Euripides’ fragments; bathroom accoutrements; and noodles next to the park
I’m All Lost In …
the 3 things I’m obsessing about THIS week
#63
Before I get to this week’s list, I’ve got a Quote of the Week, a Podcast of the Week, and a delicious Sandwich of the Week.
The Quote comes from one of the tens of thousands of people on TikTok (or DroneTok, as it’s being called right now) who are posting, pictures and theories, about the mysterious drones, UFOs, UAPs, orbs, and plasmoids(?) they’ve been seeing in the night sky over New Jersey. And now, all along east coast; it’s spreading.
One young woman, begins her post—about the relationship between outer space and the bottom of the sea—by miming the motion of the waves as she introduces her personal theory:
“The drones in New Jersey, the 50 drones that just came out of the ocean…!”
If you’re not tracking this madness, and most people aren’t because it only seems to be a big deal on TikTok: Every night for the past month, people have been seeing drones that look like the original Star Wars TIE fighters, synchronized flashing lights in the night sky, and glowing cellular blobs. Some of these blobs merge with each other and then, like some form of astro-mitosis, break apart to form a set of ten more atmospheric Will-o'-the-wisps in the shroud of night. It’s kooky stuff and the New York Times was, in fact, compelled to write up an account of the sightings. They did it as a trend story rather than a news story.
Here’s my theory: TikTok is being set up. The government is behind the whole drones, orbs, and plasmoids hoax, and they’re pushing it out on TikTok to create a hysterical, TikTok-based freak out, similar to the infamous 1938 War of the Worlds panic, which, by the way, also started with space ships in New Jersey. The government will use the TikTok-based scare as a false flag to help fuel the case for banning TikTok as a fake news site.
As with all good conspiracy theories, Trump’s pro-TikTok head fake (I wrote this before that news broke) merely confirms my explanation : )
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No surprise, my Podcast of the week is a tennis podcast. But here is a surprise: It’s not an episode from my favorite, Catherine Whitaker’s The Tennis Podcast, .
It’s the 2025 WTA predictions on Game To Love, a wholly different show that features two tennis-obsessed British chaps, including a wildly combative bloke who goes by JG. “It’s not a mental thing, mate!” he challenges his serene cohost Ben for underrating Elena Rybakina. Mostly, though, JG seems pissy that Qinwen Zheng is everyone’s pick to rise high in next year’s rankings, including Ben’s.
“And here he goes,” JG bitches with disdainful sarcasm as the pair unveil their predictions. “He’s got Qinwen Zheng in fourth,” leaning on the word fourth with utter disbelief. “He absolutely loves her. You’ve gone too high, mate. You’ve gone too high with Qinwen Zheng.” (Bitterly, JG himself ranks Zheng 8th, saying, “she’s not as good as everyone makes her out…and my ranking is generous….”)
Speaking in British marble mouth, JG is intent on arguing tennis with his podcast co-host, Ben.
Ben responds calmly, “The Olympics was huge. [Qinwen Zheng won Gold in Paris this summer.] She finished No. 5 in the world in 2024, and I think she’s going to push on. No. 4. Natural progression.” You can watch JG and Ben bicker in a Youtube version of their podcast here, where JG also seems irked by Coco Gauff’s popularity. “Recent-cy bias,” JG scoffs when Ben picks Gauff to win January’s Australian Open on the heels of her November WTA finals win. “You’ve got the wrong approach,” JG says, “I think she’ll be lucky to make the quarter finals.”
As for Qinwen Zheng, I’m with Ben. I too think she’s going to rise to No. 4. And even more so: I’ve got her winning a slam.
Overall, bumping overrated players like Jasmine Paolini, Jessica Pegula, and even rising star Emma Navarro off the current, year-end Top 10, here are my 2025 predictions, with my slam picks included as well:
1. Iga Swiatek (will win Roland Garros)
2. Coco Gauff (will win the U.S. Open)
3. Aryna Sabalenka
4. Qinwen Zheng (will win the Australian Open)
5. Elena Rybakina (will win Wimbledon)
6. Karolina Muchova
7. Daria Kasatkina
8. (As I’ve flagged before, watch out for newcomer) Diana Shnaider
9. Donna Vekic
10. Paula Badosa*
*This could just as easily be Navarro, but I don’t like Navarro.
