emily’s Reviews > Beginning Middle End > Status Update
emily
is on page 180 of 350
‘Poor Polyphemus, my daughter says. But Polyphemus is a monster, he says. Odysseus is the monster, she says. Odysseus is the greatest hero of civilisation, he replies. Cretino, I think to myself—she knows what I’m thinking—because she grins at me—Wasn’t he a woman trafficker, Odysseus? (she says) A woman trafficker? he asks. Yes, a person who kidnaps & sells women. That sort of thing didn’t exist back then, he says.’
— Aug 27, 2026 10:40PM
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emily’s Previous Updates
emily
is on page 138 of 350
‘—strange—he is not a god but a real human—the name means 'first' or 'origin' (from the Greek 'πρῶτος' prōtos), the notion of primal matter from which everything else is made. Proteus is a beginning—Something happens to our brains when faced with myth—like with some forms of poetry—we switch on to decoding, rather than—passive understanding—Proteus came from a place—where the first lighthouse in the world was built—’
— Aug 14, 2026 07:48PM
emily
is on page 133 of 350
‘—coincidences, if they can be called that—signs to be—heeded—or if it’s simply that the brain is more attuned to iterations than it is to isolated events. I suppose that literature rests on that mystery. Had we not read Trojan Women the other day—It would have remained invisible, like so many other things we don’t see even though we pass—Beauty comes only with time, after some time, and not without patience & pain.’
— Aug 13, 2026 06:29PM
emily
is on page 117 of 350
‘—wake up—boil potatoes—make coffee—Is it true that all Greek tragedies are self-fulfilling prophecies? I have developed a concerning, perhaps almost borderline fear of writing things that might come to be. So I often don’t write them. But in that case there’s almost nothing I can write—I want to write about that fear, the fear of—losing memories—becoming inconvenient. ‘& are you going to ask Grandma to translate—?’’
— Aug 12, 2026 05:21PM
emily
is on page 99 of 350
‘Easier to imagine all those women—grandmothers, mothers, daughters, from a little apartment in Tokyo than—in Lebanon—how do I get us to where we all need to be? Perhaps—when she’s in her thirties, or forties—having a hard time making sense of where she is—what she wants, she’ll coil her body against—a swimming pool—push—& expand into a sturdier—stronger version of herself—invisible threads that tie it all together.’
— Aug 10, 2026 06:15PM
emily
is on page 72 of 350
‘Is it that the more we know & understand, the more things burdens us? Is it that the more time we accumulate in our cells, the less light we let in? I think the shipwreck she had survived came back to haunt her, over & over again, even though, during her life, she had told the story as a great epic—But what happened to her memory—her mind? I don’t know, darling, nobody knows exactly why or how these things happen.’
— Aug 07, 2026 06:37PM
emily
is on page 69 of 350
‘Most things I read, I should not have—In the interview, he explained that, in order to stay sharp, he would learn a poem by heart every day—then translate it into all the languages he knew—If it is true that the limits of our world are the limits of our language, I thought—I was depleted—I had to start all over again—The prediction, the jellyfish, the storms—some are good, some are not—look for thyme, look for salt’
— Aug 06, 2026 05:37PM
emily
is on page 39 of 350
‘—to arrive in—grandmother's hometown—an echo of someone else’s belonging—borrowed memories—She was born in Philosophiana—decided to emigrate—learned—to read—while aboard the ship, read a lot of books after that—inconveniently good-looking—believed in luck, & was extremely superstitious—traces of those who came before—still live & bounce around—Steinbeck : (human unconscious) is a ‘mass of sea-memory, /sea-thought.’’
— Aug 04, 2026 04:42PM