Now I feel exposed..

One thing about having a fertility goddess as a mother is that you always see too many damn trees, and flowers, and mating animals. I mean, don’t these people ever get bored of just endless nature in harmony. You’d think so, but then, they’re Gods, I guess they can’t help being kind of... conceptual in scope, it’s just how they seem to get imagined a lot of the time, not least of all by me. Anyway, you get the general idea. There I was, just frolicking endlessly around in the hills, basking in the glory of the natural world and it was starting to get pretty dull, let me tell you that. So when this guy shows up, gets talking, then grabs me by the wrist and drags me off you’d think I’d be a bit more horrified than I actually was.

So anyway, suddenly I’m miles away from my little eternity of flowers and fornication, and there I am in the middle of the underworld. Of course, I didn’t know it was the underworld. I think what hit me first was ‘Well, this is all a bit different.’ Because I suppose the underworld really is just a place which is not, I don't know what to call it, the overworld? Anyway, you’re probably better off imagining it yourself. Picture the epitome of overflowing natural bliss I was living in before (because you didn’t imagine that up, seriously, that's just how things are - right?) and then imagine the furthest thing removed from that, like a little binary, in fact. Imagine a world without sustainability or regrowth, and then pretend you're not already living in it at least a little. Anyway, the important thing is that it wasn’t where I was before, because that's the only way you could ever tell that the scene had changed. Seriously, though, I’m getting way beyond myself. Work that one out for yourself, I suppose. Not that I’m saying you should particularly care about a binary I imagined – but hey, didn't you imagine something like that? Really?

So yeah, Hades, that’s the guy who dragged me there, introduces himself and reveals that he’s brought me to be his wife. I’m serious - and yes, it doesn't sound like this guy gets out much, does it? So anyway, there I am about to explain that you can’t just go out and grab random women off a hillside when I realize I don’t know how to get back. Anyway, I talk about how my mother is a goddess and all, and how pissed she’s going to be if I’m not back on time. But Hades just keeps going on about how beautiful and great I am and how I have to stay with him forever. After a while, it just becomes kind of pathetic, so I figure I might as well stay. I mean, it’s not as if I had a choice anyway, and I can think of worse fates than being eternally worshiped by deluded deities. At least, it doesn’t sound so bad to me. Kind of ironic, when you think about it.

Anyway. Some time passes, damned if I know how long because it’s not really important to the story (maybe) and I’m starting to get a little annoyed. If you think snatching women off hillsides hints at some kind of deep insecurity, well, you’re probably right, and I mean the probably. The weird fixation was fun at first, I’ll admit, but after a while it was really starting to grate. Talk about clingy. That, and the underworld isn’t actually as interesting as you’d think, assuming you might have somehow got the idea it would be interesting. I mean, there’s only so many times you can watch the same guy push a boulder up a hill or get pecked to death by eagles before it just gets old. Oh, and I was absolutely starving. I mean, apparently there’s this rule where I wasn’t supposed to eat food from the underworld. Don’t ask me, why would I have made something like that up, maybe some kind of metaphorical warning about the dangers of the unknown. Personally though, I reckon it’s all about sex, in which case I’d appreciate it if you’d just come out and say it directly instead of all this shit about pomegranate seeds. Why all this ‘she was so hungry, she just had to eat the seeds’ or ‘oh, how deceived she was when she munched on those seeds’ instead of ‘intercourse ensued’ or, if you want to be blunt about it, ‘he fucked her.’ Of course, in the highly likely event that you weren’t thinking that, I’m sorry. You’re obviously better adjusted (or repressed) than I give you credit for, or perhaps just more so than me. I guess you can relate anything to anything if you're thus inclined, but isn’t that kind of the point (and I use the word ‘point’ loosely.)

So anyway, yeah, I ‘ate the pomegranate seeds,’ whatever that’s supposed to mean (seriously, what do you want it to mean?) which supposedly bound me to the underworld and to him forever. Sucks to be Persephone. I was a bit pissed off when that one got explained to me. Who needs an eternity of being static and unchanging, be it stuck in a rut back in dear mummy’s pointless sweaty life-planet or down here in miserable death world where all that seems to happen is people doing the same things over and over again. Damnit, so boring! Fortunately/unfortunately, I’d reckoned without mother. Apparently, she’d got all the other Gods involved, and they’d all got very angry with Hades and forced him into a compromise. Naturally, noone thought to clear all this with me, but still it was probably the best result I could have hoped for really. Half the year of nature and sunshine with mother, the other half I get to be queen of the underworld and be generally adored by an emotionally stunted funerary deity. Fun, in small doses.

Anyway, what’s this ‘point’ I’ve been trying not to refer to but seem to be unable to resist coming back to over and over again? I suppose if you wanted to look clever you could maybe say that it’s all about how the natural world functions in cycles. Winter to spring, then through summer and autumn and back to winter again, but what about me! Just because I’m a mythological figure whose purpose is to be wheeled out to illustrate things for you doesn’t mean I deserve that kind of impersonal treatment. Maybe you can let a little ambiguity in and suggest that maybe it’s about how no-one ever completely fits into one category, we all have to find our place, even if that place is in a kind of borderland between two states, constantly flicking backwards and forwards. I like that one, except that it's still too simple. Personally, I think the real story, despite what might be implied from this neat and coherent little narrative I’ve created here, is that stories are arbitrary collections of images which don’t have to have a neat point or easy summary - but wait, isn’t that a point? Oops. Well, I guess with the point having been made and a purpose established for these lines of text, I imagine this must be the end.