Back when I took golf lessons, there were so many things to keep in mind: foot placement, shoulder placement, grip, club selection, head position. I would stand over the ball, unable to swing, going through this whole checklist in my mind. 

Then one day, the golf coach said, “Kath, you’re overthinking it. Just pick one swing thought, like: “Down and through!” and just work on that. You just need a single mantra, not the whole Upanishads!”

(He didn’t actually say that bit about the mantra and the Upanishads, because he was just a golf idiot who drank too much and didn’t give a shit about teaching golf to housewives, but I digress.)

Still, I’ve thought about that “one swing thought” in many contexts over the years because it really helps when I find myself overthinking stuff, which is every day.

Lately, it seems like a lot of my mental energy goes into thinking about how I’m going to fit my streaks into my day. One day last week, I came precariously close to ruining them, and it freaked me out. 

My usual mantra is: Discipline gets it done.

I thrive on discipline. My streak disciplines aren’t hard in themselves: yoga, meditation, and strength training are relatively easy.  What’s hard is structuring the day to fit them in and making time when the calendar blows up.

Which it did last week, and I almost killed myself —cheating on food and sleep to make sure all my boxes got checked.

I spend a lot of mental energy every day figuring out where I’m going to slot everything in. I time-block in my head first thing every morning. 

Today I thought: This isn’t fun. Maybe I need a new swing thought. All this discipline is feeling merciless, militaristic, hair-shirty, and Stoic. I get it about hormesis, that idea that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger: Freezing in cold plunges, baking in saunas. I get it, I do. 

But what if instead of Disciplines, I thought of my practices as things I am devoted to? Devotion comes with all the persistence of discipline, but without the pain. Devotion is genuflection, prayer hands, a lighted candle, a loving sigh, whereas discipline is a set jaw and clenched fists. 

Devotion is as strong as discipline, maybe stronger because devotion adds love. Devotion takes discipline to the next level because when I’m devoted to my practices, I do them not to check a box, but because I love the person I am becoming as a result.

Blog day. Take dogs to the Vet day. Beautiful October weather day. Got enough, and quality sleep day. Didn’t eat breakfast but counted the protein in my coffee.

Also: Instead of AG1, an electrolyte drink called Prfct. That’s the name of it. 

Apparently, electrolyte drinks have an aversion to vowels. 

LMNT, for instance. What’s with that? They said it tasted like Tang. It does not taste like Tang. It tastes too sweet. They said to put it in 8 or 16 ounces of water. I put it in my 24 oz Owala bottle with tons of ice, and only then could I handle it.

Walk the yard. Sip. Sip. Try to hydrate.

My ankles and feet hurt.

My knees hurt.

My hips hurt.

My back and shoulders hurt.

My arms hurt.

Have I missed any body part?

Everything hurts. Today is Day 93 of Ashtanga yoga and Week 5 of consistent 6-day-a-week Ladder workouts.

Progressive overload.  

I may have overloaded yesterday.

My 20# weights are going to go out of fashion pretty soon if I keep this up. I don’t use the 20s for everything. Just the deadlifts, but still. 

25s and 30s are in my future. Weights are expensive, though. I’m getting quite the collection on the computer room floor.

I finished Black Bag yesterday. I really liked it. Gave it 5 stars.

It won’t win the Booker, and some people are outraged that something like that even got short-listed and Switzy, which I haven’t read, got shut out.

What I liked about it was that it wasn’t moody and dark like John of John, that it wasn’t Ozzie and Harriet like The Things We Never Say. It was quirky and dark and funny and deep. 

Like a Beckett play.  Absurd, but with echoes and ripples that resonated out and out, then vanished before I got the meaning. 

It was like an acid trip, but not. 

It was like reading the news, but not.

It absolutely deserved to be short-listed, pointed to: “HERE! Pay attention to this. This voice is new. This voice is different.”

The themes are serious, but the treatment—that’s what sets this apart.  And what are the themes? Performative alienation, for one. 

The desire to be seen and not seen at the same time. The comfort of anonymity. 

