Literary ordeals: thoughts on finishing James Joyce's Ulysses

Irish author James Joyce, 1882-1941

Sometimes I enjoy a challenge, like setting a goal and working through it. The goal might be something physical, like a marathon or trail run, or something like trying to learn a language or a musical instrument (one of each in my case).

Some of these challenges are literary, like reading War and Peace and such. Lately I completed a literary endurance run, to wit James Joyce's long, rambling, stream-of-consciousness rewrite of the Odyssey, titled Ulysses. 

(I think the unreadable French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss was right in this at least: a myth includes all its variants, as in Freud's ideas are as much a part of the Oedipus myth as Sophocles' tragedy. Ditto Joyce and Homer.)

I thought about it for a long time, but every time a picked up a copy and flipped through it my head began to swim. I also wasn't a big fan of his earlier work, Portrait of the Artist as a Young  Man, which introduces the aspiring author Stephen Daedalus, who is also a kind of self portrait of the author. 

To be honest, when I read that early book, I sometimes wanted to reach out and shake the narrator, especially the parts where he was too precious to attend Easter mass with his mother. I mean, would that have killed him?

Daedalus shows up in Ulysses as a stand in for Odysseus' son Telemachus. The main protagonist of Odysseus of the story is Leopold Bloom, a non-practicing Jewish resident of Dublin who sells newspaper advertising for the living. He's a married to Molly, from whom he has been physically estranged for ten years since the death of their infant son. She's the unfaithful counterpart to Odysseus' steadfast wife Penelope, although the ten year thing might have something to do with that. The whole action of the book takes place in one day and night in 1904, with most of the Dublin action reflecting some episode of the Odyssey.

It was pretty exhausting, all in all. I don't think I would have made it through by reading it, but was fortunately (maybe) able to listen to all 30+ hours of it on my smart phone thanks to the local library. I'm also glad that I'm fairly up on literature, philosophy, mythology and such, since the book is ate up with all the above. Otherwise I would have been totally lost. I still relied on a commentary to get through it.

My final verdict (not that I'm a judge): it really was quite an achievement, packing all the references and ideas he did into an imagined 24 hour period. His stream of consciousness style of writing does a pretty good job of capturing what Buddhists call our "monkey mind," which skips from object to object like the critter moving from branch to branch.

The term "stream of consciousness" can be traced back to William James, the great American philosopher and psychologist, who wrote about "the stream of thought, of consciousness, or of subjective life." His style influenced many later writers from William Faulkner to Jack Kerouac.

So there's that, anyway. As the saying goes, it was real and it was fun, but I can't say it was real fun.

I guess I'm glad I did it. It was kind of like completing a difficult and long trail run in the summer: I enjoy having done it more than the actual process of doing it.

But next time I revisit the Odyssey story, it'll probably be Homer's original.

Travel gods

I have always felt an affinity for Odysseus. Not that I sacked Troy or blinded a cyclops or anything that dramatic. It's just that

1. much of my life involves the use of cunning (or at least attempts thereof);

2. I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get home; and

3. he and I both seem to have offended the travel gods at some point in the past. In his case, it was Poseidon. I'm not sure which Olympian has jusrisdiction over air travel.

Today, I'm hoping to make it home through what promises to be stormy skies. I hope it won't take me 10 years like it did him.

AN INTERESTING QUESTION was raised by Ken Ward at Coal Tattoo today. My guess is the answer would be no.

GOOD HEALTH ADVICE: keep moving.

URGENT FLYING DINOSAUR WITH COOL TEETH UPDATE here.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

One mile at a time

A random animal picture in which Arpad explores his feminine side.

The long-running fight over health care reform reached a milestone Saturday as the House of Representatives narrowly passed its version. It has a lot of good features, including a major expansion of Medicaid, a public option, regulations on the insurance industry and subsidies to help people purchase insurance.

I would have preferred that it would have left the Children's Health Insurance Program intact, something WV Senator Jay Rockefeller amended into the Senate bill, but maybe that will be resolved in conference after--if--the Senate passes its version.

This has been a long, tiring fight, with plenty of drama and melodrama--and we're far from done. A lot of effort will be required to get something through the Senate and to arrive at some kind of compromise between the houses.

It reminds me of running a marathon. Having completed a few of those (none too rapidly, let it be admitted), I've found it to be a good strategy not to focus on running the whole 26.2 miles. Instead, focus on the mile you're running. Once you finish that one, focus on the next.

We just passed another mile marker. Now let's focus on the next.

HEALTH CARE WHACKADOODLE-ISM. Here's a mini-encyclopedia of it.

WHILE WE'RE AT IT, here's Krugman on the same.

STATE BUDGET WOES. West Virginia has its share, although so far it hasn't been as hard hit as many states.

ODYSSEUS LIVES! Long time readers of Goat Rope know that El Cabrero has a great deal of fondness for the epics of Homer and what they can still teach us today (search Iliad, Odyssey, Homer in the top left corner for earlier series on them). Here's an op-ed from the NY Times about the Odyssey and what it can teach us about the difficulties and dangers for veterans on their homecoming.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The fog of war

There are plenty of good reasons for reading the classics, such as the Iliad, the Odyssey and the Aeneid. One of the best I've found is that it's a pretty good description of real life.

El Cabrero doesn't spend a lot of time at the legislature of my beloved state of West Virginia, but I was there enough this time to have a little mock Homeric deja vu.

In the Iliad, the tide of battle often switches back and forth, as various humans fight away and as various gods intervene here and there. No one really knows everything that is going on. As in the Aeneid, Rumor is the swiftest of the gods.

In the case of WV, the great god Randomness seems to have a lot of clout as well. Also prominent deities are Hades, god of wealth, Hermes, god of merchants and thieves, not to mention the great god Biscuit, patron of those who oppose menu labels with calorie information and the god of the gutless whose name escapes me at the moment.

At crucial times, Zeus weighs the fates of the combatants on his golden scales, which tip one way or another.

Of the many skirmishes this time, one of the most important ones had to do with the fate of WV's unemployment compensation fund, which is heading towards emptiness in the non-Buddhist sense.

