and miles to go before i sleep

In The Odyssey, Odysseus is extraordinary for the flexibility with which he can inhabit many different names, or no name at all. It is this quality of being multinamed and nameless that enables him to survive. By contrast, almost all the warriors of The Iliad yearn to have a name and a story that lasts forever. Their many names and titles, as sons and brothers and comrades and fathers and rulers, are essential to their identities, their connections with one another, and their fame after death. They fear, above all, being humiliated (cursed with a negative name), or forgotten and nameless. The lists and catalogs of names are essential to the poem’s own work, of memorializing and mourning the dead. Once the bodies return to dust, these syllables are all that remain.

im just so happy i live in a time period where actual meaningful biological transition is possible. even if we lose rights or the ability to exist in public, nothing can turn back the clock on that, and just by having any sort of access to that our lives are made immensely better. millions of our sisters throughout history would never have dreamed of a day where they could have what HRT does for us.

Cursed be the one who announced to my father: “It’s a boy!"... ...How could he twist the course of the stars so much? How could he have erred so in his astrology? A lying tongue, a fool’s mouth it had given him For he foolishly transformed justice to poison He altered the law and transposed the lines