First you will come to the Sirens who enchant all who come near them. If any one unwarily draws in too close and hears the singing of the Sirens, his wife and children will never welcome him home again, for they sit in a green field and warble him to death with the sweetness of their song. There is a great heap of dead men’s bones lying all around, with the flesh still rotting off them. Therefore pass these Sirens by, and stop your men’s ears with wax that none of them may hear; but if you like you can listen yourself, for you may get the men to bind you as you stand upright on a cross-piece half way up the mast, and they must lash the rope’s ends to the mast itself, that you may have the pleasure of listening.
Circe’s warning to Odysseus in Homer’s The Odyssey
I visit Ridgefield alone, intentionally alone, and have no men to lash me to the steering wheel that I might safely pass my Sirens, the bitterns that lurk at the edges of the marsh. Thus am I always compelled to stop, for seconds, minutes, even hours. A day may yet come when I have watched them enough, photographed them enough, that I can pass them by, but for now I am powerless to resist my Siren’s call.
