Saturday, 13 December 2008
Friday, 12 December 2008
Demeter and Persephone
If you're anything like me you constantly lie awake at night wondering what the myth of Demeter and Persephone would be like if Demeter and the other Olympian Gods were James Bond style super villains. Wonder no more:
The false-volcano secret base was empty. Not technically empty of course, it was full of nameless henchmen going about their business in gray jumpsuits, full of communications systems monitoring transmissions from spies hidden in all first-world governments, full of highly advanced weapons systems, the prize among which was the Weather Machine. But the base was missing a daughter, and that was all that had been occupying Demeter's mind for over a week. Demeter had focused all of her efforts on finding Persephone, but had found no trace of her. At this point it was quite clear to Demeter that her daughter had been kidnapped, though by whom was less clear. Had it been some secret government agency hoping to gain some advantage over Demeter? Trying to use her daughter as leverage? That was unlikely, Demeter had more eyes than Argus in those places and they had seen nothing. The only organizations that could hide Persephone from her were those of other evil geniuses, and it was as she was formulating a list in her mind about potentially vindictive rivals that one of her henchmen burst into her control room.
He stepped forward to her desk, attempting to compose himself. “We are receiving a transmission from Helios Ma'am. He has apparently heard of our situation and is offering his assistance.”
Demeter considered this for a moment as her henchman rushed out again. Helios was odd, without a doubt, floating over the world in his space station alone, processing data from his multitudes of satellites scanning every inch of the globe. She felt she could trust him though, Demeter knew he had not taken her daughter. In fact, because Persephone was not a shrinking ice cap, a swallow migration route, or an amorous couple on a secluded beach, Demeter doubted Helios cared about her daughter at all. She stood up and walked over to a screen on her wall. “Open communication” she said clearly and Helios' face flickered onto the screen.
“Hello Demeter, how are you?”
“Save it Helios, you know how I am, and you know I don't have much time.”
“Fair enough, I know who took your daughter. All I want in exchange for this information is enough money to repair one of the four thrusters on my Chariot.”
“Done” Demeter responded immediately. “Close communication” and Helios faded away. He was replaced by a video feed of a grassy park, and sitting in the middle of this park was Persephone, apparently talking with her friends. Demeter was so focused on her daughter that she barely noticed a slight movement of the ground next to her. Apparently Persephone noticed something wrong as well, as she stood up and began looking around. Suddenly a machine with a great drill on its nose burst from the ground beside Persephone. As she tried to run away, tripping over some dislodged earth, a hatch on the top of the machine opened and a man jumped out. He rushed over, picked up Persephone and carried her into the machine, which quickly disappeared back into the hole it had come from.
Hades, that lecherous old man. Demeter had seen how he looked at Persephone when the villains gathered together under the mantle of OLYMPIAN for one of Zeus' grand schemes. Persephone had always attracted attention, and always from the wrong people. Demeter often blamed herself for that though. If she had named her daughter “Pussy Galore” or “Octopussy” the secret agents would be falling over each other trying to get at her. So instead of well-dressed secret agents, who admittedly probably didn't have monogamous long-term relationships in mind, Persephone was trapped in the lair of some man who thought he was Dr. Frankenstein.
Zeus would have to hear about this. Demeter didn't like asking him for help, he could be exceedingly strange sometimes, but he liked to keep relations between the villains amicable at least. “Open communication: Zeus.”
A few moments later the majestic bearded face of Zeus appeared in front of her. “Let me guess,” he began, arrogantly “you found out who took your daughter and need me to get her back.”
“Hades... I don't want my daughter around him and all of his experiments with dead bodies.”
“My brother is a misunderstood man, I don't want a squabble between you two to disrupt my plans. I'll see what I can do.” Zeus vanished and Demeter was left standing alone in her control room. She sat back down and tried to take her mind off of the wait by developing a plot to genetically engineer corn crops, but it didn't do the job.
----------
Hermes arrived the next day, bringing Persephone with him. Demeter was extremely relieved to have her daughter back, but Hades had not returned her without making sure he had a contingency plan in effect. While keeping Persephone captive he had fed her pomegranate, the seeds of which he had ingeniously replaced with minuscule pills. The poison in the pills would be released in eight months at which point Persephone would need to return to him for the antidote. He had agreed to release her again after four months, new pills in her system. It was diabolical.
Demeter walked down to the office of the head of her weapons division. She wanted to know how much strain the Weather Machine would be under if it was in constant use for four months.
Greg Normand's Story
Demeter's story
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
The rain had been falling all morning, but it was not cold. The grass glistened in the half light of the half morning. The building--Eleusina--was a solid block of Victorian architecture, with deep bays and ceilings much too high, he was sure. Upon arrival he was assigned to a bald headed nurse or minder, to whom he should deffer any questions or problems and who would assign him task or distraction. Neither he nor the management seemed to want him to be there, and it had fallen upon the bald man to manage his stay.
