The road to Ithaka

I’ve posted today about the loss of an online friend on A Separate Life. Over the last few days I’ve been looking through his comments on my old blogs, and this one spoke to me. I’d posted back in 2008 about the directions my life had taken that I hadn’t expected, including my quest for motherhood, here. At the time, I was almost five years into my No Kidding life, but as you can see, didn’t talk that much about it. It was another couple of years before I began writing here, where I could be much more open. However, the theme of my post was very much along the lines of what turned into No Kidding in NZ.

Deloney got it. He and his partner didn’t have children. I don’t know (he never said) if it was by choice, or not by choice. It was never something he touched on. But regardless, his philosophy of life was similar to my own. And his comment to my post was the following poem, which sums up my feelings about our No Kidding lives. The first verse could sound like a version of “wishful thinking” but to me is the warning of getting stuck in the sorrows of the moment, and dread of the future, rather than opening up to what might be. It helps me to read it, not just because of the beauty of the language, but also because Ithaca, for me, is not the motherhood I had once intended, but a final nonspecific destination that is taking me on a beautiful journey. I hope you like it too.

 Thanks, D.

ITHACA
                  by Constantine P. Cavafy

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 harbours 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 marvellous 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.