Mythology

I've always loved mythology. The grand scale of the stories, magic and the telling of how the world became what it is. I was thinking about the gods and goddesses awhile ago, and the idea of the modern Greek tragedies stuck in my head. The gods living on, neglected by mortals, impotent. I also thought about Hera, how nobody likes her. But I feel sorry for her, and I wanted her side oft e story. Maybe its' the feminist in me, but when I think about women living in a society where their only power comes from what man they marry and the children they have by him, I can't help but feel sympathy. So, this is the beginning of that concept. I've done a couple of pictures based on this idea, but I decided to switch over to words- because I'll never do the idea justice with my limited artistic talent.

This is kind of a prologue. Hera talking to Atlas about life leading up to the story. I'm not sure what the story is exactly, but I know it involves Zeus, Hera, Aphrodite, and Poseidon with Atlas serving as an audience. We'll see how it goes.
Oh! But before that, here's a poem I wrote that made me decide to turn the tragedies from pictures to words:

Star Gazing
I watched
Liquid light fall from dipper's rim
where Orion paused to drink before
his hunt, shining pelts swinging from his belt
Cassiopeia, watched lounging on a throne
glistening, resplendent, with silver inlay.
Sparks flew from Draco's open mouth
and virgins trembled, hair glistening in it's light
as Hercules sword arced, flashing, toward the flames.
Andromeda strums her golden lyre,
awaiting Peruses' return as creatures of the deep
swim swift around her feet.
I lay on the onyx grass and watched
the diamonds dance their epic paths
of tragic glory one soft summer night.


HERA: Greek Tragedies

Atlas, stooped and old: wrinkles sagging, bagging eyes. Atlas the proud and powerful, the world on his shoulders. Once the world was a trap he fell into, but as the years pass, he has turned it into heroism. He holds the world, and he believes that he stands between it and destruction, dashed to pieces on the heaven's floor. But he has been deluded, like all of us. He is unnecessary: the world hangs on the strong string of science, suspended between the earth and the infinite. But no one will tell him this. We remember. So he sits, the world on his shoulders, and the years roll on.

I don't know if anyone else ever visits him. If they too demand an audience from this captive, I have never heard of it. I started coming here years ago, because where else could I go? Cuckolded queen of the gods. Goddess of the family, yes, who can't keep a husband. Queen, above- and removed from -all. By the power I hold over them still. Or perhaps by the bitterness that emanates from my eyes. What will she do next? I hear them whisper. Just loud enough for my ears, daring me to take them on too. Don't they understand? I've seen them do these things too. Proud, insolent, young. That's what we were. With the might of the mountain coursing though our veins. But as they have, I also have aged. I have, and we have, grown wise. Or I have. I hope.

Atlas, like so many times, I have come to talk. But I have not yet found the words so I sit.

I stare at the world on his back. If I were him, I'd just let the earth fall. I would hope there was no chain to hold it after I was gone. I would laugh as the world turned and I would smile over the screams of the countless lovers during the short drop. Then I would pull a broom from the star-shapes and sweep the shattered glass from my parlor floor, throwing it out into the evening and forming a new constellation. That one is earth, that one is there to remind you what happens when you forget.

Atlas, we have been forgotten. But I have been forgotten longest.