A decent version passed the state senate, which included things that neither labor nor business was all that happy with. Then things hit the house side and everything was on again. In the end, a decent bill seemed to pass after some amendments.

The tide went one way and then another and even people I usually turn to find out what is really going on wasn't all that sure what was happening.

It can be quite a show but, alas, it is an epic without a bard.

AFTER THE BUST, a boom in bankruptcies.

WHAT'S NEXT? How bout doga, or yoga with dogs? While we're at it...

BETTER THAN A DOG? That may have been a factor in Charles Darwin's decision to marry. I could think of any number of things to say but will relinquish the opportunity.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Lucky us (?)

Tibetan wheel of life and death, courtesy of wikipedia.

According to Buddhist teachings, I'm a pretty lucky guy. And if you're reading this, you probably are too, just by virtue of being human. Buddhists believe (metaphorically at least) that without attaining enlightenment, sentient beings are destined to cycle on and on in Samsara, the realm of birth and death.

Depending on karma, one can be reborn in any of six realms, which range from heavens to hells. All such states are impermanent, but some are more or less pleasant than others.

Believe it or not, being born as a human is one of the better gigs. It is believed to be the only one in which one can make progress towards waking up and escaping the endless cycle of coming into being and passing away. Those born in other realms are either too ignorant, miserable or blissed-out to make any headway.

According to some Buddhist teachings, human birth is really, really rare. As in imagine a blind tortoise at the bottom of the ocean that swims to the surface once every hundred years in an effort to put his neck in a wooden yoke floating on the surface. He's got a better chance of doing it than most beings have of being born as a human.

One doesn't have to take this literally to get the point that people do have a vast potential if they choose to develop it. Still, if we're the lucky ones, I'd hate to think what the other gigs are like...

ANOTHER NOD TO THE ODYSSEY. A few months back, there was an extended series here on the Odyssey of Homer and what it might have to say about the difficulties and dangers some combat veterans face on their homecoming. This item from the Jan. 2 New York Times is a case in point.

FROM HOMER TO VIRGIL. Speaking of the classics, in the Aeneid, Virgil speaks of the goddess Rumor (aka Fama or Ossa) as "nimble as quicksilver among evils." Here's a good AP article by the AP's Tom Breen on popular rumors and hoaxes of today.

HARD TIMES HAVE COME to the "bubble bourgeoisie."

STIMULUS. Will it be bold enough?

FUNERAL FOR A FRIEND. This weekend I attended a memorial service for William C. "Bill" Blizzard, who died in late December at the age of 92. He was the son of West Virginia labor legend Bill Blizzard, who led the historic miner's march of 1921. The march, which culminated in an armed struggle between union supporters and coal company thugs known as the Battle of Blair Mountain, was the largest workers' rebellion in American history.

An activist himself who paid the price more than once for his convictions, Blizzard was a writer and photographer and, as strange as it may sound these days, a gentleman and a scholar. In 2004, he published the result of years of research into the WV labor struggles in the book When Miners March. May light perpetual shine upon him.

My tribe diminishes...

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Make new friends but keep the old

This may be a bronze of the ancient Greek bard Hesiod. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

It is the immemorial custom at this blog (for the last couple years anyway) to reserve the last week or so of the year to discussing items from the Goat Rope book shelf. This involves giving a shout out to some of this year's best reading material, although little if any of it was written in 2008.

(Note: While El Cabrero is pleased to discuss selected books, I cannot divulge the total number of books consumed this year lest my employer realize what a slacker I am.)

This first installment consists of classics, many of which have been revisited after years since the previous perusal.

So here goes, starting with the ancients. The ancient Greek bard Hesiod was no Homer, but he had his moments. I started 2008 with another run through the Theogony, his account of the origin of gods, the universe and everything. As he put it,

In the beginning there was chaos.

Come to think of it, there still is.

Then came another look at Plato's Symposium, a dialogue on the nature of love. For some reason, I liked it better the last time I read it. Followers of this blog will not be surprised that the Odyssey of Homer got another look, since I spent a couple of months taking the long way home with its hero.

I also took another look at Rome's answer to the Homeric epics, the Aeneid of Virgil. Virgil was a more elegant writer than Homer although I prefer the latter. One difference between the work of Homer (whoever he was/they were) and Virgil is that the Homeric epics grew while Virgil's was self-consciously written. Good though.

I love these lines from Aeneas' visit to the underworld (which make a great mission statement):

...your arts are to be these:
To pacify, to impose the rule of law,
To spare the conquered, battle down the proud.

That works for me...

On the borderline between ancient and medieval literature lies Boethius' Consolations of Philosophy, a wonderful book by a man who was unjustly accused by the Powers that Were and which was composed while he prepared for a particularly nasty death. His musings on the nature of Fortune inspired this year's series on luck and randomness. It's definitely worth a look.

HEARTS OF DARKNESS, then and now, form the subject of this elegant rant by Chris Hedges. El Cabrero is a sucker for Joseph Conrad references.

LOOKING FOR A PLACE TO CUT SPENDING? There is quite a bit of indefensible "defense" spending which is really just corporate welfare.

EVERYBODY HURTS, but we hurt more if we think people are deliberately inflicting it.

PARLEZ USTED PAJARO? Here's an item on deciphering the songs of birds.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

What's updog? (And a poem)

Not much. How about you?

This weekend's poetry feature is the very last word of way too many on the ancient Greek bard Homer. El Cabrero promises the Gentle and Long-Suffering Reader that I will not write about him (or her) for a very long time. Probably.

Strange to say, Homer's epics the Iliad and the Odyssey were only known second hand in Europe from the decline of Rome until the "rediscovery" of Greek language and literature in the Renaissance. His works were indirectly known mostly through Roman writing. It took even longer for his works to be published in the common languages of Europe, but when it happened, the result was striking.

Here is a poem of John Keats (1795-1821) about how he felt when he first read an English translation. To us today, his reference to the conquistador/butcher Cortez is unfortunate but El Cabrero is not a literary Stalinist who censors old works that I don't entirely agree with. The butcher in question is mentioned here just in the context of his "discovery" of the Pacific Ocean, which for the poet is the only discovery he can imagine of a similar magnitude.