Anonymity hijacked into a cult. 

The depths of friendship in all its quirky nuances.

The writing was unselfconsciously profound. It deserves a second read, which I will not give it, of course, because Reading Challenge, hello? But it deserves a place on my bookshelf, so I’ll order the hardback.

I think the reason I liked it so much is that I too, walk around in a Black Bag. 

See me, but don’t see me.

See me, but pretend you don’t. 

I need approval and love, but am afraid to ask for it. 

I will put myself out there, but only in a Black Bag. 

The yoga studio is my black bag. 

This blog is my black bag. 

I am ostentatiously hiding in plain sight. I am moisturizing and working out and cultivating patience, trusting that if I persist, I will get what I want.

And what is that? 

A long and vital life, walking briskly and upright.

Inside a black bag.

I wrote to Zee today hoping she could advise me on how to handle my rage.

Here’s part of what she said:

“I live my life with a slow-burning rage against all this kind of shit and so when new horrificness rears up it adds fuel to the pyre but I’m not starting from scratch.”

Yeah, sadly, we are not starting from scratch. Rapist in the White House, Epstein files, now this. 

She pointed me to a guy she follows online who is an acupuncturist and a neuroscience geek who gives straightforward advice on how to handle anxiety, anger, and all kinds of toxic emotions. 

She follows him on FB, but I looked him up on Instagram.  He goes by the handle Upspiral.life. His name is Michael Hunter. I’ve seen his stuff before, but he’s not part of my algorithm. He’s good. I started following him because rage is consuming me and I need to sleep. 

Here’s  what this guy says to do when you’re angry:

1. Name it. Say, “A part of me is enraged about what those motherfuckers did to that girl at Cornell.” Say “a part of me is enraged,” rather than “I am enraged.” You don’t want rage to become your whole personality. 

2. Breathe. This was funny because I have already written about breathing when enraged in my post entitled “Don’t Breathe.” But he’s right. When rage flares, it’s important to lower your blood pressure. He says to inhale for a count of 4 and exhale for 8. Classic advice that almost nobody follows when enraged.

3. Splash cold water on your face. Cold water engages the vagus nerve and rapidly turns down your “fight or flight” response and boosts your “rest and digest mode. It also clears the mind and helps your body return to a steady, relaxed state. 

Looks like I will be carrying a spray bottle filled with ice water so I can hose myself down multiple times throughout the day.

But to tell you the truth, part of me doesn’t want to stop feeling rage. Rage feels like the only proper response right now, and not feeling rage feels like looking away or letting them off.

Our rage is how we roar NO.

But at the same time, we can’t self-immolate. We cannot burn down our own house. We have to be smart, strategic, and have every part of our brains online so as to dismantle this fucked up system. 

A part of us can roar, yes, but another part has to stay razor-focused to ensure justice is served.

I’ve been doing Ashtanga Yoga every day for 80 days and am almost finished with 3 weeks of my current weightlifting regimen, but I’m seeing practically no results, which is frustrating as hell.

But the other day I came across this before-and-after picture of a woman who went from flabby to lean in 9 months, and I had a lightbulb moment.

Nine months is a pregnancy! It takes 9 months to grow a new life in the human body, so why wouldn’t it take 9 months to recompose an already existing one?

I’ve had a baby, so I know that timeline very well. It goes like this: First trimester: you don’t show. Second trimester: you start to show. Third trimester: you are definitely pregnant. 

Reframing my progress this way helps me relax by tempering my expectations. Thinking of myself as only in the first trimester makes it clear why I’m not “showing.” I do love a good reframe. 

Ladder app Update

I’m still a fan of this app and a proud member of Team Ignite with Coach Stevie. I bought 20-pound weights the other day because I’ll need them soon. I’m also tracking my macros in the app’s Nutrition section now. (I also like calling protein, carbs, and fats “macros.”)

Crowding Out Instagram by Reading

I’m still spending more time on Insta than I’m happy about, but I did finish 3 books this week: 

Transcription by Ben Lerner.

