“The Iliad has no “truth” in it, no facts not clothed in a mystical and sacramental glory. Rather, it is theophany in dark relief. The hearer of the Iliad becomes Panaghia [Mary] at the foot of the cross, gazing upon Christ’s unjust crucifixion. For the fact is that all the men in the Iliad die unjustly, Simone Weil tells us, in the sense that they are all trapped within the same world of blind might where they must kill or be killed. And the poetry, the language, and the spirituality of the Iliad are all superb.”
-Timothy Patitsas
Jonathan Shay
Reading The Iliad requires of me a certain focus of mind that I don’t always have, which is why it’s taking a while. I listen to the audio version of the Fagles translation, and I have the same in the print edition, which I like better. I am listening to Elizabeth Vandiver’s Teaching Company series of lectures, and I read Rosemary Sutcliff’s retelling for children, Black Ships Before Troy.
But the first impetus for this recent interest probably came from Timothy Patitsas, by way of his book The Ethics of Beauty, which in turn was prompted by his reading of Jonathan Shay’s Achilles in Vietnam. On the occasion of Veterans Day, Patitsas has shared on his Substack site an excerpt from the introduction to his own book, which relates how a study of Homer is meaningful for soldiers in this modern era. Another excerpt from his post:
“That act of listening to the recitation of the Iliad from someone who knew it by heart over days or weeks worked because it took place in a communal setting among other veterans and it showed a kind of universal compassion to all the soldiers equally. Since in the Iliad there are no good guys or bad guys, its performance helps you to renounce resentment and villainization…. the wind of hate (the spiritual shock of realizing that another human being hates you enough to want to kill you) is itself the villain. It is a force and everyone is the victim of the empire of naked force.”
Last week I drove across the county to a memorial service for a dear friend. This was in the valley where our growing family lived for about seventeen years, and where my late husband worked for most of his career. The journey was through hills and valleys, vineyards and oak forests, where the early rains have brought out the most gorgeous colors of the season. In my town the Chinese Pistache trees are making the biggest splashes right now, but over there a wide assortment of sizes and shapes of venerable trees, and sloped vineyards of several wine grape varietals, brightened the landscape with a rich palette. So many beautiful sights nourished my heart! But in the end, it was a remembrance from my own garden that seemed to best illustrate this poem.
NOVEMBER
It is an old drama this disappearance of the leaves, this seeming death
of the landscape. In a later scene, or earlier, the trees like gnarled magicians produce handkerchiefs of leaves out of empty branches.
And we watch. We are like children at this spectacle of leaves, as if one day we too will open the wooden doors of our coffins and come out smiling and bowing all over again.
I didn’t bake this apple pie, and I won’t be at the event where it will be eaten this evening, but it is a product of my kitchen and came out of my oven, so I feel invested in it. Its beauty is obvious, but its butteriness you can only imagine.
After the pie went out the door, I popped some popcorn. I have taken to eating this snack in the last few months, whereas I didn’t for many years previous. I like to cook it in beef tallow in a heavy saucepan, shaking it frequently as it pops away on the gas range. How do you pop corn? And do you like yellow or white popcorn? The last time I bought it, I tried the white variety, and was disappointed to find that the popped kernels are smaller than the yellow. I can’t decide if I like the relative softness better or not.
You can see behind the popcorn that I have my sewing machine on the table. This used to be a common sight, in the long, long ago. Yesterday I tried to start on a Christmas sewing project upstairs in my Sewing-Morning Room, but the old Kenmore in a cabinet there is not working right. So I took my other old machine out of the cupboard and after a little oiling it is running like a dream.
This machine I bought when a freshman in college, at a sewing and fabric store in Santa Barbara. It had been retired from its first life in a high school home economics class, and sold for $40. I am very fond of it, as it has been the most reliable of all the machines I’ve owned. But little things show its age. The pads serving as feet, that might project one’s table from the screws, are hard as rocks and crumbling. I don’t know if any shop would want to attempt a refurbishing of them…. I have the machine sitting on a towel for now.
The ferny asparagus of summer 2021
Joyous news: All the work I did to “sanitize” my asparagus bed last fall seems to have paid off. I was trying to mitigate the horrid infestation of aphids my plants had suffered in their ferny stage, two years in a row, forcing me to cut them down several months earlier than is best; one wants them to carry on photosynthesis for the nourishment of the crowns underground.
What I did was to remove all the mulch, apply a fresh layer of topsoil, and finally a thick layer of fresh mulch. This year the fronds are naturally turning yellow, at the appropriate time, and I haven’t see a single aphid. It is such a relief. This picture of the neighbor cat on the renewed asparagus bed is from last October.
On the subject of pests, you might remember that I was wondering why the fruit of my fig tree was dropping when still hard and unripe. Nikkipolani suggested that Black Fig Fly might be the problem, and after researching online and looking carefully at the fruit and my tree, I discovered both the larva and the fly on site. Ugh! It seems that sanitation is once again the main thing I can do to try to solve this problem, so I’m going to remove all the (wood chip or “arbor”) mulch and old fruit from under the fig and keep the soil bare. I will spare you photos of all the damage done by these insects. It’s not pretty.
My sister Nancy was visiting recently from California’s agricultural heartland, and she and I shopped at two nurseries. I bought some heuchera plants that are just the thing I was looking for to put in this area where I also had planted white Japanese anemones and violas and some blue grass. Other finds from this fall I will wait to show you when they are looking like something next spring. I replanted the area by the front door just before the rains came.
In the pot by the doorstep, I popped in more of those orange violas with succulents. I’m thinking I need to find a tall box or planter to put there, in which I can display whatever pretty thing I can find, even if I have to switch it out every month when it fades. The current pot-within-a-broken-pot system leaves something to be desired.
I don’t have much fall decor, but I did put up this garland that my daughter-in-law Joy made for me several years ago. We were given a giant pumpkin that we kept by the front door for a few days, and then Bea roasted it into 29 cups of puree for the freezer. So far we’ve used it for muffins, pumpkin chia seed pudding, and pumpkin pancakes.
I baked hefty loaves of Chocolate Banana Bread, the recipe for which I’ll try to post soon.
When I was waiting in an office the other day, I was seated just opposite this painting, which appears to be a depiction of the local scenery right now.
“The Synaxis of the Chief of the Heavenly Hosts, Archangel Michael and the Other Heavenly Bodiless Powers: Archangels Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Selaphiel, Jehudiel, Barachiel, and Jeremiel was established at the beginning of the fourth century at the Council of Laodicea, which met several years before the First Ecumenical Council. The 35th Canon of the Council of Laodicea condemned and denounced as heretical the worship of angels as gods and rulers of the world, but affirmed their proper veneration.” oca
The Archangel Michael
In icons, the ribbons extending from the ears of angels
symbolize that they are always attending to God
and ready to obey.
“The Iliad has no “truth” in it, no facts not clothed in a mystical and sacramental glory. Rather, it is theophany in dark relief. The hearer of the Iliad becomes Panaghia [Mary] at the foot of the cross, gazing upon Christ’s unjust crucifixion. For the fact is that all the men in the Iliad die unjustly, Simone Weil tells us, in the sense that they are all trapped within the same world of blind might where they must kill or be killed. And the poetry, the language, and the spirituality of the Iliad are all superb.” 
upstairs in my Sewing-Morning Room, but the old Kenmore in a cabinet there is not working right. So I took my other old machine out of the cupboard and after a little oiling it is running like a dream.