On first looking into Chapman’s Homer


MUCH have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow’d Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star’d at the Pacific—and all his men
Look’d at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

A hell of a trip

William Blake's rendition of Ulysses and Diomedes in hell.

Goat Rope is winding up on long series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find links and comments about current events. At this point, we've covered the epic pretty well and are now looking at what other writers have done with the character of Odysseus, aka Ulysses.

As noted in yesterday's post, Plato imagined that he would choose a calm, non eventful life next time around. But other writers, such as Dante, just weren't buying it. They imagined that Ulysses wouldn't be able to give up the itch for more travel and more adventures.

In Dante's Inferno, he wound up (or down) in the Eighth Circle of hell, a place reserved for fraud for the whole Trojan horse thing. Dante, after all, was a fan of Rome and the mythical founder of that city was the Trojan prince Aeneas. But it sounds like the real reason for his punishment was an endless thirst for adventure which leads him to set out again.

From the horse's mouth:

"When I

From Circe had departed, who concealed me
More than a year there near unto Gaeta,
Or ever yet Aeneas named it so,

Nor fondness for my son, nor reverence
For my old father, nor the due affection
Which joyous should have made Penelope,

Could overcome within me the desire
I had to be experienced of the world,
And of the vice and virtue of mankind;

But I put forth on the high open sea
With one sole ship, and that small company
By which I never had deserted been..."

(Dante, of course, never read Homer. In the medieval period, knowledge of Greek was mostly lost in the west and he didn't know the whole story--like the fact that Odysseus returned alone from his wanderings.)

In Dante's version, Ulysses/Odysseus made the blasphemous decision to push beyond the boundaries of the known world and sail out into the ocean where his ship met disaster:

I and my company were old and slow
When at that narrow passage we arrived
Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,

That man no farther onward should adventure.
On the right hand behind me left I Seville,
And on the other already had left Ceuta.

'O brothers, who amid a hundred thousand
Perils,' I said, 'have come unto the West,
To this so inconsiderable vigil

Which is remaining of your senses still
Be ye unwilling to deny the knowledge,
Following the sun, of the unpeopled world.

Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;
Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,
But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.'

So eager did I render my companions,
With this brief exhortation, for the voyage,
That then I hardly could have held them back.

And having turned our stern unto the morning,
We of the oars made wings for our mad flight,
Evermore gaining on the larboard side.

Already all the stars of the other pole
The night beheld, and ours so very low
It did not rise above the ocean floor.

Five times rekindled and as many quenched
Had been the splendour underneath the moon,
Since we had entered into the deep pass,

When there appeared to us a mountain, dim
From distance, and it seemed to me so high
As I had never any one beheld.

Joyful were we, and soon it turned to weeping;
For out of the new land a whirlwind rose,
And smote upon the fore part of the ship.

Three times it made her whirl with all the waters,
At the fourth time it made the stern uplift,
And the prow downward go, as pleased Another,

Until the sea above us closed again."

As we'll see tomorrow, Tennyson picked up on this theme as well.

UNGOOD NEWS. The economic meltdown has wiped out $2 trillion in retirement savings.

LOOKING ON THE BRIGHT SIDE. Some economists see the financial meltdown as a chance to promote a more sustainable economy that looks beyond short term profits.

WHEN FACTS DON'T MATTER. Here's more on a recent study of the lasting effects of misinformation.

I KNOW YOU'RE ASKING YOURSELF THIS QUESTION, to wit: what do fish that live five miles below the surface of the ocean do and what do they look like? Your answer awaits here.

THIS IS TOTALLY WEIRD, but El Cabrero's beloved state of West Virginia is actually leading the nation in economic growth.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: INCOMPREHENSIBLE

The afterlife of an epic

Plato (left) and Aristotle in a detail from Raphael's The School of Athens. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

This is the very last week here of a long running series on the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to say to us today. You'll also find links and comments about (some) current events. If you like the classics, check the blog archives. The series started August 4 and has run on weekdays since then, hitting most of the stops of Odysseus on his 10 year journey home.

Given the popularity of this story over the ages, it's no surprise that people would have a hard time leaving it alone. The figure of Odysseus keeps showing up in works of literature over the ages.

One place where he showed up in classical Greece was in Plato's Republic. This is a little ironic since Plato didn't have a very high impression of Homer or at least of the moral value of his epics (probably because he didn't get it).

Toward the end of Plato's most famous dialogue comes a discussion of the afterlife commonly known as "the myth of Er." In the story, Er is a soldier who has what we would call a near death experience in which he gets to explore the afterlife and return to tell the tale.

In the afterlife, souls are rewarded or punished for their deeds on earth. For the very wicked, the punishment seems to last forever. Others, after a suitable interval, have a chance to choose their next life. Some humans choose to live as animals and vice versa. Many souls make grave mistakes at this point, choosing what seems to be a pleasant life even though it may lead to further punishment and sufferings.

After all his travels and sufferings, Odysseus has had his fill of adventure and the quest for glory. He chooses a dull life that others rejected. As Plato put it,

There came also the soul of Odysseus having yet to make a choice, and his lot happened to be the last of them all. Now the recollection of former tolls had disenchanted him of ambition, and he went about for a considerable time in search of the life of a private man who had no cares; he had some difficulty in finding this, which was lying about and had been neglected by everybody else; and when he saw it, he said that he would have done the had his lot been first instead of last, and that he was delighted to have it.

As we'll see tomorrow, Dante envisioned a whole different scenario for Odysseus...in hell.

WEIGHING IN ON THE MELTDOWN. Here are the views of five economists on where the economic mess is likely to go from, of all places, al Jazeera.

COAL STRUGGLE MAKES CNN. Some coalfield groups and residents are proposing wind energy as an alternative to mountaintop removal mining. The story is going national.

LATIN LIVES. Who said it was a dead language anyway?

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Where will it end?

Athena, courtesy of wikipedia.

We're almost done with a long series on the Odyssey of Homer. You'll also find links and comments about current events. When I started writing about what this timeless classic had to say to us today, I never thought it would last this long. What can I say? Homer is the man (or maybe, as some have speculated, the woman).