——
Lastly, keeping my December 25th tradition in play for the ninth year running, I made my annual Chickpea of the Sea (vegan tuna salad) sandwich.
Arriving back at my apartment after an 8.3-mile afternoon walk to the U. District and back, I threw the chickpeas into the Cuisinart along with improvised measurements of vegan mayo, button mushrooms, peanuts, Nori paper, nooch, and celery. Next, I spread it on some Jewish Rye (albeit, insubstantial Safeway Jewish Rye that I had to toast in order to conjure any heft) while adding some leafy green lettuce, a slice of tomato, white onion, and vegan Swiss, plus some yellow mustard. I swapped in actual Swiss for XDX, who joined me later to eat the vegan tuna sandwich I fixed for her and also to talk brain waves and fields of flower petals this Xmas evening .
5:00 pm, 12/25/24
9:15 pm, 12/25/24
Okay, onto this week’s actual obsessions:
1) Antiope, by Euripides, circa 407 B.C.
Euripides’ play Antiope is the source material for the Greek myth of Amphion, a story about music and cities that Euripides wrote toward the end of his life, circa 407 B.C. It only survives in fragments.
The Amphion myth runs through my new poetry manuscript, City States, so last month, I ordered (what turned out to be) a gorgeous hardcover edition with a green dust jacket from Harvard’s Loeb Classical Library series. Despite the fact that all we get here is (essentially) a found erasure poem, the crux of the myth remains intact in Euripides’ pretty verse: The Artful Dodger (or Johnny Rotten) of Mt. Olympus, the trickster messenger god of travelers, Hermes, instructs polar opposite twin brothers (artsy musician, Amphion, and he-man warrior, Zethus) to “enter Cadmus’ city [Cadmus was the original founder of Thebes] without pollution … and build a complete city with seven gated openings.”
Amphion leads this municipal renewal capital project by playing his magical lyre to charm the foundational stones, so that they float into place; the lyre was a gift from his sometimes lover, Hermes). Thus Amphion bests Zethus in the play’s central social and political debate question: What is the best means of success, “womanly” creativity or he-man brawn?
The play concludes with Hermes’ instructions:
I bid Amphion, hands armed with his lyre, to sing the gods’ praise; solid rocks charmed by the music will follow you, and trees leaving their seats in mother earth, so that you will make light work for builders’ hands.
We learn, from later sources, in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, for example, that Amphion, as city builder, ascends to the throne of Thebes, not only consolidating his bohemian triumph over his macho brother Zethus, but also displacing his great uncle Lycus, who ruled over Thebes at that time and, more to the point, had been threatening to kill Amphion’s and Zethus’ mother, Antiope.
Years earlier, Zeus raped young Antiope. In order to escape her father’s wrath over this “shaming violence,” Antiope fled her home in Thebes, the capital of Boeotia, where her aforementioned father, Nycteus, was the king. She quickly settled in Sicyon, a rival city on the Peloponnese isthmus to the southwest of Boeotia. There, she married the king of Sicyon, Epahpus.
On his deathbed, Nycteus instructed his brother and soon-to-be-successor, Lycus, to go after Antiope (“she should not go unscathed” and bring her home “in bonds.”) Lycus does this, killing Epaphus, and forcing Antiope back to Thebes. First, though, on the journey home from Sicyon, east via Attica, they stop in a town called Eleutherae on the border between Attica and Boeotia at Mt. Cithaeron, the site of a shrine to Dionysus, god of fertility, fruits, wine, festivity, and madness. Here, Antiope gives birth to Zeus’ children, the twins Amphion and Zethus. Antiope abandons them there. Once back in Thebes, Lycus, now King of Thebes, hands over Antiope to his wife Dirce, who makes Antiope her slave. “Antiope was given to Dirce the wife of Lycus to torture,” Euripides writes in the play’s intro, adding, “she got an opportunity to escape and committed herself to it. She reached her sons…”
Rival cities Thebes and Sicyon help define the myth of Amphion.