"cup of tea"
"you should make the tea. You're going to have to do something, or you're going to get very bored today"
The boy somehow seemed to end up in the middle of a busy thoroughfare whenever he came to a standstill, even when expressly trying to press himself against the red papered walls or miscellaneous pieces of furniture, standing as close as he could without touching anything. Not having to touching anything had in fact been one of the preconditions he had set himself during the morning's rain, in exchange for not running away. His non-touching rule had been purposefully vague when drafted, being able, if the situation so demanded, to be enacted with reference to the soft skinned old and infirm. He feared the old, their lived lives too visible in their exposed bones and wet eyes.
Tea making proved a satisfactory task, being able--unsupervised--to stretch the time of making one cup of tea over two, or even three cups' worth of time. squeezing, spinning then re-squeezing each bag before adding the milk. He imagined the lives of these people, condemned as they were to spend the end of their lives in a half-world, a sub-society embedded within his. Does bitter tea make one bitter? Or is it bitterness that makes one less sensitive to subtleties?
Give tea, sit down, speak, or avoid speaking, these were the tasks he was to fulfill, angry both at his superfluity and at his unwillingness to really help, really care about these people stuck outside their time. He was sure people were not meant to live these artificially extended lives, you can only adapt and upgrade so much before you become obsolete, then all that is left is a life in storage.
"Here"
"Sit down here, bring the chair a little closer to me so I can hear you well"
Setting down the tea where she instructed, he scraped the chain over the deep carpet and sat. Her--Demeter--hands were soft with visible gristle when the fingers moved. He followed the veins or arteries down her arm towards her hands. Followed them up-stream as they split and split into smaller tributaries, finally going under the surface over her knuckles. He did not look up at her face as she began to speak.
"You know, I have a daughter. She's not your age, not anymore, but being around young people reminds me of her. Reminds me of the pain, as well as great happiness she gave me. She was taken you know"
He lined up each finger tip with its opposite on the far side of the cup, then brought it up to his mouth for a tentative sip. He looked at her for the first time, looked through her thin hair and at her aged face. She was more elegant than the rest of the 'residents', they had loosened, given in, in exchange they had happiness of a sort. She was not happy, she stared out the window at the rain, blurring and swaying, not even noticing that he looked at her. He admired her unhappiness, or at least what it stood for, she had not succumb to being old as the others had.
"My daughter..." she continued "You have a mother don't you?" She said twisting her face around and looking him in the eyes for the first time. The boy nodded. She slowly turned away to face the rain once again.
"She must love you very much. I loved my daughter very much, as all mothers love theirs. But our love seemed special. We were together all the time, she would help me work, planting, harvesting... together we reaped and sowed, we nurtured the young and weak plants during their fragile, tentative early life. Together... nature was ours, and we were nature. We could create the green earth and sweet fruit... grains for bread, grass and small shrubs feed the animals and we feast on the fruit and nuts, the future lives of the plants themselves. That's why they are so good for you... did you know that?"
He shook his head slowly. She had suddenly come alive, she was hot now with memories and emotions running through her body and mind. She seemed suddenly sharper, even her voice seemed to have taken on a harder, more attacking timbre.
"We lived like this for a long time, i don't remember how long, but it seemed to last forever. When something is unchanging it lasts a long time, because your memories get muddled and you remember them more than once. You see? So I can't say how long it was exactly"
She lent over to the small table beside her and brought her tea up to her eyes before lowering it to her mouth. she drank half the cup's contents in consecutive gulps before setting it down again.
"She was taken. She was picking flowers or fruits from trees with some other sweet things when the ground split. It shook and crumbled, throwing earth and stones into the air. The fissure was as deep as anything can be deep, and dark. Light did not come out of it, it could only enter. She was taken down to the world below ours. It screams and throbs, yet cannot utter words. It is reliant on us, on our world for its sustenance, it sucks us, want us as part of it, yet cannot escape itself, cannot become us, so robs. He robbed me of my daughter."
Small balls, like pearls, of sweat or tears could be seen down the front of her face. They hesitated, then rolled, riding over the contours and cracks. Her Voice remained strong though, it did not quiver or thin.
"I did not find all this out until later of course. I spent time, all of time, searching for my dear daughter, the earth died, nothing grew, I couldn't celebrate in life's abundances and pleasures without her. I wished away all that was green, and embraced the dry, the pain, the barren, my nostrils were filled with bitterness, nothing was sweet to me"
Turning to look at him again, he saw the strain on her face, what she suffered to tell her life.