For many readers, the least satisfying part of the book is the ending. Odysseus, Telemachus and some faithful servants finally wreak terrible vengeance on the 108 suitors and the unfaithful maids and servants. In a contest, Odysseus strings a bow as only he can do and a massacre ensues.

(The goat herder Melanthius comes to a particularly nasty end. El Cabrero's one complaint about the bard is that he was a little rough on a fellow goat herder. I'm not sure you can really blame the guy for being such a jerk: this is an occupational hazard of hanging out with goats. But I digress...)

The people of Ithaca are not happy about this slaughter. Nor are they particularly pleased with a commander who loses every single one of his 600 men after the war was over.

A fresh conflict is about to ensue between Odysseus, son Telemachus, father Laertes, and servants and a mob of Ithacans when the gods intervened. Athena cries out

"in a piercing voice that stopped all fighters cold,
"Hold back, you men of Ithaca, back from brutal war!
Break off--shed no more blood--make peace at once!"

With that,

...Terror blanched their faces,
they went limp with fear, weapons slipped from their hands
and strewed the ground at the goddess' ringing voice...

At her command, they made a pact of peace.

It is kind of hard to believe (even in an epic with all kinds of gods and monsters and wonders). But it does raise this point: how does the spiral of violence come to an end, with one provocation being answered by yet another with no end in sight and with all sides feeling justified in doing what they do?

Homer seems to suggest that we do need some kind of divine intervention for that to happen. If it's on the menu, I'll take it. Another reading is to say that our only hope is in what the goddess Athena embodies: wisdom, craft and strategy.

Or maybe they're the same thing.

THE END OF AFFLUENZA? Maybe.

PAYBACK. Here's an interesting item on our innate sense sense of justice, the desire to punish cheaters, and capacity for forgiveness.

THE RECESSION AND YOUR HEALTH. Economic downturns can have some interesting effects.

GET THE PICTURE on climate change? If not, click here.

WARM BLOODED. Half of all mammal species are in decline and one fourth are headed for extinction, according to this report. Here's more on the topic.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The bed of Odysseus

Odysseus and Penelope by Francesco Primaticcio (1563), courtesy of wikipedia.

Along with links and comments about current events, the ongoing theme at Goat Rope for quite a while now has been the Odyssey of Homer. El Cabrero is striving mightily to wind it up but it takes a while to stop at train or turn a ship around. I'm trying though.

Whatever else you can say about Odysseus, as strange as it may seem he really did have a loving bond with his wife Penelope. This is true despite his 20 years of wandering and the occasional dalliance with a goddess or two. After all, he gave up Calypso's offer of immortality to go home to her.

One symbol of the power of that bond is the story of their bed. Toward the end of the epic, Odysseus, disguised as a beggar, gradually reveals himself to his family and faithful servants. It's hard to tell when the recognition occurred since they are all operating under stress from the threat of more than 100 insolent suitors. It's sort of a game of classics geeks to speculate about what did Penelope know and when.

Penelope in particular is skeptical of anyone who claims to have knowledge of Odysseus after many years of lies and rumors. She also fears being deceived by someone who claims to be her husband. When at last they talk, she pretends to doubt him, which leads him to protest

"Strange woman! So hard--the gods of Olympus
made you harder than any other woman in the world!
What other wife could have a spirit so unbending?
Holding back from her husband, home at last for her
after bearing twenty years of brutal struggle."

As a way of giving him a final test (or of just messing with him), she asks the maid to move their bed so that the stranger can sleep on it--alone.

Now here's the thing about that bed. It is absolutely immovable by any mortal, have been built around the stump of an olive tree. He is devastated at the thought that anyone could have moved it:

"Woman--your words, they cut me to the core!
Who could move my bed? Impossible task,
even for some skilled craftsman--unless a god
came down in person, quick to lend a hand,
lifted out with ease and moved it elsewhere.
Not a man on earth, not even at peak strength,
would find it easy to prise it up and shift it, no,
a great sign, a hallmark lies in its construction."

With that, she knows she's got her man:

"...now, since you have revealed such overwhelming proof-
the secret sign of our bed, which no one's ever seen
but you and I and a single maid, Actoris,
the servant my father gave me when I came,
who kept the doors of our room you built so well...
you've conquered my heart, my hard heart, at last!"

The goddess Athena even gives the couple a special break:

She held back the night, and night lingered long
at the western edge of the earth, while in the east
she reined in Dawn of the golden throne at Ocean's banks.
commanding her not to yoke the windswift team that brings men light...

They had a lot of catching up to do. The lengthened night gave them time to love, talk and sleep.

There are some powerful images in the Odyssey, like Penelope's loom, and this is one of them. The image of this immovable bed symbolizes a deep bond between a couple that not even the ravages of the years can uproot. You don't see a whole lot of that these days.

OH GOOD. The US lost 159,000 jobs in September, the biggest loss since March 2003, according to this Jobs Byte from the Center for Economic and Policy Research.

ON A SIMILAR NOTE, this snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute looks at trade deficit related job losses in 2007.

HOMO ECONOMICUS don't live around here.

WAKE UP. Here's an item on the medical utility of mindfulness meditation.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Dream weaver, Penelope, the bailout and more

Along with links and comments about current events, Goat Rope is winding down a long series on the Odyssey of Homer. Much of the series has focused on the misadventures of Odysseus' homecoming and how these shed light both on ordinary life and particularly on veterans coming home from war.

One character who has not received her due here has been the faithful wife Penelope, who in her own was was as crafty as her husband. Incidentally, Margaret Atwood wrote The Penelopiad to tell the whole story from her point of view.

With Odysseus gone and presumed dead, her status was unclear. There was little or now place in that society for an independent woman of child-bearing years. Now that her son Telemachus is coming of age, she is under enormous pressure to remarry. Over 100 suitors are basically camped out at her home and are devouring the family's estate. They even plot the murder of Telemachus.

To gain time, she says she must complete her duties by weaving a burial shroud for Odysseus' father Laertes, which she secretly unravels at night until her secret is revealed by a treacherous maid.

