I have never eaten a pomegranate.
My mother is dumbfounded. I tell her this when she is cutting into a jackfruit. At first I resist taking the pale yellow, pungent smelling fruit. But when I bite into it, I am cycled into my early childhood and with the singular taste, I am once again four years old in Vietnam. Oh! I know this taste and this smell. That is the taste memory of jackfruit: Vietnam. I have not eaten since I left that country, until this moment.
But I have no recollection of eating pomegranate. Pomegranate juice I drink all the time. But I know it's probably not the same.
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The Persephone Myth:
The nymph is at play in the fields of Enna. Her mother has long sheltered her, keeping her away from the licentious court of Olympus. Apollo was among those who wanted to marry her. Fair, young, she is the Kore -- the Maiden. It's the name by which she will be known later on, even after she becomes worshipped as the feared and dark Queen: "The Maiden."
On this day in the field, her girlish laughter echoes as she and her playmates pick flowers and tease each other. In the near distance, a fissure develops in the earth. The ground rattles and groans, splitting open as the Lord of the Underworld bursts through on a rare foray to surface, his chariot thundering across the startled terrain, his horses raging across the plain. The Maiden's playmates are the first to see him: and they cry out in fear as he approaches them. But he moves swiftly past them, intent on the the young nymph, his arm outstretched to capture her. And as the ground swallows them into darkness, her mother hears her screams.
Demeter, goddess of harvest and of hearth, races to the field to find her child. The girl's playmates are too frightened to tell her what they saw; too afraid of what Hades will do to them and so they say nothing; and Demeter turns them into sirens for failing to intervene in her daughter's abduction.
Demeter searches for her daughter, thwarted at every turn. For several seasons, she ignores her charge of harvest: Fields are dry, fallow. Nothing green sprouts. Nothing nourishing lives. Always the same question she asks of every rock, every woodland creature, every sentient thing: Did you see my Kore? Have you seen my Kore? No one knows what happened-- or if they do, they too, are afraid of the powerful lord Hades.
Helios, the sun, on his arching summit, saw Hades take Persephone. And finally, he takes pity on Demeter and tells her what he saw. Demeter is consumed with anguish. She hides herself away, for a time living among mortals, the same beings who are hungry as their crops refuse to grow, who are dying as they are unable to feed themselves. Zeus finally understands that Demeter's grief is not an affectation: devastated by the loss of her child, she is indifferent to the suffering of others. She does not care if earth's children die; her Kore is lost and her will is likewise gone. Earth's children will die, she tells Zeus; and he knows because the gods can hear the pitiful wailing of the hungry people. He sends Hermes as an envoy to his brother, demanding Persephone's return.
In the Underworld, Persephone sits beside Hades on a throne; she is a queen, but one who came unwillingly to that seat and one who would rather run amidst the field uncrowned and unburdened. She has not eaten since he brought her to this hell. But now, with her imminent release she unthinkingly accepts the pomegranate he proffers, swallowing six seeds. Hades argues with Zeus that she has eaten from his table, and therefore cannot be taken from him; Demeter tells Zeus that if her daughter is not returned to her, there will be no more seasons. Zeus offers a compromise: for every seed she has eaten, Persephone will spend a month with Hades; and the rest of the time, she will be with her mother.
And so the seasons change as Persephone spends the verdant spring and hazy summer months with her mother on earth, and in the dying fall and deadened winter, she returns to her throne as the Queen of the Underworld by her husband's side.
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My mother searches all of Orlando for a pomegranate and is unsuccessful.
Why did I want it? she asks.
There is a recipe I have been wanting to try. You have a juicer. I thought I'd make it here.
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This is Stephen Asprinio's seductive dessert and it is laden with pomegranate seeds...alas I could find none for this post..But I will. Yes. I will.