"You do understand don't you? This was never-ending. As the unchanging stretches in our memory, so does pain. All pain is never-ending, is unbearable and insurmountable. And so it was. Time passed, all time passed, and she was returned to me. she was retrieved from darkness and returned to my breast as my world was on the brink of losing all its colour, fading. But she had cheated, or been cheated by another. Before her return she took six seeds and feasted upon them. Had she bought her own return? Her motivation was never revealed to me. She returned, always only to be taken away again, and so my life was lived, in sorrow and in joy, with life and death always close to one another"
Squeezing, spinning, squeezing. Squeezing, spinning, squeezing.
"I see you met Demeter? Sorry to abandon you, ...she's ...well, she can be very emotional, people sometimes find it difficult to talk to her, even some of the permanent staff"
The bald man-nurse had come up behind the boy as he made another batch of tea in the small, yellowing kitchenette. They carried tree mugs of tea in each hand as they walked into the main room, past the reception.
"What... do you know what happened to her daughter?"
He stopped and put his mugs down on a small ornamental table with tall thin legs "She doesn't have a daughter. They... her stories, they are all a part of her life, her past, her youth. We don't really know much about her. We suppose she grew up in the countryside somewhere, but there is no evidence that she ever had a daughter"
They stood in silence for a minute. The boy seemed upset.
"You know... she is a very important character in here. Everything and everyone become very important, and take on special significance if you live in such close confines. For Eleusinians she is very important and will be remembered for a long time to come. Her stories and her person represent for them renewal, they represent the cycles of life that come to be very important as you age... " He bend over taking up his six cups again "Your path is made by walking it, you should take everything you can from it, as looking back you'll see the path you can never again tread... Come"
Caminante, son tus huellas
el camino y nada más;
caminante, no hay camino,
se hace camino al andar.
Al andar se hace camino
y al volver la vista atrás
se ve la senda que nunca
se ha de volver a pisar.
The rain had been falling all morning, but it was not cold. The grass glistened in the half light of the half morning. The building--Eleusina--was a solid block of Victorian architecture, with deep bays and ceilings much too high, he was sure. Upon arrival he was assigned to a bald headed nurse or minder, to whom he should deffer any questions or problems and who would assign him task or distraction. Neither he nor the management seemed to want him to be there, and it had fallen upon the bald man to manage his stay.
"cup of tea"
"you should make the tea. You're going to have to do something, or you're going to get very bored today"
The boy somehow seemed to end up in the middle of a busy thoroughfare whenever he came to a standstill, even when expressly trying to press himself against the red papered walls or miscellaneous pieces of furniture, standing as close as he could without touching anything. Not having to touching anything had in fact been one of the preconditions he had set himself during the morning's rain, in exchange for not running away. His non-touching rule had been purposefully vague when drafted, being able, if the situation so demanded, to be enacted with reference to the soft skinned old and infirm. He feared the old, their lived lives too visible in their exposed bones and wet eyes.
Tea making proved a satisfactory task, being able--unsupervised--to stretch the time of making one cup of tea over two, or even three cups' worth of time. squeezing, spinning then re-squeezing each bag before adding the milk. He imagined the lives of these people, condemned as they were to spend the end of their lives in a half-world, a sub-society embedded within his. Does bitter tea make one bitter? Or is it bitterness that makes one less sensitive to subtleties?
Give tea, sit down, speak, or avoid speaking, these were the tasks he was to fulfill, angry both at his superfluity and at his unwillingness to really help, really care about these people stuck outside their time. He was sure people were not meant to live these artificially extended lives, you can only adapt and upgrade so much before you become obsolete, then all that is left is a life in storage.
"Here"
"Sit down here, bring the chair a little closer to me so I can hear you well"
Setting down the tea where she instructed, he scraped the chain over the deep carpet and sat. Her--Demeter--hands were soft with visible gristle when the fingers moved. He followed the veins or arteries down her arm towards her hands. Followed them up-stream as they split and split into smaller tributaries, finally going under the surface over her knuckles. He did not look up at her face as she began to speak.
"You know, I have a daughter. She's not your age, not anymore, but being around young people reminds me of her. Reminds me of the pain, as well as great happiness she gave me. She was taken you know"
He lined up each finger tip with its opposite on the far side of the cup, then brought it up to his mouth for a tentative sip. He looked at her for the first time, looked through her thin hair and at her aged face. She was more elegant than the rest of the 'residents', they had loosened, given in, in exchange they had happiness of a sort. She was not happy, she stared out the window at the rain, blurring and swaying, not even noticing that he looked at her. He admired her unhappiness, or at least what it stood for, she had not succumb to being old as the others had.