In the epic cycle, she is seen as the ideal wife, in direct contrast to Clytemnestra, the wife of Agamemnon who murders her husband on his homecoming to revenge his sacrifice of her daughter Iphigenia (although there are many here among us who would say Agamemnon had it coming).

My favorite scene with Penelope in the Odyssey is her discussion of the nature of dreams. As you may have noticed, some dreams make sense and some don't. Here's her explanation:

"Ah my friend," seasoned Penelope dissented,
"dreams are hard to unravel, wayward, drifting things--
not all we glimpse in them will come to pass...
Two gates there are for our evanescent dreams,
one is made of ivory, the other made of horn.
Those that pass through the ivory cleanly carved
are will-o'-the-wisps, their message bears no fruit.
The dreams that pass through the gates of polished horn
are fraught with truth, for the dreamer who can see them..."

The problem is it's kind of hard to tell true dreams and false ones apart sometimes, whether we're awake or asleep.

WELFARE FOR WALL STREET UPDATE. The House is likely to vote today on the Wall Street bailout. Here's an action alert and analysis from the American Friends Service Committee.

SCAPEGOAT. Right wingers are trying to blame the Community Reinvestment Act (and minorities) for the Wall Street meltdown. That would be another dog that don't hunt.

URBAN PLOWBOY. Here's an interesting item on the future of urban farming.

SCORE ONE FOR SIGMUND. A new medical study finds that old school psychodynamic therapy works as well as other treatments for certain mental disorders.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: WHO KNOWS?

Man's best friend and an important action alert on the bailout

Note: The Goat Rope is nearing the end of a series of posts about the Odyssey of Homer, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this kind of thing, please click on earlier posts.

What person born with a living soul isn't a sucker for a dog story? There's a great little dog nugget towards the end of the Odyssey. Odysseus, after 10 years of war and 10 more years of wandering, has finally made it home to Ithaca. He is disguised as a beggar as he approaches his home, where over 100 insolent suitors are devouring the resources of his family.

Odysseus is generally pretty good at self-control in a dangerous situation and at hiding his emotions, but he wasn't prepared for this:

Now, as they talked on, a dog that lay there
lifted up his muzzle, pricked his ears...
It was Argos, long-enduring Odysseus' dog
he trained as a puppy once, but little joy he got
since all too soon he shipped to sacred Troy.
In the old days young hunters loved to set him
coursing after the wild goats and deer and hares.
But now with his master gone he lay there, castaway,
on piles of dung from mules and cattle, heaps collecting
out before the gates till Odysseus' self-serving men
could cart it off to manure the king's estates.
Infested with ticks, half-dead from neglect,
here lay the hound, old Argos.

Out of everyone Odysseus meets during his homecoming, the only critter who recognizes and greets him right away is the dog:

But the moment he sensed Odysseus standing by
he thumped his tail, nuzzling low, and his ears dropped,
though he had no strength to drag himself an inch
toward his master.

Odysseus can't run up to greet the dog, because this would reveal his identity to the murderous suitors. So he turns his head, sheds a tear, and asks the swineherd Eumaeus about him. He replies

"Here--it's all too true--here's the dog of a man
who died in foreign parts. But if he had now
the form and flair he had in his glory days--
as Odysseus left him, sailing off to Troy--
you'd be amazed to see such speed, such strength.
No quarry he chased in the deepest, darkest woods
could ever slip this hound. A champion tracker too!
Ah, but he's run out of luck now, poor fellow...
his master's dead and gone, so far from home,
and the heartless women tend him not at all....."

Odysseus never got the chance to try to make up for lost time:

...the dark shadow of death closed down on Argos' eyes
the instant he saw Odysseus, twenty years away.

A little dog-reality note: the point of this story is about the loyalty and love of the dog and about his neglect. However, El Cabrero can vouch for the fact that lying on a manure pile is not a sign of neglect. The dogs of my acquaintance love to lay in, roll around upon, and sometimes eat all kinds of stinky stuff, manure and dead things included. And any dog--then or now--that lived 20 years couldn't have had it all that bad. But I still fell for it.

SPEAKING OF DOGS, the Senate's bailout bill may have passed, but it don't hunt. The House may vote on it by Friday at latest word. Here's the full text of an action alert urging people to contact their representatives and ask them to fill in the blanks in the legislation:

Take Action: Let Congress Know the Bailout Solution Should not be Driven by Fear

The financial crisis in the United States today is not in the Dow Jones but in our communities, where millions of people are threatened by home foreclosures and a sluggish economy. This is a deep and wide crisis that should receive thoughtful attention, not a panicked response driven by fear.

Today the Senate will vote on a revised version of the Emergency Economic Recovery Act of 2008, which the House of Representatives rejected on Sept. 29 by a 228-205 margin. Although it is likely to pass in the Senate, this bill still fails to address the causes of the crisis or its impact on most people. The House is likely to take up the issue again on Friday.

Congress should develop and pass stronger legislation that meets the following principles:

Bankruptcy Protection - This bill must grant authority for bankruptcy judges to restructure mortgages and allow government to work with loan servicers on new mortgage terms, thereby providing stability and security for local communities and the economy as a whole.

A Strong Economic Recovery Package - Congress must adopt measures that will create jobs for workers who have lost their employment and invest in the needs of local communities.

Taxpayer Protection - The public’s massive investment in our financial institutions must be vigorously protected. Tough independent oversight, transparency, and an assurance of repayment from the financial service companies must be mandatory. The public must receive significant return for the assets we acquire.

Regulatory Framework – To address the causes of recent financial failures, the financial system should be regulated in ways that support sound lending and investment, and that also protect taxpayers and consumers. The regulatory framework should be revisited to restore good governance in our financial institutions.

Limitations on Executive Compensation - Strict limits on compensation and severance packages for senior executives must be enacted on any institution receiving taxpayer-funded assistance.

Your Voice is Needed! Call your House Representative Today.

The Congressional switchboard, fax and email systems are crashing do to volume, so the only way to reach your Representative is to call their DC office directly. Click here to enter your address and find your Representative and their direct phone number.

