exercise three: a long sentence

It was too hard, life was too hard, and the long road ahead would be longer still and even harder despite the advice from friends and their well-timed gestures and nods, the focused gaze from family members and their reassuring hugs – especially aunt Donna, when she hugged you you felt her heart forcing its way through her chest to meet with yours, you felt (it was momentary but nonetheless powerful) that if she could transmit her faith in your abilities into you, then everything would be alright...the road would be long and hard but doable, it wouldn’t be an incline, like so many people insisted, people who had never ventured to walk the road yet somehow knew everything there was to know about the road; the road up and the road down was the same, aunt Donna would insist, and walking it is reserved for the person who is brave enough to take the first step, unsure if the road will be there to meet your heel (and here she would wink and say, please don’t wear high heels either...not at first, anyway); yes, damn hard, F-ing hard, and it would take a long time – and here we come to the truth of it all: the time; not the path itself but how long it would take to come to fruition, how long it would take before you came to the end of the road, were satisfied with the miles you put in and the blisters on your toes and the arthritis splintering like shards of glass and ice through your knees (knees you got from your grandmother – God rest her soul); it was how long it would take and all this because you wanted things to happen sooner, quickly, but Ithaca isn’t a destination, isn’t that what Cavafy says, and doesn’t he counsel not to be cross with her if, upon reaching her glorious shores, there is nothing left for you there, neither beautiful Penelope nor Telemachus, because, and please don’t cry, she gave you this journey, this long, F-ing journey – this life – and you have smelled the sweetest scents and heard the warmest voices, and seen the tallest peaks; you have broken your bones, and tasted your blood, and felt your spirit’s last gasps (or so they seemed); all these things Ithaca has given to you, enough experience so that you may (no, you must) hold your shoulders back and raise your troubled head high, and – look quick – behind you stands the greatest life of all, the hardest and most painful and sweetest and most glorified life of all...your life, sweet child, your life like a shadow behind you and yes, you noticed correctly, the sun, the sun and its angels of light cast upon you, a target unlike any other, a guide meant just for you, sweet child, because you took that step, sweet child, you learned to walk and never, ever forgot.