Cast Away/Ulysseus

Time exploded for Tom Hanks, the high level Fed-Ex employee that had what he thought was a reliable relationship to time. A modern day Ulysses, stuck on an island for years. What does one do when there is no hope? Or is there hope even if you don't see it. Is it coming down the path but you've just turned the corner and looked back and it's out of sight.

The internet is like sending out flares on a deserted island. Like feeding the small fire created. Hoping, assuming, that there's a plane overhead, behind the cloud cover. I don't see the plane but I hear the engine or is that sound coming from inside of me? There is an attempt to be heard, understood, rescued.

Ulysses spent seven years in captivity on Calypso's island. Rescue comes from a persuasion by the Gods. Calypso is persuaded to release him by the messenger God Hermes, sent by Zeus. Ulysses builds a raft and is given clothing, food and drink by Calypso for the voyage. Tom Hanks character is sent part of his long discarded crashed plane from the Gods, and creates a raft and collects his own food and water for the voyage. His Calypso is his girlfriend, Helen Hunt's character, who'd given him a photograph of her.

My raft is literature. I travel into unknown waters using the compass of others before me. Those braver than I could ever imagine being. I hesitate because there is land under my feet. I know land. I know the earth. The water is home too, but a different home. Possibly the first home from which everything was created, but it seems anxious to swallow, to return me back to where I started. Neptune can be very patient, but then again so can I.