Sorry been thinking about it a lot.
I think there's also such a time-ness to it in a way? Ithaca is a ghostown, all the good men are gone, most of Odysseus' old life is dead. We only have Telemachus, who only knows Odysseus as the soldier. Penelope, who knew Odysseus before the war. And Odysseus, who does not know himself
there's like sort of a divide in a way? Past present future. Most of the past are dead (anticleia, Argos, even laertes), and the future has left (Telemachus), and the only ones left are Odysseus n Penelope
(There is something to be said about eumaeus and eurycleia, who were also there before the war, but call for blood. I think they believed in the myth he's become. But also I think they kind of represent Ithaca too. Festering)
But like yeah at this point Ithaca has become stuck in this liminal past-present, and so have Odysseus and Penelope. The contrast of the lines "forget about the war old man, it was a long time ago" and "the war is in everything. Waiting for me to make it happen again." and "For some, war becomes home." (paraphrasing here) puts him in this state where his past is also his present. And Penelope has been keeping the peace for ten years, and weaving the loom for three. She's been living in a perpetual state of present trying to preserve a past. (I have no other choice, I cannot live another life)
When she asks for their history to be shared and wipes away the blood, when he throws aside her loom to reveal their bed. They're making steps to settle into the present (the past never fully goes away. The blood dilutes but does not clear) and to hope tentatively for the future ("When he finds out who he is, he will return")
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