Odisea

1

Jorge Luis Borges said that there are only two stories: the battle, expressed in the Iliad, and the return, narrated in the Odyssey. As we read the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Ramayana, the Mahabharata, Sinbad, Don Quixote, Gulliver's Travels, we find only variations on these themes. A narrative survives to the extent that it speaks to us. Every so often, we once again accompany the patient, divine Odysseus, son of Zeus, in quiet reading or in his unbearable tribulations, because they are our own.

2

Duty, the curiosity to prove ourselves, or pride call us to the whirlwind of daily combat. After glory, plunder rears its grim face. We go into the fray hoping for a swift victory. When the conflict drags on, weariness gives way to reason, and reason to its bastard child, cunning. In battle, you fight for interests that don't necessarily belong to you. When it's over, you exhaust your strength trying to return to what is truly yours. Only the return is yours.

3

In war, men call upon the gods for aid. Indeed, the patient, godlike Odysseus earns the enmity of the most powerful: Zeus, father of the gods; Helios, Titan of the Sun; and Poseidon, sovereign of the sea. Every great destiny is a battle against omnipotence; to defy them is victory. The ocean is time, or rather, the infinite, anonymous, inscrutable, barely measured by its regular waves or its uncontrolled tantrums. Sea or time are paths we face only to leave them behind, with no other apparent purpose than their perilous shores or treacherous harbors. To surrender to the waters is to discover the measure of our insignificance. And yet, clinging to the helm during midnight watches, with no company but the solitary stars, can in itself seem like destiny.

4

Every journey is a learning experience. One crosses an open sea on the way to battle, and another, fraught with obstacles, on the return. On the first, you try to seize what belongs to others: plunder, women, wisdom. Only on the second do you return to the only things that truly belong to you: home, land, memories. The stones thrown by hostile Laestrygonians, the searing songs of Sirens, the voluptuous transformations of Circe, the lotuses that bestow oblivion, the sensual embrace of Calypso, even the conjugal bed that awaits us in Ithaca are nothing more than intervals, distractions from the course of life in the fluid time of the vast solitudes of the sea.

5

Like the days or the waves, comrades die. The stages of the journey are islands in eternity. On some, we are devoured by Cyclopes, stoned by Laestrygonians, bitten by the six-headed Scylla, plunged into the vortex of Charybdis. On others, we devour ourselves: in the oblivion of lotus leaves, the numbing embraces of Circe, the comforting caresses of Calypso, the irresistible song of the Sirens, the shadow of the realm of death, where the seer Tiresias reveals to us that it is preferable to be a slave in life than a monarch among the dead. For the goddesses we encounter in our wandering, we are also monsters who wound, kill, or abandon. For wretched mortals, loving a goddess is the only sip of the liquor of transcendence. Making the mortal we love a goddess is our only glimpse of omnipotence. The cruelty of the sea of ​​time is that the hollow ships are sighted from afar and only to be diverted or scrapped.

6

At some point, we think it's not worth facing this profuse spectacle of ferocious or pitiful beasts. The true monster is the ocean that draws us closer to them or separates us from them. There is no sailor who hasn't experienced the impassive temptation of the infinite. The sea erases all traces. There is no navigator who isn't on the verge of shipwreck in the anonymous sea that floods our moments. We set sail from the port to confirm our existence by confronting it with monstrosities and dangers that end up being reduced to mere obstacles. We assault fortresses with a ferocity that reflects that of those who defend them. The swell of days batters us against reefs until our features are replaced by wounds and our strength by indifference. We adopt the name "Nobody" when the journey through the void ends by emptying us. We are defeated. Perhaps it is preferable to be a slave in the Realm of the Dead than a dead man pretending to be alive.

7

After shipwrecks and founderings on the inland sea, the only defense is finding a reason to stay afloat. Treasures snatched away by the waves or tranquil bays lulled by boredom will be of no use. Having overcome adversity will be worthless if you don't hold onto what you salvaged from it. All cunning will be futile; you don't need abstractions, but presences. The sand of a familiar shore. The whine of an old dog that reminds you of someone. The voice of a blind beggar. Everything is both familiar and strange because you can't quite recognize yourself. Decades of abrupt solitude end when you realize where you are. It is the Homeland, the shared presence. It is the slice of the inexhaustible world that matters to you and where perhaps someone else cares about you.

8

You return from raiding fortresses to find your own home invaded. Looters plunder what was once yours and your child's, and yearn to wallow in the austere bridal bed where you conceived him. No one invited them, no one wants them. Greed is their only right. They leave you for dead, and they vomit as they devour the inheritance you refused them. It is your world. Without it, you do not exist, and without you, it vanishes. You are not the monster hunter nor the adventure collector: you are the sum of all that you truly love, and therefore, that defines you.

9

Tiresias prophesies to Odysseus that he will have a peaceful death, but only after wandering with an oar on his shoulder until he reaches a land where no one knows the purpose of such an instrument: firm ground, free from the fruitless onslaught of the waves. There he can close his eyes, asking that the oar be planted upon his grave. But who knows if the oar will take root upon the traveler, transforming him into a leafy tree that will bear fruit for men and shelter birds until they, carried away by the winds, fly above the waves?

10

But first you draw your bow, you aim it at those who devour what is yours. Not one of the invaders and accomplices will be left alive.