Hey David,
I'm so glad you make your lovely voice be heard in this way!
BTW: What's for dinner?!!?!? Knowing your cooking skills, please sign me up among your guests! :-)

Perrrrrrrrfection, oh yes, a nice one... For me one pitfall can be when I (or others) think of it as some sort of a train station, s.thing to arrive at? A state to achieve? (And by the way, even if it was like that, would I really want to stay there I wonder... actually i know: for sure not.)

I found this poem some days ago for a dear friend, who's recently set out on a kinda personal Odyssey... I have not shown it to him yet, instead I feel this is now the place to share it (also as a gesture of love for Vaso, since it is by early 20th-c. Greek poet Kavafis).

The (our /each of our's) Odyssey is clearly about a man who is roaming about, looking for something and wants to feel perfectly home somewhere. For instance in Ithaca. Or in himself. Thus I felt it belongs here.

"As you set out for Ithaca
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.

Hope your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you enter harbours you’re seeing 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 learn and go on learning from their scholars.

Keep Ithaca always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you’re destined for.
But don’t hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you’re old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you’ve gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaca to make you rich.

Ithaca gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you wouldn’t have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.

And if you find her poor, Ithaca won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you’ll have understood by then this is the meaning of Ithaca."

K. Kavafis, (Greek Κωνσταντίνος Π. Καβάφης) (April 29, 1863 – April 29, 1933)