Ask your Representative not to act out of fear and take the time to do this right for the long-term well-being of your community.

The American Friends Service Committee is providing a toll-free number to the congressional switchboard: 1-800-473-6711.

ONE MORE THING ON THAT: Here's an opinion piece from AFSC General Secretary Mary Ellen McNish about the values that should guide a response to the crisis.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Is a court-martial in order?

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

The theme at Goat Rope lately has been the Odyssey of Homer, along with links and comments about current events. We're almost done, but there are a few loose ends.

One of which is about Odysseus' style as a leader. It's tempting to wonder how a contemporary military officer would be treated after performing as badly as he did during his homecoming (my guess is the Bush administration would probably promote him).

To recap, he lost 12 ships and 600 or so men--after the fighting was over. As Jonathan Shay sums it up in Odysseus in America: Combat Trauma and the Trials of Homecoming reminds us,

*he loses control of his troops and suffers 72 casualties in a botched and unnecessary pirate raid on the Circoneans;

*he puts himself and his men at risk needlessly and impulsively (the whole Cyclops thing);

*he protects his own ship but loses the rest when they approach the land of the Laestrygonians;

*he can't even be bothered to count his men when he leaves the island of Circe;

*he can't control his men when they violate the command not to kill and eat the sun god Helios' cattle. (Note: all of these have been the subjects of previous posts.)

As Shay puts it after looking over the evidence from the Iliad and the Odyssey,

As a staff officer, strategist, independent intelligence operative, and solo fighter, Odysseus was brilliant. As a troop leader, he was a catastrophe. Homer's great epics show him in full depth and perspective.

One thing hasn't changed from then to now in war as well as "peace," ordinary people pay the price for bad leadership.

SPEAKING OF PAYING FOR BAD LEADERSHIP, it looks like the Senate will vote today on the Wall Street bailout bill. The new version raises FDIC depositor's insurance from $100,000 to $250,000 and includes more business tax cuts--as if blowing $700 billion on corporate welfare wasn't enough.

Many groups around the country are opposing the bailout as it now stands for its lack of support for ordinary Americans. Here's an alternate vision that a number of groups have supported. Actions opposing the bailout will occur in several states today and progressive groups have been scrambling to keep up with the latest developments.

WHILE WE'RE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT THE ECONOMIC CRISIS, we could always buy local.

HERE'S A LITTLE REMINDER that whatever happens with the bailout, there's nothing new about corporate welfare.

SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT. I've said this before and I'll say it again: what if everyone's Social Security was privately invested on Wall Street? Some people, who shall remain nameless, still want to do that.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

The wolf himself

Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is in the process of winding up a long series of reflections on the Odyssey of Homer, although you'll also find links and comments about current events.

Odysseus, the eponymous main character, is a hero in the ancient Greek sense of someone who lived a larger than normal life and whose deeds are remembered after his death. The word did not imply moral superiority and some of the most famous Greek heroes did some pretty nasty things.

Such is the case with our boy. As we've seen along the way, he's a terrible commander who is directly or indirectly responsible for the death of around 600 of his men on 12 ships--and that was after the war was over. He is secretive, totally lacking in social trust, excessive in his desire for revenge, and impulsive. He lies nearly every time he speaks, even when there's no good reason to do so. What's his deal, anyway?

The VA psychiatrist and classical scholar Jonathan Shay has some interesting thoughts about this. First, while Odysseus has been through many grueling ordeals at war and on his way home, he doesn't seem to have suffered from the classic symptoms of war-related post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) as a direct result. But there are interesting clues of an earlier trauma.

In his homecoming, he is recognized by his nurse Eurycleia by a scar on his thigh that he received as a child:

Bending closer
she started to bathe her master...then,
in a flash, she knew the scar--
that old wound
made years ago by a boar's white tusk when Odysseus
went to Parnassus, out to see [his grandfather] Autolycus and his sons.
The man was his mother's noble father, one who excelled
the world at thievery, that and subtle, shifty oaths.

Autolycus means something like "wolf-like" or "the wolf himself" or even "werewolf." It was he who gave him the name Odysseus, which means something like "man of pain" or "he who gives and receives pain."

When he was a boy, he went to visit Autolycus and nearly died on that hunt. Some commentators have seen this as a turning point in his development. This may have given him a sense that those who were responsible for his well-being couldn't be trusted. As Shay put it,

I see it as a darker transformation, when Odysseus concluded that no one was to be trusted, when he concluded that unless you beat them to it or get over on them first, other people only want to hurt, exploit, or humiliate you...

Shay notes that some of his patients who had the most difficult symptoms experienced abuse and neglect in childhood and adolescence prior to their military service.

...If the expectation that other people plan only harm, exploitation, and humiliation produces a cynical "strike first" attitude, trauma can produce an active, self-starting predator. Odysseus' scar alerts us to the interconnection of childhood trauma, combat trauma, and a veteran's character.

El Cabrero is well aware of the limited practical utility of psychoanalyzing literary characters, but there you have it. Let's just say he had issues.

THE BIG NEWS of course is the failure of the Wall Street bailout bill in the House. El Cabrero has mixed feelings about that. The bill was a vast improvement over what was originally proposed but didn't go far enough in helping ordinary Americans. The best advice I've heard is for people to take a deep breath and then start advocating again for a package that provides more protection for homeowners, an ownership state in every firm that receives public assistance and increased regulation of the financial industry. Congress also needs to consider another targeted stimulus package aimed at the hardest hit Americans.

RETHINKING "FREE" TRADE. Lots of economists are.

STALEMATE. A BBC poll conducted in 23 nations found that 59 percent of respondents believed that the Bush administration's "war on terror" either hasn't weakened al-Qaeda or made it stronger. Let me guess...the decision to invade Iraq didn't help.

URGENT DEEP SEA FISH COMMUNICATION UPDATE. Stop the presses! It appears that the cusk-eel uses some form of sonic communication, which is to say it makes noises to other cusk-eels. Take that, all you cusk-eel communication skeptics out there!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Odysseus and Telemachus open a can on the suitors. Image courtesy of wikipedia.

