You will never be again
What you never were before.
Theodor Storm
Every morning Odysseus sits on the beach and casts his eyes across the sun-freckled water. The breeze is fresh and the waves rumble gently as they break. He is crying. For seven years he has been a prisoner in paradise, the unwilling consort of the beautiful nymph Calypso, who loves and fawns on him. Odysseus can’t bear it. Since leaving Troy victorious, he has wandered the seas, hounded by the god Poseidon, who would prevent him from finding his way home to Ithaca. Eventually Zeus is driven to pity and orders Calypso to release him. “Where shall a man find sweetness to surpass his own home and his parents? In far lands he shall not, though he find a house of gold.” Odysseus builds himself a raft, and after one last night of lovemaking and weeping he sails off alone.