"My daughter..." she continued "You have a mother don't you?" She said twisting her face around and looking him in the eyes for the first time. The boy nodded. She slowly turned away to face the rain once again.
"She must love you very much. I loved my daughter very much, as all mothers love theirs. But our love seemed special. We were together all the time, she would help me work, planting, harvesting... together we reaped and sowed, we nurtured the young and weak plants during their fragile, tentative early life. Together... nature was ours, and we were nature. We could create the green earth and sweet fruit... grains for bread, grass and small shrubs feed the animals and we feast on the fruit and nuts, the future lives of the plants themselves. That's why they are so good for you... did you know that?"
He shook his head slowly. She had suddenly come alive, she was hot now with memories and emotions running through her body and mind. She seemed suddenly sharper, even her voice seemed to have taken on a harder, more attacking timbre.
"We lived like this for a long time, i don't remember how long, but it seemed to last forever. When something is unchanging it lasts a long time, because your memories get muddled and you remember them more than once. You see? So I can't say how long it was exactly"
She lent over to the small table beside her and brought her tea up to her eyes before lowering it to her mouth. she drank half the cup's contents in consecutive gulps before setting it down again.
"She was taken. She was picking flowers or fruits from trees with some other sweet things when the ground split. It shook and crumbled, throwing earth and stones into the air. The fissure was as deep as anything can be deep, and dark. Light did not come out of it, it could only enter. She was taken down to the world below ours. It screams and throbs, yet cannot utter words. It is reliant on us, on our world for its sustenance, it sucks us, want us as part of it, yet cannot escape itself, cannot become us, so robs. He robbed me of my daughter."
Small balls, like pearls, of sweat or tears could be seen down the front of her face. They hesitated, then rolled, riding over the contours and cracks. Her Voice remained strong though, it did not quiver or thin.
"I did not find all this out until later of course. I spent time, all of time, searching for my dear daughter, the earth died, nothing grew, I couldn't celebrate in life's abundances and pleasures without her. I wished away all that was green, and embraced the dry, the pain, the barren, my nostrils were filled with bitterness, nothing was sweet to me"
Turning to look at him again, he saw the strain on her face, what she suffered to tell her life.
"You do understand don't you? This was never-ending. As the unchanging stretches in our memory, so does pain. All pain is never-ending, is unbearable and insurmountable. And so it was. Time passed, all time passed, and she was returned to me. she was retrieved from darkness and returned to my breast as my world was on the brink of losing all its colour, fading. But she had cheated, or been cheated by another. Before her return she took six seeds and feasted upon them. Had she bought her own return? Her motivation was never revealed to me. She returned, always only to be taken away again, and so my life was lived, in sorrow and in joy, with life and death always close to one another"
Squeezing, spinning, squeezing. Squeezing, spinning, squeezing.
"I see you met Demeter? Sorry to abandon you, ...she's ...well, she can be very emotional, people sometimes find it difficult to talk to her, even some of the permanent staff"
The bald man-nurse had come up behind the boy as he made another batch of tea in the small, yellowing kitchenette. They carried tree mugs of tea in each hand as they walked into the main room, past the reception.
"What... do you know what happened to her daughter?"
He stopped and put his mugs down on a small ornamental table with tall thin legs "She doesn't have a daughter. They... her stories, they are all a part of her life, her past, her youth. We don't really know much about her. We suppose she grew up in the countryside somewhere, but there is no evidence that she ever had a daughter"
They stood in silence for a minute. The boy seemed upset.
"You know... she is a very important character in here. Everything and everyone become very important, and take on special significance if you live in such close confines. For Eleusinians she is very important and will be remembered for a long time to come. Her stories and her person represent for them renewal, they represent the cycles of life that come to be very important as you age... " He bend over taking up his six cups again "Your path is made by walking it, you should take everything you can from it, as looking back you'll see the path you can never again tread... Come"
Kristen Park's Story
I miss her, I miss part of me, I miss…I’m missing. No matter where I go I can’t find what’s lacking. The wind, the earth, the trees and flowers, I don’t care anymore.
A life once abundant, fruitful, pregnable with pleasure, satisfaction, contentment and joy.
A distant memory. A distant dream.
All desire and will, escaped, into the realm of nothingness. All I have left is loss, a missing space, a hole of anti-fulfilment grasps me, encompasses me.
Where has she gone? Why has she gone from me?
This world, this land, me. Departed, abandoned, lost…stolen?
Faith, love, hope, life – despairing.
I cannot rest until I know; I feel and hear her again.
I am in limbo. I am in Hell. But I am on earth, in heaven, in the world. I am uncertain, I am despair and I am desire. Desire for past and future. Desire for what is part of me to be returned, without I am incomplete.
