Dish soap. That would be where this entry stems from. My roommate brought us home a new bottle of dish soap, which we both cheered at - I'll never take having a dishwasher for granted again - and as I came to the sink later, and noticed the name of the brand: Ajax.
If anyone's seen Troy, you'll know the image of the burly man my mind went straight to - tall, strong, falls to Hector ( in the movie). I watched him before I read about him in Ovid, but there he was, his name never to die, emblazoned on a container of yellow dish soap. There's something about men always wanting their names to last through the ages in that movie, these grand gestures that will make them known to the world long after they are gone. My mind moved to Odysseus in that film as well (one of Sean Bean's only movie roles where he doesn't die) - a character who I despise...but who's wife I'm fond of.
And as I'm standing at the counter, I remember the phrase, "Penelope did this too." There was a poem, way back somewhere between grades three and six that I remembered very clearly being one of my favorites. I hadn't read it in ages, couldn't remember the title. But I found it.
I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.
If anyone's seen Troy, you'll know the image of the burly man my mind went straight to - tall, strong, falls to Hector ( in the movie). I watched him before I read about him in Ovid, but there he was, his name never to die, emblazoned on a container of yellow dish soap. There's something about men always wanting their names to last through the ages in that movie, these grand gestures that will make them known to the world long after they are gone. My mind moved to Odysseus in that film as well (one of Sean Bean's only movie roles where he doesn't die) - a character who I despise...but who's wife I'm fond of.
And as I'm standing at the counter, I remember the phrase, "Penelope did this too." There was a poem, way back somewhere between grades three and six that I remembered very clearly being one of my favorites. I hadn't read it in ages, couldn't remember the title. But I found it.
I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
Penelope did this too.
And more than once: you can't keep weaving all day
And undoing it all through the night;
Your arms get tired, and the back of your neck gets tight;
And along towards morning, when you think it will never be light,
And your husband has been gone, and you don't know where, for years.
Suddenly you burst into tears;
There is simply nothing else to do.
And I thought, as I wiped my eyes on the corner of my apron:
This is an ancient gesture, authentic, antique,
In the very best tradition, classic, Greek;
Ulysses did this too.
But only as a gesture,—a gesture which implied
To the assembled throng that he was much too moved to speak.
He learned it from Penelope...
Penelope, who really cried.
- Edna St. Vincent Millay An Ancient Gesture
All these mythic clues are jogging my memory the way music does. It's wonderful.
"Penelope, who really cried."
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