Taipei Story by R.F. Kuang. 

and I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman. 

I’ve started writing short book reviews on Goodreads to remind myself what I thought of them.

I’m now trying to read the Booker Short List, which came out this week. 

The Disappearers by Marlon James

Black Bag by Luke Kennard

May We Feed The King by Rebecca Perry

The Things We Never Say by Elizabeth Strout

John of John by Douglas Stuart

One of the five, May We Feed the King, won’t even be released until October 20^th.  I read John of John and The Things We Never Say this summer.

The Disappearers is over 600 pages, so that one will unfortunately set me back in my race to read 50 books by the end of the year because it’ll take me way more than a week to read. 

I started Black Bag today, which is a manageable 350.

I like the Booker Prize more than the Pulitzer because the Booker is open to any work of fiction written in English, whereas the Pulitzer is limited to works of fiction by American authors.

Autumnal Equinox

I made sourdough bread this week.

I want soup.

I hauled sweaters up from the basement storage.

This weekend is Homecoming.

We now have mums everywhere.

Saturday is the Harvest Moon.

Happy Fall, everyone! Thanks for reading.

I don’t know what this deep resistance to writing is, but it’s worrying me. It feels like a scary bodily symptom I’m choosing to ignore, hoping it will go away on its own.

Every time I open Instagram, there’s a chirp in my brain that whispers: Get off this now! Shut it down. This is bad for you, and I promptly ignore it.

Then, today, I saw an article in The Atlantic titled “This Is Your Brain on Short-Form Video” by Hana Kiros. 

Even before I read it, I knew how my brain on short-form video would be described: small, deformed, and sick.

Because that’s how it feels.

The author quotes actor Andrew Garfield (of old Spider-Man fame), saying his Instagram feed is full of “weird ceramics” and Japanese craftspeople.

I get it. Mine is full of rescue dogs and sourdough. And yours is full of whatever your kink of the moment might be.

Peter Garfield bemoans that he’s “given all those hours to nothing!”

Exactly how I feel.

I’m not writing.

I’m not reading. 

I’m giving all my hours to nothing, too.

So I start reading this article, hoping the science will confirm that my brain is indeed getting sick from Instagram and that this fact will scare me enough to quit.

But it doesn’t conclude this. 

It concludes that although we can feel Instagram is rotting our brains, destroying our analytical skills, and impeding memory, empathy, and conversational depth, there isn’t yet enough scientific evidence to prove it.

But I know by the time that evidence arrives, I’ll be too far gone, so I have to act now.

Here’s what I’ve decided to do: Crowd it out.

Crowding out is a technique I learned in health coaching.  It’s a dietary strategy that focuses on adding more healthy, nutrient-dense foods rather than obsessing over cutting out junk food. So instead of trying to cut out Instagram, I’m going to crowd it out with something healthier.

I noticed the other day that I’m way behind on my Goodreads Challenge to read 50 books this year.

I’m only up to 31. That means I need to read 19 books before the end of the year to hit my goal of 50. That works out to a new book every 5.5 days until the end of the year. 

So I’ve decided to Crowd Out Instagram with books. I can’t possibly read a new book every 5 days unless I’m reading in every spare moment. All the time I’m now spending on Instagram will have to be spent reading instead.

On September 29^th, there will be 100 days left in this year. 100 days isn’t a lot, but it’s a meaningful stretch to commit to something worthwhile. If you’re into streaks and projects like I am, this timeframe has a lot of appeal. What might you consider doing in the next 100 days to make you happier, healthier, or smarter?

Think about it and let me know in the comments if you decide to do something. You know how I love this stuff!

To back it up a bit, I do not love weight training. 

I do not love picking up big, heavy, metallic-smelling weights and hoisting them aloft.

I’ve been going to the gym with Linda every Thursday for a few years and using the machines, but I’m not getting any stronger.  It’s probably because I only go once a week, and the machines aren’t designed for a 5’2” woman with narrow shoulders, so I always feel like my form is “off” on them.  Plus, the weight increments are weird.  

Plus, I always just want to go home.