All you hear me! Fend for yourselves, I work for you no longer, energy depleted I must care for the absence; tend instead to this moment, my moment, her moment. Nothing else compares.
All you hear me! Fend for yourselves, live by yourselves dependent on yourselves or return to me what belongs to me!
Where have I landed? In what world? In what domain? In what Hell? I yearn for freedom, for the moment, for life. For death?
This man I see, this beast, this God, this spectre, shadow, foreign form has taken me over. I yearn for up, I yearn for down. My will and pure self assures me this is not my place, not meant to be my whole life. What of my other life? What distant memory – an alter-ego – an alternate realm of existence. Have I escaped restrictions of space and time? Am I now so detached from what I knew, familiarity. Family?
My mother, my earth, the flowers that bloom, the trees that shade, the peace that gleams and the life that pulls me. What I see before me, where I see before me has an unknown air. Am I to live it, feel it, know it, explore it? A new realm, new, unknown, a realm of uncertainty. Should I embrace it? Should I understand it? Should I yearn for things no longer? What is a life full of yearning, a life inadequate, a life of want? Empty? Nothing? Unsatisfactory? Bleak?
No. what life is that. Shall I? Shan’t I? What will happen? Will I forget? Will I become detached? Will I forget the love I felt from my mother? The security of love and safety, is it too safe, will it be all the same? So many questions, too many.
Yes. I must know, I must explore, I must…eat.
Where is she?
Return to me what I long for, yearn for, desire for!
Return to me what I believe to be MINE!
Welcome, welcome to my domain. Now you shall remain.
You are my wife; you and me together can live this life.
No need to think how it came to be but merely to know this is how it is for me.
I want, I take, I need, I know, but all in balance, we need not challenge what I’ve made it to be.
Six? That’s all? Six? No more?
She is tied, she is bound I can do nothing. Shackled to what she fears yet also to what she does not have but wants. The earth is barren, life dwindles and fights yet it will not be enough. The work, the power of the mother, a mother of sense for the earth, without which we cannot fight. Cannot grow. Cannot receive offerings of the earth. What then?
Six. Six. That’s all. It is enough and not.
What is wanted shall be granted.
One – a life to be rejuvenated. Granted a second chance. Once again to be fulfilled. Less wandering, less absence, something more than nothing. Yet still with an air of dissatisfaction. A portion must still be spent in limbo, for six, only six has bound her. Bound numbers of lives to this situation.
Two – a life led double. Two worlds, two realms, two needs, two thoughts. A dichotomy of desire.
Three – left much the same. Yet still only six and not more. Here a desire shall feel for longer, it was never meant to be his to take. It should be this way. He knows.
What now belongs between two worlds shall flitter between two lives. A balance, a dichotomy the way it had been made to be.
A life once abundant, fruitful, pregnable with pleasure, satisfaction, contentment and joy.
A distant memory. A distant dream.
All desire and will, escaped, into the realm of nothingness. All I have left is loss, a missing space, a hole of anti-fulfilment grasps me, encompasses me.
Where has she gone? Why has she gone from me?
This world, this land, me. Departed, abandoned, lost…stolen?
Faith, love, hope, life – despairing.
I cannot rest until I know; I feel and hear her again.
I am in limbo. I am in Hell. But I am on earth, in heaven, in the world. I am uncertain, I am despair and I am desire. Desire for past and future. Desire for what is part of me to be returned, without I am incomplete.
All you hear me! Fend for yourselves, I work for you no longer, energy depleted I must care for the absence; tend instead to this moment, my moment, her moment. Nothing else compares.
All you hear me! Fend for yourselves, live by yourselves dependent on yourselves or return to me what belongs to me!
Where have I landed? In what world? In what domain? In what Hell? I yearn for freedom, for the moment, for life. For death?
This man I see, this beast, this God, this spectre, shadow, foreign form has taken me over. I yearn for up, I yearn for down. My will and pure self assures me this is not my place, not meant to be my whole life. What of my other life? What distant memory – an alter-ego – an alternate realm of existence. Have I escaped restrictions of space and time? Am I now so detached from what I knew, familiarity. Family?
My mother, my earth, the flowers that bloom, the trees that shade, the peace that gleams and the life that pulls me. What I see before me, where I see before me has an unknown air. Am I to live it, feel it, know it, explore it? A new realm, new, unknown, a realm of uncertainty. Should I embrace it? Should I understand it? Should I yearn for things no longer? What is a life full of yearning, a life inadequate, a life of want? Empty? Nothing? Unsatisfactory? Bleak?
No. what life is that. Shall I? Shan’t I? What will happen? Will I forget? Will I become detached? Will I forget the love I felt from my mother? The security of love and safety, is it too safe, will it be all the same? So many questions, too many.
Yes. I must know, I must explore, I must…eat.
