L’ Estranger

Perhaps we all have an Ithaca in mind. Something like a dream, a desire, or an illusion that, besides setting us in motion, frightens us. Cavafis, in his poem dedicated to Ithaca, gives us some keys to overcome these fears: "you will not meet them, the Laestrygonians and the Cyclops and the fierce Poseidon, if you do not carry them within your soul, if your soul does not set them up before you" and he prayed that your journey be patient and long, full of pleasures, voluptuousness, and learning. That you arrive old at your destination, to know that what Ithaca has given you was precisely that, the journey.