Waiting for The Odyssey

These past couple of months I’ve been re-reading The Odyssey trying a bunch of versions - the Fagles, Emily Wilson, Lattimore (the version I am quoting from) - all in anticipation of the Christopher Nolan movie which seems to have excited historians, philosophers, literary types and movie buffs alike. Homer and Nolan seem like a match made in heaven - non linear narration, blurred lines between myth and reality, and family relationships at the core of a story. Inception one could argue was a practice run for the real deal -a father trying to get back to his kids and his home battling imagined and real threats. Wait, wasn't that also Interstellar or The Prestige. And here you thought Chris Nolan was an original (jk)!  For that matter, it is not an exaggeration to say that most of the stories in the Western world spring from Homer! I am super excited to see the movie this weekend and hope it lives up to all my super-charged expectations. 

I didn’t encounter The Odyssey in school in India. It was not mandatory reading, but the key plot points have always been in my consciousness and I can’t trace the source (most likely my dad). I came to The Odyssey by way of James Joyce. I had wanted to read Ulysses for a long time and realized knowing The Odyssey would make it a tiny bit easier. Back then, the focus was always on the middle bit - Odysseus’ adventures - Cyclops, Circe, Hades, Sirens, Scylla & Charybdis, Helios and Calypso. The Telemachus and Penelope books were the boring bits to get through to get to the adventure! It took me nearly 20 years to finish Ulysses and at times I thought having read The Odyssey once was enough.

Then my daughter had to read the Emily Wilson’s version in 9th grade and I read it again alongside her. Suddenly I found my lens had changed. If we set aside the questions of history, was Homer real, and the patriarchy that is inherent in any epic, it is at its core a darn good tale raising serious questions on who is a hero, what does it mean to grow as a human being, the importance of family, doing right by others, what it means to be loyal, who bears the consequences of war and violence and perhaps most important of all - how do you face whatever fate/gods/ life throws at you and keep going! No wonder Joseph Campbell uses Homer to illuminate the Hero’s journey and the spiritual implications of such a journey.

One of my favorite books in the poem is Book V. When Calypso offers him immortality and a life of unending pleasure and Odysseus turns it down, that’s when he shows what it truly means to be a human. By the time Calypso makes him the offer our hero has dealt with the horrors of cyclops, losing all his companions and has braved the wine-dark sea for weeks, but he still says 

“if some god batters me far out on the wine-blue water, I will endure it, keeping a stubborn spirit inside me, for already I have suffered much and done much hard work on the waves and in the fighting. So let this adventure follow.” 

To view life with all its ups and downs as an adventure is a philosophical aspiration for most humans. And he turns down Calypso even though his Penelope is not ageless or not nearly as beautiful for I like to believe that their companionship meant something more to him. She is as canny as him and has shown remarkable endurance and ability to face whatever the fates threw at her. In that sense Homer shows us a glimpse of what a well matched couple could look like (again if I ignore the patriarchy).

He is not a hero like Achilles of the Iliad whose death caused immense sorrow and whose name remains on everyone’s lips long after his death for his bravery. But once again Homer throws us a curve ball in Book XI when Odysseus meets the ghost of Achilles in the land of Hades. When reminded of his honor Achilles says 

“I would rather follow the plow as thrall to another man, one with no land allotted him and not much to live on, than be a king over all the perished dead.” 

How are we to interpret this? Is Achilles saying glory means nothing? All of one’s achievements pale in comparison to spending time with your family? Is that just me reading into the poem based on my own life stage or is this a foil that Homer inserted for a world obsessed with achievements and glory? But this is not the only instance that Homer reiterates that heroes are over rated. When Odysseus was “No Man” he survived the Cyclops but when his pride made him reveal his name he brought death and destruction to his companions and immense misery to himself. A lesson that he learned the hard way that when he re-enters Ithaca he enters as a beggar and endures taunts and insults without revealing his name. 

I can go on and on as each time I read the poem I am finding something new to focus on. In the last reading I was touched by Telemachus calling the lowly yet honorable swineherd Eumaios as Father even as his own Father was standing next to him! A nod to non-biological families and relations. I hadn't paid much attention to Argos the dog when I first read the poem but now that I’ve experienced the love of a dog through one of our friends’ the episode was just moving (it better be there in the movie Mr.Nolan!). 

But the thing I’ve been pondering the most about this past week is that the poem does not give a satisfying end. It doesn’t say Odysseus comes back to Ithaca after 20 years and reunites with his family braving all odds and they lived happily ever after. The End!  That is the version we choose to remember but that’s not the ending that Homer intended. We are reminded that he has to undertake one more journey to many cities until he meets a man who knows nothing of the sea so he can finally appease Poseidon and meet his end in an “unwarlike way” in old age. No rest for the wicked (If you want to know more about the crazy ending look up Telegony). Perhaps some lives are not easily summed up, some battles are never truly won and some sequels are not meant to be.

At the end of the day it is just a story and what one takes from it is entirely up to each of us. But some stories have staying power because they have something timeless about them and this is perhaps one of the most immortal stories of Western civilization. The last adaptation of The Odyssey that I thoroughly enjoyed was O Brother, Where Art Thou by the Coen brothers. This one by Chris Nolan has all the makings of a true epic and unlike Penelope I can’t wait! 

