baggage, it's not as much as I once had, and it's not as heavy as it once was, and that's how I measure progress now, in relative terms which seems a good place to be when you begin an Odyssey.

Odyssey

Those of you who know me, know that like Odysseus, I've been searching for home most of my life.  I fell in love with The Odyssey when I first read it as a child, not the actual poem but some child's version of it, maybe in Edith Hamilton's Mythology or Bullfinch's, or both.  I do love my mythology and did from my beginnings.  It wasn't long before I read the Samuel Butler translation and later, in college, Robert Fagles'.  Every few years I would pick it up and read through it again, finding new resonances as I continued to search for my Ithaca.


After my heart attack in 2009, I gave up on home.  I came to think that maybe, for me, the journey was home, although this never really sat well.  I read The Odyssey again during my recovery and felt the tug of hope and home, and as I walked myself back into well, assumed my old life, I felt in my heart a hunger that had no name, at least none I would admit to.  I tried to make do, to force myself back into what once seemed enough, and I did a pretty good job, or at least seemed too.  The thing was, my heart broke open and there was no more making do.


A few of you know the sudden changes in my life; many of you don't.  In January I reconnected with two old loves - a man, Bryan, and a sailboat, Susurru - and realized I had found my home.  Since then, I have been making my way toward a new life, another adventure in what has been my Odyssey.  I am spending Easter Week sailing in the Virgin Islands on Susurru, and by June, if not sooner, I'll be spending all my days on her, home at last.


I always thought of myself as patient Penelope and I was, but I'm also wily Odysseus, she of the twists and turns as Robert Fagles calls him.  If you want to follow my odyssey, please come along.  There will be tales and adventures, and if not zombies, maybe pirates ... or maybe zombie pirates.