Along with links and comments about current events, the theme at Goat Rope lately has been the Odyssey of Homer and what it has to say to us today. We're almost done. So far we've followed his wanderings from Troy to his home at Ithaca. It has involved 10 years of fighting and 10 more of various adventures and (largely self-inflicted) disasters.

Now, like many veterans returning from war, he finds himself at home but doesn't recognize the place. Disguised as a beggar, he will be abused by arrogant suitors even within his own house.

You probably remember how the story ends. In the home stretch, Odysseus will wreak terrible vengeance on the suitors who have been devouring his substance, abusing the hospitality (xenia) of his house, harassing his faithful wife Penelope, and plotting the murder of his son Telemachus. In the end the people of Ithaca are so upset by the carnage that another battle almost ensues until the gods intervene and make peace.

But first he must alternately deceive and then reveal himself to those he knew, including the swineherd Eumaeus, Telemachus, his nurse Euraycleia, Penelope herself, and his father Laertes.

He is clearly in a dangerous position. Aside from the 108 suitors, many in Ithaca are angry over the fact that not a single one of his fellow countrymen survived the journey, largely due to the mistakes of their commander. But so ingrained is his tendency to resort to lies and stratagems (Greek: metis) that he often lies even when he has no reason to do so.

Not only that, but we've seen all the way along that he is secretive to a fault, that he conceals vital information from his men, and that he has absolutely no social trust. What is his major malfunction?

Maybe a scar holds the key. More on that tomorrow.

BAILOUT. Here's the latest on the compromise version of the Wall Street bailout, which is likely to be voted on in the House today. Short version: it's a little better than that originally proposed but leaves out a lot. Holy free market, Batman!

INJUSTICE KILLS. This article reviews research on inequality and health.

THE POLITICS OF RACE is the topic of this op-ed by yours truly.

MOTHER GOOSE! 50 million years ago, giant geese-like birds with a 5 meter wingspan and bony teeth flew over England. I want one!

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ?????

The letdown and the meltdown

Ithaca today, courtesy of wikipedia.

Have you ever wanted something badly for a long time only to be let down when you get it? That's what happened to Odysseus who for twenty years has longed for nothing so much as to see his home in Ithaca.

And when the voyage home finally happens, he totally missed it. The Phaeacians who have hosted the hero take him home on one of their swift sailing ships laden with gifts. During the journey,

an irresistible sleep fell deeply on his eyes, the sweetest,
soundest oblivion, still as the sleep of death itself.

He's still asleep when they land. The Phaeacians carry him and his gifts off the ship and leave without waking them. When he finally wakes up, he doesn't know where he is. In despair, he cried out as he did before:

"Man of misery, whose land have I lit on now?
What are they here--violent, savage, lawless?
or friendly to strangers, god-fearing men?"

As Jonathan Shay has noted, it's not uncommon for veterans returning from combat to have trouble recognizing the place they left behind. And for many, as for Odysseus, some of the worst problems occur when than finally get there.

BACK TO THE BAILOUT. El Cabrero and amigos from WV Citizen Action Group, the state AFL-CIO and Direct Action Welfare Group held a press conference yesterday about the Wall Street bailout proposal. We called for greater regulation of the finance industry, limits on CEO pay for companies getting corporate welfare, an equity share for American taxpayers, help for people dealing with foreclosure, and a stimulus package targeted at those who need it most.

This was part of a series of events all around the country calling for the same things. Here's CNN coverage of national efforts.

It now looks like a deal almost reached in Congress went up in smoke.

ON TOPIC, here economist Dean Baker's latest piece on the bailout and here's Paul Krugman's column on the need for grownups.

MEANWHILE, BACK AT THE RANCH, here's a snapshot from the Economic Policy Institute about unemployment trends across the states.

URGENT DINOSAUR UPDATE. The latest discovery is the smallest American dinosaur, which was chicken sized. This means the chickens on Goat Rope Farm are dinosaur sized.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: UNFATHOMABLE

Strapped to the mast, the siren song of the Wall Street bailout, and more

"Ulysses and the Sirens" by John William Waterhouse, courtesy of wikipedia.

"Siren" is a word that entered the English language from the Odyssey although the contrast between the real ones and the mythological ones is pretty stark. Sirens on emergency vehicles and loud and aversive, nothing that most people would like to listen to day in and day out.

The mythological sirens are mysterious female beings whose beautiful singing lures sailors to certain death. Their song is irresistible.

Odysseus, forewarned by the goddess Circe, puts beeswax in the ears of his men but is--of course--too driven by curiosity to miss out. He has his men tie him to the mast with strict orders to ignore his entreaties to let him go.

This is a great image. I've always found it compelling and have been in situations where I hear things that are tempting and distracting but have to focus on the task at hand or the journey home. It's a kind of universal thing. But, as with many places in the Odyssey, the danger of the sirens has a special meaning for a combat veteran like Odysseus trying to get home.

What did they sing? Here goes:

"Come closer, famous Odysseus--Achaea's pride and glory--
moor your ship on our coast so you can hear our song!
Never has any sailor passed our shores in his black craft
until he has heard the honeyed voices pouring from our lips,
and once he hears to his heart's content sails on, a wiser man."

Of course they are lying. But what makes them so dangerous is their subject:

"...We know all the pains that Achaeans and Trojans once endured
on the spreading plain of Troy when the gods willed it so--
all that comes to pass on the fertile earth, we know it all!"

The danger they represent is the danger of getting stuck in the past, of going over the scenes of war over and over again, of obsessing over what "really" happened, of missing out on the present. As Jonathan Shay puts it

The "voice" of the Sirens, scholars tell us, is the "voice" of the Iliad, the voice of a wartime past experienced as more real and meaningful than the present.

If Odysseus is going to make it home, he as to put the drive for kleos or glory behind him. (Note: kleos specifically means living in such a way as to be remembered in song after one dies.) This was also the theme of his encounter with the ghost of Achilles in the underworld in last Friday's post. Part of what he has to put behind him is the romantization of death and war as something romantic and glorious.

Next time: Scylla and Charybdis.