Where is she?
Return to me what I long for, yearn for, desire for!
Return to me what I believe to be MINE!
Welcome, welcome to my domain. Now you shall remain.
You are my wife; you and me together can live this life.
No need to think how it came to be but merely to know this is how it is for me.
I want, I take, I need, I know, but all in balance, we need not challenge what I’ve made it to be.
Six? That’s all? Six? No more?
She is tied, she is bound I can do nothing. Shackled to what she fears yet also to what she does not have but wants. The earth is barren, life dwindles and fights yet it will not be enough. The work, the power of the mother, a mother of sense for the earth, without which we cannot fight. Cannot grow. Cannot receive offerings of the earth. What then?
Six. Six. That’s all. It is enough and not.
What is wanted shall be granted.
One – a life to be rejuvenated. Granted a second chance. Once again to be fulfilled. Less wandering, less absence, something more than nothing. Yet still with an air of dissatisfaction. A portion must still be spent in limbo, for six, only six has bound her. Bound numbers of lives to this situation.
Two – a life led double. Two worlds, two realms, two needs, two thoughts. A dichotomy of desire.
Three – left much the same. Yet still only six and not more. Here a desire shall feel for longer, it was never meant to be his to take. It should be this way. He knows.
What now belongs between two worlds shall flitter between two lives. A balance, a dichotomy the way it had been made to be.
"Seiren" - Demeter and Persephone: A Reorientation
When one is alone, one fears the hollow echo of one’s voice. I fear the echo now, of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing, as I tell this story. A tale I have told before, that is not my tale; by telling it I will not be reconciled to my fate. But I must tell it. If this tale is mine, it is only of my failure.
This is the tale of she who I failed and will one day know again, of how she came to moisten mortal springs with tears and take her pleasures in cursing men and ruling spectres. Only one’s songs have stirred her in the aeons I have been condemned to sing, and those were the haunting ballads of Orpheus. This how she became the Iron Queen, and how she was before when she still demurely smiled: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my friend…
I want to state that it was spring, but it couldn’t have been. There were no seasons in that age. This is their tale as well. I remember the narcissi were blooming, I remember that clearly. We were in Enna, in Sicily. Kore, as I and my sisters called her, was young then – for a goddess. Many gods had tried to woo her, but her mother had rejected them all. Sometimes I wonder if that was for the best; perhaps it would have altered both our fates… selfish thoughts. She and her mother were close, very close. Was I jealous? I don’t remember. Aeons dull such feelings. But I remember it was I who suggested we go to Enna to pick the narcissi in bloom. Kore loved narcissi, but Enna was very far from her mother. She hadn’t wanted to go so far.
But we went to Enna—Kore, my two sisters and myself—and wandered the countryside of Sicily’s navel. My sisters left us alone. She was so beautiful and radiant. I remember how I used to watch her. I remember how I sang to her, before my voice took on its rapine euphony. No, perhaps it had it even then, unbeknownst to me. Perhaps that song which I was to sing again and again was what condemned her. But she loved my singing. It was my pride, my joy.
We spent most of that last day alone. Hyperion alone beheld us. The last day… I didn’t know it was the last day then…
Eventually we met up with my sisters, and the four of us continued our search for the narcissi. The day was waning and Kore wanted to return, but I insisted on finding the flowers. (Just one more minute, one more moment…) So we searched, and the shadows lengthened, and eventually we found one, I found one, weeping. I called to her; she came. I remember her smile, that beautiful smile, so radiant it burns me to recall it, as she knelt besides the bloom as it wept, as she reached out and took it in her alabaster hand. Oh gods, how that memory is tainted for me. That last smile. She plucked it, with her pristine hands at my behest. Mine! I was the one, me, my fault, my sin, not hers, and yet I could do nothing!
She fell at that moment. The earth opened and consumed her, and I did nothing, could do nothing. What could I have done? It was so fast. Hyperion saw, as I later learned, for he sees all. The earth swallowed her, down among the dead and the dank and the dark, my pure and radiant Persephone; my Kore; my guilt.
(Why didn’t he take me? Was I just not pure enough for his tastes, that king of shadows?)
I searched through the night, with my sisters. (It was not their sin, why did they suffer? Why was it only they who cast themselves onto the rocks when Odysseus passed? Why am I the only one to remain? I know why: because I am a coward, because I cannot face her even now, when aeons segregate us.) But we searched and scoured and cried the night away, perhaps I more desperately then my siblings. We found nothing, and I returned to Kore’s mother full of sin. My sisters did not deserve their fate.