At home, I have dumbbells, a few kettlebells, and some resistance bands. Sometimes I’ll pick them up, but I don’t know what I’m doing.

I’ve tried looking at Instagram and YouTube for plans, but… Eh. 

A million years ago, I had a trainer, and that was great, but it was expensive, so I could only go once a week, and that’s not enough. 

Since I’m an Obliger by temperament, I need an accountability partner to do things I don’t want to do. I’ll only go to the gym if I’ve made a date to meet you there. 

Otherwise, I’ll find an excuse to stay home and read.

But I NEED to lift weights.

I heard about this app called Ladder. 

https://www.joinladder.com

Somebody I follow on Instagram uses it. I looked into it. I watched some YouTube reviews and how-tos. It got great reviews. Plus, it had a 7-day Free Trial.

You start by picking a “team” based on what you want. I wanted to do my workouts at home with dumbbells. I didn’t want to have to go to the gym.

I wanted something beginner-friendly, so Team Ignite with Coach Stevie was the best match for me.

She talks you through the whole thing. She demos everything. She’s enthusiastic and encouraging— not cringey or obnoxious. 

All I needed were dumbbells and a bench. I didn’t have a bench, so I got a small foldable one on Amazon for $150

After the 7 Day Trial I bought the Pro Annual Plan for $179.99. This breaks down to $14.99 a month for a year.

The sessions are only 30 minutes long and include a warm-up and cool-down.

The app is robust. It has stuff I haven’t explored yet and might never use, like meal tracking. 

There’s a Chat room where you can get your questions answered. (Haven’t been there yet, either.) 

There’s a Journal feature where you can track your weights and monitor your progress.

There’s a feature where you can send encouraging emoji explosions to people who are working out at the same time you are. (I’ve had quite a few of these sent my way! It’s silly, but fun.)

There are Badges to earn (I earned the Labor Day Badge the other day). I’m a sucker for a badge.

After 6 weeks on a team, there is an “Open” period during which you can try out another team and coach and switch if you want. 

I have 9 workouts under my belt so far, and I really like it. But the true test will be: Can I stick with it, and what will my results be?  

Stay tuned.

At the beginning of July, I started Project Daily Yoga. 

I committed to David Swenson’s 45-minute Ashtanga Yoga Practice. I told myself, come hell or high water, I would make time to do this sequence every day.

But more than that, I wanted to do it pure. No hidden agendas like greater flexibility or more toned abs. I wanted to embrace the Zen adage: “Goal is Path. Path is Goal.” My idea was: Commit to the path. Do it every damned day. That was my only goal. I wanted to focus on the process, not the outcomes.

I’m 60 days in now, and the fact is, my flexibility gains have been minimal, and my body is no more toned than it was in early July. The mirror shows no change whatsoever, and my fancy scale says I’m actually moving in the wrong direction.

I don’t get it, and I’m getting a little depressed. 

I saw The Odyssey for the second time yesterday, and now I’m thinking this might be a test by the gods. Are they testing my resolve? Putting storms and gargoyles in my way to see if I’ll quit? 

If so, bring it, gods! I’m not quitting. Not yet, anyway. It’s only Day 60. Check back on me on Day 600. 

Back in July, I wondered if I could make this project interesting and fun. Could I do it without whining and complaining? Could I just fall in love with the process?

Apparently, the answer is:

Or not yet.

I know, at least theoretically, that the act of showing up to train, day after day, month after month, year after year is the alchemical ingredient.

Persistently, with reverence, for a long time is my mantra.

At the same time, I still want evidence of transformation. Just a little. Especially when it’s a body practice, and a hard one at that. Surely after 60 days, shouldn’t I be able to get my nose a teensy bit closer to my knees in a forward fold?

My hidden agendas are revealed in my disappointment. The goal of falling in love with the process, or falling in love with reality (Amor fati), is still in the Ideal Realm, not a reality for me. 

Yet.

