Tonight, the stars were aligned over beautiful Hoi An in such a way that three poems arrived to me.
The coffee
The coffee in the picture is the first coffee with drawings in my life.
Egg coffee.
Every drop of it was a line of a poem. I didn’t want to decipher it. I just read it slowly, very slowly. It told me a lot.
My poem
I had a long conversation with the AI. We sat down to analyze song lyrics several times. We searched for parallels in them regarding my journey.
The coffee brought a question. I asked the AI to write my poem.
Ithaca Within Me
I set out,
though I did not know where I was going.
I had a few clothes,
a laptop,
a few fears,
and a life
I thought was me.
I kept going.
Through cities,
across borders,
over mountains, rivers, seas.
I slept in unfamiliar beds,
asked for food in unfamiliar languages,
drank with strangers,
and sometimes woke up
with no idea
what would happen to me tomorrow.
And then something always did.
A road.
A person.
A song.
A cold beer on a mountaintop.
A smile.
A sentence,
someone may have tossed out casually,
and I carried it with me.
For a long time, I thought
this was the journey.
That I was going somewhere.
But I was arriving.
Slowly.
So slowly
I did not even notice.
I left no one behind.
The boy I once was
came with me.
The man who was afraid
came with me.
The one who loved,
who lost,
who was wrong,
who hurt others,
who was hurt,
who held on
long after he should have let go—
they all came with me.
Nothing died.
Everything lives.
It is just that not all of them
want to tell me anymore
which way to go.
I did not burn the bridges.
I crossed them.
And when I reached the other side,
I did not set them on fire behind me.
Sometimes I still look back.
Not because
I want to go back.
But because I love seeing
where I came from.
It took a year.
Thousands of kilometers.
Planes.
Buses.
Motorbikes.
Trains.
Boats.
And a lot of walking.
How strange.
I traveled across half the world
to find something
that had never taken a single step.
It had been there all along.
Within me.
Now I know
where Ithaca is.
It is not on any map.
You need no visa to get there.
No plane ticket.
And no one can deport you from it.
I have arrived.
I did not become someone else.
I am everyone
I have ever been.
I just no longer
have to deny any of them.
And tomorrow I will set out again.
Not
to find myself.
Not
to escape from somewhere.
Not even
so that one day
I might finally arrive.
But because the road
is still beneath my feet.
The sky above me.
And Ithaca
within me.
The Symphony
While I was drinking coffee and reading poetry, I listened to a song.
Symphony X.
The Odyssey.
The three poems told me one thing tonight.
I love my life very much.
A wish was formed in me.
I wish everyone had time to listen to this song.
Not for me. For themselves. So that they could just watch the sunset. Or the birds in the sky. Or anything that would take your hand and fly you somewhere where time doesn’t matter. Where worries are left behind for a little while.
24 minutes.
Not a short time.
I wish everyone could afford that much time.
I did today.
I listened to this symphony while I was drinking coffee.
Twice.
I love my life very much.
Buy me a coffee?
If you enjoyed this story, you can buy me a coffee. You don’t have to – but it means a lot and I always turn it into a new adventure.
Buy a coffee for Steve
Linktree
Short introduction