It was that day that we were bound to sing, and so my greatest joy became my greatest pain. I have never seen Kore since that day; I learnt what happened from Hermes. Even when she returns to her mother’s side for half the year I do not see her. I cannot see her. And why would she want to see me, who led her to the place of her fall? I who condemned her to her torment: once-friend and companion. I doubt she would recognise me. I am hideous now, hideous and hoarse from singing. But this is not my story.
It was Hades who had taken her, I later found, down to his hidden halls beneath the world. The earth bleed dry at her descent; Demeter could not be consoled. She eventually learnt from Hyperion what had happened, though while he sees all he did not tell her everything. I am grateful for that. Perhaps he pities me, gazing down at me upon the rocks crying to the sea.
Hades held her captive for a long time. The gods tried to bargain with him, but he would not listen. What did he care for the earth? Its desolation filled his halls and Hades always loved it when his kingdom waxed. They said that Kore ate nothing, slowly wasting away. She would not wed him. The moons went by. Everything died. And all the time I sung. I could do no other: a solemn requiem, a hollow echo.
Eventually they rescued Kore from her prison. Hecate and Hermes did it, smuggling her up from the avernine halls to the embracing arms of her mother. But she was no longer Kore. She had eaten six pomegranate seeds, only six, but anyone who eats in Hades’ halls becomes his property. That was the Law. So when Hades came charging to reclaim their prize, they struck a deal. Six months below, six months above. His property. How could they… to her?
But it was my fault. If I had never taken her selfishly to Enna she would not have fallen. She is different now, I hear. She doesn’t smile. Her gaze is empty and pitiless. My sisters have descended, and daily I send hapless sailors to meet her through their watery graves. I cannot face her, even if she no longer knows me for who I was, even if my curse and the millennia I have sung have twisted me.
(My fault, my sin, my crime, my passion…)
I am old now. Nymphs are not immortal. I will have to see her. Her stare will fall to me. I look at my reflection in the water. What remains of the me that was? The bones of my sisters have long worn away. I open my mouth and listen once again to the hollow echo of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing. Endlessly singing the song I sang to her that day beneath Hyperion’s gaze: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my love… forgive me.
This is the tale of she who I failed and will one day know again, of how she came to moisten mortal springs with tears and take her pleasures in cursing men and ruling spectres. Only one’s songs have stirred her in the aeons I have been condemned to sing, and those were the haunting ballads of Orpheus. This how she became the Iron Queen, and how she was before when she still demurely smiled: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my friend…
I want to state that it was spring, but it couldn’t have been. There were no seasons in that age. This is their tale as well. I remember the narcissi were blooming, I remember that clearly. We were in Enna, in Sicily. Kore, as I and my sisters called her, was young then – for a goddess. Many gods had tried to woo her, but her mother had rejected them all. Sometimes I wonder if that was for the best; perhaps it would have altered both our fates… selfish thoughts. She and her mother were close, very close. Was I jealous? I don’t remember. Aeons dull such feelings. But I remember it was I who suggested we go to Enna to pick the narcissi in bloom. Kore loved narcissi, but Enna was very far from her mother. She hadn’t wanted to go so far.
But we went to Enna—Kore, my two sisters and myself—and wandered the countryside of Sicily’s navel. My sisters left us alone. She was so beautiful and radiant. I remember how I used to watch her. I remember how I sang to her, before my voice took on its rapine euphony. No, perhaps it had it even then, unbeknownst to me. Perhaps that song which I was to sing again and again was what condemned her. But she loved my singing. It was my pride, my joy.
We spent most of that last day alone. Hyperion alone beheld us. The last day… I didn’t know it was the last day then…
Eventually we met up with my sisters, and the four of us continued our search for the narcissi. The day was waning and Kore wanted to return, but I insisted on finding the flowers. (Just one more minute, one more moment…) So we searched, and the shadows lengthened, and eventually we found one, I found one, weeping. I called to her; she came. I remember her smile, that beautiful smile, so radiant it burns me to recall it, as she knelt besides the bloom as it wept, as she reached out and took it in her alabaster hand. Oh gods, how that memory is tainted for me. That last smile. She plucked it, with her pristine hands at my behest. Mine! I was the one, me, my fault, my sin, not hers, and yet I could do nothing!
She fell at that moment. The earth opened and consumed her, and I did nothing, could do nothing. What could I have done? It was so fast. Hyperion saw, as I later learned, for he sees all. The earth swallowed her, down among the dead and the dank and the dark, my pure and radiant Persephone; my Kore; my guilt.
(Why didn’t he take me? Was I just not pure enough for his tastes, that king of shadows?)
I searched through the night, with my sisters. (It was not their sin, why did they suffer? Why was it only they who cast themselves onto the rocks when Odysseus passed? Why am I the only one to remain? I know why: because I am a coward, because I cannot face her even now, when aeons segregate us.) But we searched and scoured and cried the night away, perhaps I more desperately then my siblings. We found nothing, and I returned to Kore’s mother full of sin. My sisters did not deserve their fate.