Intellectually, I know that:

1. Change takes time.

2. Change takes consistency over time.

3. Change takes incremental change over time.

4. It takes time to turn the ship around.

5. While the ship is turning around, there is no visible change.

6. Persistence is the key.

So as it stands now, there are still 4 weeks left in Q3.

It’s time to refocus on just showing up, speaking more kindly to my body, lowering my expectations, and learning to love the discipline of habit change while genuinely enjoying the ride.

Onward.

 I’m not comfortable admitting how much time I spend on Instagram. But I just now checked my algorithm, and it said that lately I’m into mindful movement, resistance workouts, and being present. 

Okay. That makes me feel a bit better, and it sounds like I’m feeding my head a healthy diet, even if I am spending more time on that app than I would like.

I do like that Instagram is upfront about what they are feeding you, though. I also like that they let me curate my feed. 

If I start getting stuff I don’t like (too much politics, for example), I can change it. 

So if you, too, would like to know what your algorithm is feeding you on Insta, here’s how to do it:

Press your Profile (that circle in the bottom right with the head in it)

Then press the hamburger icon (those 3 horizontal bars) in the upper right. 

That will take you to “Settings and Activity.”

From there, scroll down to “Content Preferences,” then “Your Algorithm.” 

From there, you can add what you want to see more of and less of. 

It’s probably better to limit your time on the app, or delete it altogether, but if you’re weak like me, at least curate your feed and build in some uplifting things.

Parasocial Relationships

I have a parasocial relationship with Isabel Klee (@simonsits) on Instagram. I wrote extensively about it back in May when Isabel’s book, Dogs, Boys, And Other Things I’ve Cried About, hit the NYTimes Bestseller List. You can read the post here:

A month ago, her beloved dog, Simon, had to be put down, and I know this sounds ridiculous, but Simon’s death hit me hard. It felt like putting my own dog down. I cried a lot. So many tears for a dog I never met, or got to see or pet. 

The internet brings a lot of shit into our lives, but it also brings real people living real lives. People who share so much of their lives that you feel you know them. It’s a little like how you feel about and care for some characters in novels, except these online people aren’t fictional characters; they’re real. And their dogs are real. And when their dogs get so sick they have to be put down, these people lay themselves bare and document, for all the world to see, their pain. 

And their vulnerability is so brave that it makes me wonder: in their shoes, would I be able to be so open about my pain? And the answer is, oh hell no, because when I am in pain, my instinct is to hide, to crawl into the proverbial hole and die. 

But what I learned watching Isabel say goodbye to her precious Simon is that by letting the world watch her suffer, she brought us all together because everyone who has ever loved a pet knows the particular ache of that pain, and it is really deep. 

And everyone online who witnessed that pain locked hearts together and cried with Isabel. Strangers, crying over a dog they loved and feeling so deeply for the woman who loved him. 

These parasocial relationships are so weirdly real. 

 So much of the time, the world can feel unreal and alienating, and then, out of the blue, you encounter these weird little pockets of authenticity and sweetness, where people are so openly brave and intimate that strangers all over the world cry together online.

This is what inspired me in August.

Yep, today was Day 45. 

The last time I completed a long, everyday yoga streak was in 2019. I did Travis Elliot’s 108 Day Yoga Challenge.

That program was so hard for me. I remember thinking every single day: When is this going to get easier?? And also: When is my body going to start looking different??

I don’t remember a time when I was completely OK with my body. There may have been a short window in my late 40s, early 50s, when I was happy when I looked at myself in the mirror.  But that window closed shortly after then, and it’s been closed ever since.

I am struggling now because even though I think not much has changed in the way I eat and the amount of exercise I get, suddenly I have, for the first time in my life, a belly. A fricken belly that sticks out, and no amount of abdominal contraction, sucking it in, and trying to do nauli will make it go away.

I am not at all reconciled to the fact that this is a natural part of aging. 

But if I am honest, even though I say my lifestyle hasn’t changed, it probably has. I have become more sedentary. I don’t run anymore, for instance. I don’t do nearly as much cardio as I used to.

