Book 6. Nausicaa. The one where Odysseus washes up like human driftwood, salt-caked and wrecked and basically naked, and has to beg a princess for help without seeming like either a pervert or a pathetic case. It’s about being broken and trying to hold onto some shred of dignity while you’re covered in seaweed and your own exhaustion.
And Jamie Freebury’s out there in those concrete pools that used to be Sutro’s wet dream of democratic bathing, those ruins that the ocean’s been patiently reclaiming since 1966, performing this story about shipwreck and survival and the distance between where you thought you’d be and where you actually ended up. The Pacific’s right there doing what it’s always done, which is exactly nothing and absolutely everything simultaneously, and somewhere in that space between the ancient Greek understanding that the universe wants to destroy you and the decidedly American ruins of a robber baron’s vision of leisure, something’s happening that probably shouldn’t work but absolutely does.
Because here’s the thing about performing 2,800 year old poetry in a place that’s actively falling apart: it’s either the most pretentious bullshit imaginable or it’s an honest attempt to get at something. There’s no middle ground. And standing there with the fog rolling in and the ruins refusing to be metaphorical because they’re too busy being literal ruins, you realize Homer knew all along that this is what happens, civilizations build their bathhouses and their certainties and the sea just waits.