SPEAKING OF SIRENS--the US Congress would do well not to listen to the Bush Wall Street bailout plan/siren song. Short version:

*No blank-check bailout for Wall Street. Any plan to save the economy must put Main Street first.

*Congress should not blindly rush to pass bad legislation. They should take their time and get it right – even if it means a delay in adjournment.

*Putting Main Street first means, at a minimum: a) much more oversight, control over and regulation of financial institutions; b) limitations on CEO compensation; c) an economic recovery package to get the economy moving again; d) provisions to protect people facing foreclosures.

By the way,here's Dean Baker on the elements of a progressive response.

THIS WOULD NOT BE COOL. LITERALLY. Abrupt climate change is a distinct possibility.

MISMEASUREMENT. This Boston Globe commentary highlights the obsolete official federal poverty measure. This might be good to update since it looks like lots of us are going to get poorer unless things change.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE, pleasant smells can make for pleasant dreams.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Metaphor and reality

El Cabrero would like to thank regular readers of Goat Rope for putting up with a long series on the Odyssey of Homer. As I've written before, I think this epic of homecoming has universal human appeal but also can shed light on the difficulty many veterans have on returning from war.

I happened to grow up between the wars, but my father served in World War II, having enlisted shortly after asking, and I quote, "Where the #*%@ is Pearl Harbor?" He made it back in one piece but had trouble with his homecoming throughout his life. So have some other people I know who served in Vietnam or Iraq.

To recap, many of the misadventures Odysseus had on his long way home can be seen as metaphors for the many different ways people can lose their homecoming. Indeed, Odysseus can be seen as an example of how not to do it. As Jonathan Shay, a psychiatrist who works with veterans dealing with post-traumatic stress syndrome, wrote

Odysseus was absent from home for twenty years. Ten of those were the Trojan War itself. The remaining ten years were...what? The only account we have of them is Odysseus' fabulous tales told to the Phaeacian courtiers in Books 9-12. Might they have been ten years at home, but not home? Ten years of wildness, drinking, drugging, living on the edge, violence, sex addiction, not-so-petty crime, and of "bunkering in," becoming unapproachable and withdrawn? If so would not Odysseus have been just as "absent" a son to Anticleia, just as "absent" a husband to Penelope, and "absent" a father to Telemachus as if he still had been overseas? Could not these ten years have been told in metaphor as the very same story told in the Odyssey?

Get ready for the sirens...

THE DEBT OF NATIONS. Here's a view from Canada on the current US financial crisis. And here's Paul Krugman with more of the same.

HOW MANY ECONOMISTS DOES IT TAKE to change a light bulb? For many, the answer until recently was "None. The market will take care of it." As this item from the UK points out, it won't.

LOSING IT. The number of foreclosures in West Virginia has been greatly underreported, according to an investigation by the Charleston Gazette.

FEAR THIS. Here's more on the recent study of the psychology and politics of fear mentioned here last week.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED

Farewell to glory, plus stuff on the economy, fear, and whales

Statue of the death of Achilles, courtesy of wikipedia.

Goat Rope is all about the Odyssey of Homer these days, although you'll also find links and comments about current events. If you like this stuff, click back on earlier posts.

The visit Odysseus makes to the underworld is a turning point in the story. It can be seen as a kind of initiation, marking the end of Odysseus the warrior and the beginning of his return (although he ain't there yet).

He meets many people in the underworld. There's a sad encounter with the shade of his mother Anticlea, who died of grief after despairing of her son's return. There's a failed meeting with the ghost of Ajax, a mighty Greek warrior who went mad and committed suicide at Troy largely through the actions of Odysseus. Odysseus wants to make up but Ajax refuses to speak.

Lots of veterans--of war and peace--have lost people after having let them down in life and experience regret and survivor's guilt.

But one of the most important encounters is with the ghost of the warrior Achilles, who was given a choice between long life without fame and an early death but enduring fame. The Homeric term for fame or glory was kleos, which meant in part living on in song after one's death. Since the underworld was pretty grim, that was often regarded as the only meaningful form of immortality.

He did get fame--we're still talking about him today. But kleos turns out to have been an empty promise.

Odysseus, thinking him the most fortunate of men, greets him thus:

...Achilles,
there's not a man in the world more blest than you--
there never has been, never will be one.
Time was, when you were alive, we Argives
honored you as a god, and now down here, I see,
you lord it over the dead in all your power.
So grieve no more at dying, great Achilles.

He's not buying it. In a shocking renunciation of the cult of glory, Achilles replies

No winning words about death to me, shining Odysseus!
By god, I'd rather slave on earth for another man--
some dirt-poor tenant farmer who scrapes to keep alive--
than rule down here over all the breathless dead.

I think this farewell to and disparagement of glory--coming from someone who got more of it than anyone else--marks the key difference between the Iliad as a poem of kleos to the Odyssey as a poem of nostos or homecoming.

One last word: Achilles' renunciation of the "glory" of war calls to mind a saying of Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman:

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

BROTHER, CAN YOU SPARE A JOB? Job seekers outnumber jobs about about three to one, according to the latest Economic Policy Institute snapshot. Here's a related issue brief on the subject.

SOCIALISM FOR THE RICH, FREE ENTERPRISE FOR THE POOR. That pretty well sums up Wall Street bailouts while millions of American families are feeling the squeeze. I can't claim originality on this one, but free enterprisers in a recession are kind of like the proverbial atheists in foxholes.

ON A RELATED NOTE, this item argues that gouging the poor lies at the root of the credit/housing meltdown.

WITHOUT A NET. As the economy tanks, millions of workers are watching the value of their 401(k)s evaporate. This McClatchy article suggests that the economic crisis may lead Americans to re-evaluate the current social contract.

THE FIX. Here's Paul Krugman on what the bailout might look like.

THE FEAR FACTOR. A new study finds some interesting connections between political views and the response to fear.

URGENT ANCIENT WHALE UPDATE. The early ones used their back legs to swim--a feature missing on more recent models. El Cabrero doesn't know about y'all but I find the evolution of aquatic mammals fascinating.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: DON'T EVEN ASK