Yoga took over. Especially the teaching, which sadly, crowded out my personal practice, and that’s when I decided to do that 108 Day Yoga Challenge in 2019. To get my practice back.

I remember so vividly back then, around Day 46, when I was despairing that nothing was happening and I was on the verge of quitting, that there was a sudden shift. 

On Day 46 I began to feel better and to look better. I recognized then that I just had to stay with the struggle and not give up.

46 days is just over 6 weeks. When I started this current Ashtanga streak, I said to myself: 

Just get to Day 46.  After Day 46, things will get better. You’ll feel better. You’ll start to see results.

Tomorrow is Day 46. I am not going to have my breakthrough day tomorrow, and that’s ok. 

This Ashtanga thing I’m doing isn’t about changing my body but about changing my mind. I want to come to grips with change, time, and aging.

This practice involves doing the same poses every day. Some of them I can do, but I can only approximate most. 

I use a strap for the binds. I use my wheel for half shoulderstand. I can’t grab my big toe in Triangle. I can’t rest my hand on the floor in lateral angle. Headstand used to be one of my favorite poses; now I skip it.

There’s a spot on my right knee that needs protection and could probably use a little Arnica Gel if I remember to bring it into the room.

I’m older. I’m wiser. I’m stiffer. I’m not pushing that right knee the way I might have a few years ago. I’m propping it with a bolster instead.

The “win” is that I’m doing it every day. The win is cultivating patience. Today, instead of bemoaning the lack of progress, I told myself: It hasn’t even been 2 months yet!

The other day, I saw one of those Before-and-After body transformation photos on Instagram, and the woman’s body was unrecognizable in the After picture. From fat and lumpy, she transformed into lean and muscular. In her video voiceover, she said: 

A lot of these Instagram transformations will tell you that you can go from THIS (fat and lumpy) to THIS (lean and muscular) in 6 months, but I’m here to tell you it took me 4 YEARS!!

I yelled at my phone, “Preach, woman! YES!!”

This was the most encouraging transformation story I had ever heard. 

Change takes time, and everyone in the social media landscape lies about this. They tell you you can transform yourself in 6 months, and that is complete and utter bullshit. Real, lasting, and meaningful transformation takes 4 years. Maybe longer. And if you buy into the 6-month lie, you buy into misery.

I see this in the yoga practice room sometimes. People will come faithfully every week for a few months (8 classes total), and then they’ll disappear. 

I don’t know why, but I’ll bet they came with some expectation of transformation—at least a little—and when it doesn’t happen after 8 tries, they give up.

But this truth that transformation takes time is especially hard to swallow when you’re no longer young.  So, let’s say this Ashtanga streak of mine extends 4 years. I will be 77 then.

Geez.  

But if I’m going to be 77 anyway, I might as well enjoy nailing that stupid bind in Ardha Baddha Padma Pascimotanasana, right?

But seriously, the bind isn’t the point. The posture is never the point. The point of the practice is going into the room, closing the door, putting on the music, changing into the clothes, tying up the hair, and spending an hour connecting to the breath, and then getting to encounter the reality and the marvel of the human body.

And encouraging it, and tending it, and testing its limits. Then, at the very end, exhausted mentally and physically, lying in a heap on the floor, feeling the body ripple, ripple, ripple, until eventually the ripples subside, and there is only…

What? 

G, Fred, and I drove up last Friday, scoring 3 seats together in the second row. Not ideal, but Friday was the only day we could go. Shows are selling out so much that they’re adding 2 AM and 6 AM shows. Our show was at 11:40 AM.

I fully expected to leave with a neck ache after staring up at a 5-story-high screen into Odysseus’s nostrils for three hours. But even though we were ridiculously close, it wasn’t bad. 

I didn’t know this at the time, but there are only 25 theaters in the entire US that have the rare equipment needed to show the film in IMAX 70mm.

If you want, check here to see if there’s one near you:

https://www.statspanda.com/blog/the-odyssey-imax-70mm-theaters

I live 2 hours from the Rochester, NY one.

Now that I’ve seen it, here’s what I’d tell anyone who wants to go: 

Number 1. 

