It's taken me a while to get this first post up, not for lack of reading, but because I don't use computers very often, or very well. But here we are, and here we go.

  Upon reading the first couple of chapters, I found myself thinking, more than anything, about how paranoid every attractive girl must have been back in these times. It seems as though if you had a rockin' bod, and your head wasn't on a swivel, you could be abducted at any moment by any one of the various Gods. Heaven forbid you should pick flowers, because you'd be snatched up quick as any daisy, and if you go swimming, there is probably a divine voyeur checking you out from somewhere "on high". 

  I was also noticed (and was psyched about) the fact that the Gods could be gay without any of the other Gods calling them out on it. Dionysus was in love with Ampelos, and was also apparently one of the biggest womanizing figures in myth. I was surprised to get open bisexuality from the ancients (a God nonetheless) when so many of us still don't want to ask or be told today. Dionysus seemed like a terrible being, but he has such a duality to his character that he really just reminds me of most of my favorite musicians, or a Third Eye Blind song. He starts out with a love, loses it, and turns pain and loss into art (wine is artistic in my opinion, I understand if someone chooses not to agree with this). I just get the image of him slumped up against a thick tree in some forest, drunk and alone, holding a golden goblet just barely upright enough to spill only a few drops of wine. I picture the sharp and bitter taste of strong red wine mingling with internalized anger and drizzling out of the corners of slack jaws in a stream of profanity. I don't want to quote too many lines from page 45, so I would encourage reading over the first paragraph on this page carefully, and really picturing and understanding the wonderful analogies Calasso uses. Some beautiful writing.

  I also liked the point Calasso brought up about how Erigone was the farthest thing from a "celestial queen", but still managed to make it into the heavens as a constellation, just because it's interesting to think about this weird, macabre story hanging in the sky with all of the heroes and monsters of epic poems, and classic tales, like a strange cousin. just a thought, I suppose.

  Until next time, 

  Jerrod