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| First Florence sunset I watched from Piazza Michelangelo with my flatmates. |
This isn’t how I pictured my last day. I’m not ready to
leave, but I know I’ll be back. If you really fall in love with something, it’s
never truly goodbye—just see you later. That’s what I hope is true for Florence
and all the wonderful people I’ve met along the way. There is still so much I
want to do! I didn’t even see Michelangelo’s David until two days ago.
When you study abroad for a semester, it seems like you have
all the time in the world at first. I mean, 4 months is a long time, right? But
it slips by so fast and before I could check off half the things on my list,
I’m suddenly sitting here the night before move out day, looking around at an
empty room.
There is so much I have done that I’m so grateful for. There
were challenges, cultural differences, a few language barriers and a lot of
gesturing, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing.
One of my classes this semester was Backgrounds of Western
Literature, during which I reread The
Odyssey. After reading about the adventures Odysseus encounters on his
journey, our professor passed around a poem that seemed to encompass the ideal experience
of traveling. For anyone else out there who loves to travel, I hope you will appreciate
this poem as much as I did:
Ithaka
As you
set out for Ithaka
hope the
voyage is a long one,
full of
adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians
and 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
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.
Hope the
voyage is a long one.
May
there be many a summer morning when,
with
what pleasure, what joy,
you come
into harbors seen 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
gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
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.
Ithaka
gave you the marvelous journey.
Without
her you would not 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 will have understood by then
what these Ithakas mean.
As I continue to travel around Europe these next two months, I’m
keeping this poem close to my heart. I will definitely continue blogging—hopefully
with more frequency now that the semester is over.
And now I’m off, “backpacking” (I’m actually bringing a small
suitcase) through Europe. Wish me well!
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