The Story Of Psyche

Or did she learn to be colder when she got older and now she saves them the pain?

Commission for Johnicholas Hines! Based on this drawing

Persephone the Wanderer (II)

by Louise Glück

In the second version, Persephone is dead. She dies, her mother grieves– problems of sexuality need not trouble us here. Compulsively, in grief, Demeter circles the earth. We don’t expect to know what Persephone is doing. She is dead, the dead are mysteries. We have here a mother and a cipher: this is accurate to the experience of the mother as she looks into the infant’s face. She thinks: I remember when you didn’t exist. The infant is puzzled: later, the child’s opinion is she has always existed, just as her mother had always existed in her present form. Her mother is like a figure at a bus stop, an audience for the bus’s arrival. Before that, she was the bus, a temporary home or convenience. Persephone, protected, stares out of the window of the chariot. What does she see? A morning in early spring, in April. Now her whole life is beginning–unfortunately, it’s going to be a short life. She’s going to know, really, only two adults: death and her mother. But two is twice what her mother has: her mother has one child, a daughter. As a god, she could have had a thousand children. We begin to see here the deep violence of the earth whose hostility suggests she has no wish to continue as a source of life. And why is this hypothesis never discussed? Because it is not in the story; it only creates the story. In grief, after the daughter dies, the mother wanders the earth. She is preparing her case; like a politician she remembers everything and admits nothing. For example, her daughter’s birth was unbearable, her beauty was unbearable: she remembers this. She remembers Persephone’s innocence, her tenderness– What is she planning, seeking her daughter? She is issuing a warning whose implicit message is: what are you doing outside my body? You ask yourself: why is the mother’s body safe? The answer is this is the wrong question, since the daughter’s body doesn’t exist, except as a branch of the the mother’s body that needs to be reattached any any cost. When a god grieves it meas destroying others (as in war) while at the same time petitioning to reverse agreements (as in war also): if Zeus will get her back, winter will end. Winter will end, spring will return. The small pestering breezes that I so loved, the idiot yellow flowers– Spring will return, a dream based on a falsehood: that the dead return. Persephone was used to death. Now over and over her mother hauls her out again– You must ask yourself: are the flowers real? If Persephone “returns” there will be one of two reasons: either she was not dead or she is being used to support a fiction– I think I can remember being dead. Many times, in winter, I approached Zeus. Tell me, I would ask him, how can I endure the earth? And he would say, in a short time you will be here again. And in the time between you will forget everything: those fields of ice will be the meadows of Elysium.

some of the short stories from this eve that im thinking abt still... someone read them and tell me ur thoughts thank u

monsters never leave you - carlie st. george . i thought the fairytale elements were woven together nicely 😌 you get undead siblings, tree mothers, chosen family, forgiveness vs love etc! good stuff

call them children - wenmimareba klobah collins the monster narrative continues. their descriptions are delightful, especially in the crafting of the setting, and the ending... obsessed

my country is a ghost - eugenia triantafyllou the longing after loss that imbues this.. feel like it captures a loss of family connection when you’re not in your homeland very well imo

open house on haunted hill - john wiswell another house that loves you! adore the concept of this one, though it’s not horror vibes, more cozy and amusing! though the last line ‘if anything is as patient as a parent, it’s a haunting’ so much potential Thematically there for something more sinister... please may someone write it!

Fyodor Dostoevsky ― Crime and Punishment

Common Tree Boa - yellow Morph.  

PHOTO : Pete Oxford.

i was not a nice little girl, gillian flynn

The Epic of Gilgamesh illustrated by Wael Tarabieh (½)

Persephone and the Springtime was written by Margaret Hodges with illustrations by Arvis Stewart.

Part 2