Go with the right people. This is not a movie to go to with people who have no clue what this story is about—people who have never referenced a Trojan horse, or described themselves as caught between Scylla and Charybdis, or imagined themselves tied to a mast to resist temptation. 

At the very least, make sure your friends have Wikipedia-ed the basic plot. 

As we were walking into the theater, Fred said, “What’s this movie about, basically?

Ideally, go with someone who has read it, even if they read it a long time ago. Go with someone who has already “seen” this movie in their imaginations, someone who has seen Penelope at her loom, negotiated Scylla and Charybdis, run from the Cyclops. 

The thrill for me, who had already “seen” these things in my imagination, was to see them come to life on the screen. For me, this movie was so much better than what I had concocted in my own imagination, by like, a thousand-fold. And that is almost NEVER the case for me with books and movies. The movie is always, or mostly, a disappointment. Not this one.

Afterward, I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to compare notes with another person who had already experienced it in their imagination. 

Neither G nor Fred had read it. As we were standing in the lobby afterward, me, gobsmacked, I asked Fred what he thought. 

He thought it was all right, basically a Jason Bourne movie (apparently Matt Damon plays Jason Bourne in a series of action-adventure movies) 

I felt a kind of shock. I also felt disappointed in a crestfallen kind of way. I said nothing. 

It is totally okay to not agree or feel the same way about a movie like The Odyssey with someone, but not with someone who doesn’t recognize that all the ubiquitous cultural references to siren songs, Trojan horses, or feeling caught between Scylla and Charybdis come from this epic poem. 

Number 2.

Do a brief refresh of the plot line. Even though I read it in college and again when the Emily Wilson translation came out in 2017, I had forgotten much of it. Like, why did he need to sack Troy? Just because Helen cheated on Menelaus with Paris? How could adultery cause all this violence and slaughter?

But when I checked when I got home, yup, that was it. 

Man, it was so violent. It was also so fucking loud. At moments, I thought to myself: “This is a boy’s movie. This is the kind of violence boys like to watch: people’s heads getting lopped off, people being impaled on swords.”

 I really hate those kinds of movies.

But that being said, it was the sacking of Troy that revealed Odysseus’s character.

Odyseus, as it turns out, is no hero. He’s not noble. He’s a piece of shit, really. I felt sorry for him only when I recognized he had PTSD. What he did to Troy ruined him. But not enough. I found him more pathetic than heroic. 

Number 3.

Don’t get distracted by the reviews. It’s a movie, for cryin’ out loud.

The whole flap doodle with Emily Wilson is boring to me. Yeah, he (Nolan) took tons of liberties with her translation. Yeah, he got a lot “wrong.” Yeah, his portrayal of Circe was stingy and narrow, but he got so much right. 

It was a masterpiece of cinematic art. He didn’t use CGI. It was shot on film. It wasn’t a book. It was a movie. And a fucking masterful one.

The casting was brilliant, IMHO. 

Ever since I saw it last Friday, it’s all I can think about, but not in some ruminative, intellectual way. I see scenes: Calypso on the beach, Odysseus surrendering to the sea in a raft, Circe saying, “Return to your disguises” as she turns the pigs back to men. The dog Argus and his tail. Penelope telling Telemachus that she deserved the throne! (Damn straight she did!) The scene inside the horse. The whirlpool, the dead rising from the black dirt.

So many scenes! They emerge in my dreams and I entertain them. I want to think about them.

I want to see it again, and I’m going to, on September 2^nd. This time I’m going with Ira, who is reading it now (he’s more an Iliad fan. I don’t think he’s read The Odyssey.)

I’m also rereading the Wilson translation again. Not to compare the book to the movie, but for the pure pleasure of it.

Lots of commentators, whether they love the movie or not, are all agreeing that its emphasis on The Law of Zeus, which is to welcome the stranger, is what our society needs to focus on right now. 

Also, if this movie makes people curious to read this epic poem, that is amazing. 

If you can see it, I think you should. If it makes you want to read it, even better.

Five stars.