It was that day that we were bound to sing, and so my greatest joy became my greatest pain. I have never seen Kore since that day; I learnt what happened from Hermes. Even when she returns to her mother’s side for half the year I do not see her. I cannot see her. And why would she want to see me, who led her to the place of her fall? I who condemned her to her torment: once-friend and companion. I doubt she would recognise me. I am hideous now, hideous and hoarse from singing. But this is not my story.
It was Hades who had taken her, I later found, down to his hidden halls beneath the world. The earth bleed dry at her descent; Demeter could not be consoled. She eventually learnt from Hyperion what had happened, though while he sees all he did not tell her everything. I am grateful for that. Perhaps he pities me, gazing down at me upon the rocks crying to the sea.
Hades held her captive for a long time. The gods tried to bargain with him, but he would not listen. What did he care for the earth? Its desolation filled his halls and Hades always loved it when his kingdom waxed. They said that Kore ate nothing, slowly wasting away. She would not wed him. The moons went by. Everything died. And all the time I sung. I could do no other: a solemn requiem, a hollow echo.
Eventually they rescued Kore from her prison. Hecate and Hermes did it, smuggling her up from the avernine halls to the embracing arms of her mother. But she was no longer Kore. She had eaten six pomegranate seeds, only six, but anyone who eats in Hades’ halls becomes his property. That was the Law. So when Hades came charging to reclaim their prize, they struck a deal. Six months below, six months above. His property. How could they… to her?
But it was my fault. If I had never taken her selfishly to Enna she would not have fallen. She is different now, I hear. She doesn’t smile. Her gaze is empty and pitiless. My sisters have descended, and daily I send hapless sailors to meet her through their watery graves. I cannot face her, even if she no longer knows me for who I was, even if my curse and the millennia I have sung have twisted me.
(My fault, my sin, my crime, my passion…)
I am old now. Nymphs are not immortal. I will have to see her. Her stare will fall to me. I look at my reflection in the water. What remains of the me that was? The bones of my sisters have long worn away. I open my mouth and listen once again to the hollow echo of a voice aeons-hoarse from singing. Endlessly singing the song I sang to her that day beneath Hyperion’s gaze: Maiden of Antenor, Proserpine, Kore, Persephone, my love… forgive me.
Thursday, 11 December 2008
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.
Wednesday, 10 December 2008
Dolor
Drifting slowly, silent Dolor’s pitiful form
dragged himself along, exhausted,
watching vain, false hopes –
hopes flitting past him and the goddess.
Withered and wasted arms,
tired and aching legs, still kept ever driving him forwards,
quivering with the burden of untold griefs;
Griefs as countless as the grains of sand on the shore, leaves in a forest,
stalks of corn once so often seen at harvest time;
stalks which now ceased to bear some – any -
craved, desired, crucial sustenance for the people of the earth. Crops caused to
wither by the neglect of Ceres, mother of the earth, goddess of the harvest.
The once fruitful fields, swaying gently in the mellow summer breeze,
nodding sleepily with heavy heads of corn, full of sun and rain,
had long perished.
Desolate earth was all that remained, cold and wintered, barren and bare,
Over which Dolor wandered, his gaunt
And sallow face immortally etched by the burden of turmoil.
Pale presence, trembling lips, sunken eyes
spoke - and kept speaking – of innumerable nights, alone with tears of anxiety.
Wasted body racked with the sobs of despair, of lost Joy
- Joy fleetingly come and gone -
not even a shadow of a being.
His every presence hung over Ceres,
trailing steadily and stealthily behind the goddess, step for step,
as she drifted over the landscape in search of her beloved child,
Prosperina.
Tuesday, 9 December 2008
Tutorial Questions
What is the difference between representational and ontological narrativity? What is the relationship between narrative and experience? What are the benefits of taking an ontological approach to narrativity particularly in terms of the 'dimensions of narrativity' that Somers outlines? And finally, do you think that we could analyse the theorists and theories of myth we have looked at this term using Somer's reconfigured theory of narrativity? What would be revealed if we did?
If that doesn't grab you, maybe a trip to the pub after the lecture on Thursday will?
Monday, 8 December 2008
Pennie does pomegranate
...and he tells me that my breasts are getting empty. I mean, I know 6 years is a long time by most peoples standards but what better way of feeding Xena in times of drought than by the most natural thing a woman can give a child, the milk of a mother.
We go together to feed the animals, plough the fields and water the plants: she's very strong--it's a family trait. The rest of the household will do their bit later. I still don't understand why my small breasts are such a big issue.
Read the rest here
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