Close Encounters of the Swamp Kind

"Dreary and wearisome. Cold, clammy winter still held sway in this forsaken country. The only green was the scum of livid weed on the dark greasy surfaces of the sullen waters. Dead grasses and rotting reeds loomed up in the mists like ragged shadows of long forgotten summers." This was the landscape of the Dead Marshes that Frodo and Samwise had to pass through on their way to Mordor. A place where Frodo encountered the "candles of corpses" in Middle Earth.  From the moors of Wuthering Heights to the dangerous Grimpen Mire of The Hound of Baskervilles, marshes have always had a bad rap and have often been used to create "atmosphere" for fantastical stories. Re-christened as "wetlands" they are being rehabilitated into the human imagination. As the writer Tom Blass says "wetland is a good, clean healthful post-superstitious word. But a more archaic taxonomy using marsh, bog, fen fenny and quagmire says more about our experience of such places before ready access to insect repellent, boardwalks and nature trails robbed them of their mystery." 

These meditations on wetlands are a  result of my visit to the Kendal Frost Marsh yesterday as part of the annual Love Your Wetlands Day (LYWD). As I sat down to record my oral history at the event I was suddenly overcome with nostalgia. This was my 12th LYWD and the third without my daughter who now goes to college in the North East. She fell in love with the marsh when she was 8. Wearing the long boots, crisscrossing the water channels, and letting her legs sink into the mud, she thought it was the greatest adventure! Over time she became a docent for the marsh and before leaving home led tours of the marsh during LYWD. As I recounted this story for the oral history project I realized how often the cultural and spiritual value of places is overlooked and I got a momentary insight into the long association the local Kumeyaay have had with these wetlands and how important their stories are. At the event we also heard from a young researcher studying the Tijuana estuary. She talked about how swamps in the South East have sheltered her ancestors as they escaped from slavery and were seen as a place of refuge from the so called civilized world.

However, from our first President to our current one, from Julius Caesar to Saddam Hussein men have always wanted to "drain the swamp", many literally and some figuratively.  As Blass says, there is always someone with a scheme to "drain it, pluck from it its riches and return it to the world settled, compliant, well ordered (or non existent)." It is no wonder that 90% of wetlands have been lost in the last 300 years, 35% since 1970 (most numbers I quote are from Parth Dasgupta's Economics of Biodiversity). 

Wetlands do wonders for the biosphere. In broad terms they offer three distinct services:

1. Provisioning Goods - things we get from the ecosystem. Could be food, wood, medicinal plants etc
2. Maintenance & Regulating Services - controlling erosion, flood management, carbon sequestration
3. Cultural Services - spiritual connection to the land, recreation opportunities, social relationships

These things are intricately bound to each other and have real impact on our lives. Dasgupta notes that the wetlands reduced flood damages from Hurricane Sandy by $625M. It is estimated that the insurance industry could save $52B a year through reduced losses by protecting coastal wetlands. Nature based infrastructure projects are also estimated to create an additional 4 million jobs by 2030. While quantifying the positive impact of wetlands and other ecosystems can help us value the "natural capital" Dasgupta warns that there are critical differences between natural and produced capital. 

 Damages to ecosystem can be irreversible, they can collapse abruptly, and it is very hard to replicate a degraded ecosystem. A healthy ecosystem is dependent on biodiversity and to preserve biodiversity we need habitat conservation. In some cases focusing on keystone species or charismatic species has led to habitat protection but very often focusing on habitat protection will lead to conservation of non charismatic species and even those species that are currently not accounted for.

Which is why yesterday's LYWD was so inspiring! San Diego's ReWild Coalition has been at the forefront of making sure our last remaining pocket of wetlands in Mission Bay are restored and expanded. A restored wetland would help our city face the challenges from climate change and sea level rise and also provide opportunities for San Diegans to forge a cultural and natural connection with this ecosystem. Just as biodiversity is critical to the health of an ecosystem a diverse coalition of stakeholders is critical to the mission at hand. I met groups trying to keep tobacco product waste from entering the wetlands of Mission Bay, I talked to a young researcher from Baja working to re-introduce the California red-legged frog (a non charismatic species) into the wetlands of Southern California and groups like the Climate Science Alliance working to integrate indigenous knowledge and participation in climate adaptation planning and stewardship. Sometimes the daily news cycle can make one lose hope or feel very overwhelmed. Wandering around the wetlands yesterday I felt re-energized. 

I wanted to close with a different image of a swamp from the greatest TV show ever (at least according to me). Every summer my daughter and I watch The Last Airbender  (the original) from start to finish and I must've watched the show with her at least a dozen times. Unlike Frodo, Avatar Aang has a very different experience when he and his friends get pulled into the Foggy Swamp of the Earth Kingdom. Initially spooked by the mystical visions and the mysterious swamp bending tribes, the Avatar realizes that he has a lot to learn from the swamp.  And it is amazing that the wisdom is revealed to him by a Banyan-Grove tree (death and life intertwined) which shows him that the swamp is just one big living organism and "if you listen hard enough you will hear every living thing breathe together." Now that's some Hindu/Buddhist/ Transcendental swamp wisdom I can get behind completely!