This is the point at which Euripides’ play starts.
As the action begins, Antiope has once again escaped Thebes, and this time, escaped her slave master Dirce as well. She has fled south to Eleutherae to find her sons, who, unaware of Antiope’s existence, have been raised there by a local shepherd. Dirce comes after Antiope (she has also come to worship Dionysus), but Amphion and Zethus, who have now learned the whole story from the shepherd, avenge their mother’s enslavement by killing Dirce; she’s dragged apart by a bull. Next Lycus arrives with his soldiers, going after runaway Antiope yet again.
Assisted by the shepherd, Amphion and Zethus overtake Lycus and his men. They are about to kill Lycus when Hermes arrives and commands the twins to spare Lycus. Instead, he makes Lycus relinquish Thebes to Amphion and Zethus, and then directs the pair to retrofit Thebes. This sets up the contrasting brothers as the city’s new leaders. Hermes also directs Lycus to retrieve Dirce’s remains and “throw her bones into Ares’ spring, that its outflow may be called Dirce to mark her name, the spring which goes through the city and continually soaks Thebes’ plain with its waters.”
There is plenty of rich symbolism in all this: Music as municipal building blocks, for example, or Dirce’s ashes as the enriching headwaters of Thebes, her son's revitalized and grand city. However, the literary turn that strikes me as most worthy of inquiry in Euripides’ dissertation on building city walls is Amphion’s birthplace, a nebulous boundary world on the border of great Thebes and its seven gated doors.
2) My new toilet paper holder & my fuzzy gray bathroom rugs
As the year ends and starts, I’m on a kick to retrofit my bathroom. Taking note of a fancy toilet paper holder I saw in the restroom of a coffee shop (though, it looked more like something you’d find in a boutique hotel), I immediately bought a lookalike dark bronze model online.
This led me to then scrub my tub, toss my old bathroom rug, and buy a bigger one, and then, a second matching one too. I went with two soft gray rugs, weaved akin to loopy sea flora where marine creatures linger at the bottom of the ocean.
3) Kajiken, the new noodle place in Capitol Hill
Seizing the early hour—Modnay afternoon at 4:45—XDX and I walked over to Kajiken, a new Japanese noodle spot on 11th Ave. just across the street and to the east of Cal Anderson Park; we wanted to get there right when they opened at 5 pm to make sure we got a table. Indeed, with ten shops in the U.S., including in Manhattan, the Bay Area, and Chicago, this Japanese-based chain has caused a buzz in Seattle (“soupless ramen!”) after setting up here in September.
It was lightly crowded when we arrived and the enthusiastic greeter ushered us to a table with a gloaming-hour view through the big glass windows of the city center park.
Kajiken specializes in a dish called Aburasoba, which is a ramen-style concoction. Rather than using spicy broth to grace the noodle dishes with kick, though, you add oils. Kajiken sets bottles of rich chili oil, homemade soy sauce, and vinegar on the table.
I had the vegan option, which came with shimeji and king trumpet mushrooms, luscious spinach, a plentiful serving of soft tofu, and red onions piled over languid and hardy soba noodles. (I’d say less tofu and more mushrooms, please, but that’s because the mix of fresh, flavorful shrooms doused in chili oil was hitting the spot.)
There’s plenty on this friendly menu for meat lovers too, and I certainly snuck a bite of the octopus-filled pancake balls topped with sweet sauce, mayonnaise, and toasted seaweed flakes.
12/23/24, Mushroom Aburasoba, the tasty vegan option at Kajiken
XDX got the 100%-not-vegan minced pork, which comes with green onions, bamboo shoots, seaweed, chives, and fish powder, topped with a 100% non-vegan egg.
12/23/24, Homura Arubasoba, not vegan.
Kajiken is a 2024, year-end discovery that’s making me look forward to 2025.