Friday, November 26, 2010

Passing Ithaka


As you set out for Ithaka

hope the voyage is a long one,

full of adventure, full of discovery.

Climbing the stairs to Deck Ten I am in deep thought, trying to recollect C. P. Cavafy’s poem.

May there be many a summer morning when,

with what pleasure, what joy,

you come into harbors seen for the first time.

Venice, Dobrovnik, Kusadasi, Santorini, Corfu - I say to myself. Harbors seen or to be seen for the first time, either from the balcony of our room or from the top deck. But on this summer morning I am thinking of a special harbor, one of which I have no concrete image. One I will not explore, though its name is quite familiar to me: Ithaka! Abstract thoughts run ahead of me as I reach the exercise deck. I whisper the Greek word nostos. I scan the horizon; dark islands appear in the distance. I wonder if I will actually see Ithaka on the trip south. Nostos I repeat – that’s what I have named my travel journal. The Homecoming.

Whether I am accused of traveling in my mind or whether I am admired for it, Ithaka itself - Ithake as the young Greek waiter pronounces it – is a reality. This island in the Ionian chain occupies an area of 45 square miles and has around three thousand inhabitants. Modern Ithaka is most often identified with Homer’s Ithaka, the home of Odysseus. When Mother introduced me to the most famous poem by one of Greece’s most famous poets, Constantine Petrou Cavafy, I interpreted Ithaka as the ultimate goal of a life-long journey. A place, most desirable, to be saved until one has learned all that is needed to be worthy of final grace: the homecoming.

Keep Ithaka always in your mind.

Arriving there is what you are destined for.

But do not hurry the journey at all.

Better if it lasts for years,

so you are old by the time you reach the island,

wealthy with all you have gained on the way,

not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.

I already finished my morning mile earlier; now, after breakfast with Pat, I come to Deck 10 to participate in a charity event. By purchasing a “Wishes at Sea” t-shirt and walking a mile I will support the Make-A-Wish Foundation. When I arrive at the Rock Climbing Wall I am the only customer. The young man who sells the shirts lets me know that he has watched several terminally ill children enjoy their Mediterranean cruises. “It gets to you,” he says.

I tell him that I knit teddy bears for sick children in Africa. We talk about the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Mother Bear Project. I shake his hand, tell him that his enthusiasm touches me.

The still crisp morning air, the blue water, and the thought that I am helping a child fulfill a dream make me giddy. Making my way between runners, joggers, photographers, deck hands, and people chatting with each other, I’ve all but forgotten Homer and Cavafy and Ithaka, when a voice on the loudspeaker announces that we are about to pass between the islands of Kefalonia and Ithaka. I pull the camera from my fanny pack.

When the ship is flanked by the islands on either side the young man at the rock wall offers to take my photograph in front of Ithaka. I am overwhelmed and confide my absolute delight to have this moment on record. For the second time I shake his hand.

“I am passing Ithaka,” I announce. “It is August 9, 2010. 9:45am.”

Of course I don’t tell him that all my photographs so far are of Kefalonia. Only his suggestion to pose at a certain spot – portside he says and points to the left - makes me realize that I have been concentrating on the wrong island. In my eagerness to attribute symbolic value to the German transmission of information I lacked concentration and confused starboard and portside – a subject of endless speculation at our dinner conversations for days to come. I take another twenty pictures, aiming my camera up and down the shoreline of Ithaka, the mountainous interior where a tiny smoke cloud hovers over a divide, the wake our ship creates as we continue our journey.

Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.

Without her you would not have set out.

She has nothing left to give you now.

I finish my second mile and go to the solarium to write into my journal. “Not much to see since the harbors are located on the east side.” But as I scan the last passage of the poem I grasp and adore its meaning.

And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.

Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,

you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.

Reading the poem again – it is attached to the inside of my journal’s front cover – I smile. Tomorrow I will fulfill a few more lines by shopping in Kusadasi and visiting Ephesus.

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 gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.

My amber and ebony will probably be cloth and stone; my scholars will be past emperors and philosophers and a modern-day tour guide with a list of facts he has committed to memory.

For a moment I feel the need for a witness and try to invoke Dr. Steinfeld, but relaxed silence spreads across my body. “All my corners are rounded,” I write without questioning the metaphor.

Laistrygonians and Cyclops,

Angry Posidon – don’t be afraid of them:

You’ll never find things like that on your way

As long as a rare excitement

Stirs your spirit and your body.

Laistrygonians and 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.

My mind is almost empty now. I close the journal and my eyes. My soul is free of cannibals and monsters as Ithaka glides into past tense. Thank you, Mr. Cavafy.

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