One Last Time a Commuter Before Becoming Peregrina
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.
— Constantine Cavafy
There is nothing ceremonial about how a pilgrimage starts. It starts the way every working morning of my early professional life had started, with a schedule and a platform and the Metro-North timetable, except that today the timetable runs all the way to Madrid. Three trains and a plane stand between our front door and a Spanish morning. For one more afternoon I am a commuter, doing the thing I have done for years, moving through the familiar machinery of getting somewhere. By Saturday the machinery will be my own two feet.
LIRR at Grand Central, into the belly of a beast
What strikes me now, bag packed, taking the brief sitting-down pause the old country’s custom dictates before a journey, for safe passage, is how much of the prep work is subtraction. Not what to bring, but what to leave. The desk, closed. The garden given over to the rain and to my mother’s care, when she is able to visit it.
The last act of our American evening happened at a steakhouse in JFK’s Terminal 4. The wait was long and four-tops sat empty, held back for larger parties that weren’t coming. So John asked a couple beside us whether they’d share a table so we could all sit, and just like that we were four.
They were on their way to Greece, we to Spain. For the length of a dinner, two couples who would never otherwise have met talked mostly about travel, the places we’d been and the places we were headed. Some of us found a shared passion for true crime stories, which have never been my cup of tea. After we parted, a thought struck me: I’d spent the morning thinking of the Greek Odyssey and Cavafy, a Greek poet, and here we were at dinner with a couple, the gentleman of Greek origin, headed for Greece. Makes you wonder if the universe is listening.