OST: The Goddess of Spring

Happy birthday to me & my lifelong Persephone complex.

Happy Taurus season! 🌸 Today is my birthday, I’ve returned to Garden State, locked in the Beatrix Potter illustration that is my parents’ house. Suffice to say it’s been a poignant transition for a 33-year-old woman with a Persephone complex.

Between my mother’s Catholic God and my father’s Orthodox God we’re living in an expanded Easter. The pool is finally filled, the lawn is littered with monarch butterflies. I’ve seen bunnies chasing one another, paw at each other in a frantic little dance, and then presumably go off to boink (as rabbits do).

And apparently I don’t know how to pick flowers. “You need to pull it from the root,” my mother recently instructed me, as my Docs dug into the mud and the stem of a scarlet-mouthed tulip snapped in my hand. What’s next, I find out I suck at fucking *frolicking*? Unbelievable.

Anyway, I appreciate you being on this journey with me, and we’ll return to our regularly scheduled program in May. ‘Till then, I’m sharing super-charged vibes and a very special playlist, grown straight from this soil of the Garden State. This is about:

The Goddess of Spring

The myth of Persephone is something I study at length, but to simplify I’m explaining in my usual Horowitz-ian cadence. Okay, SO, Persephone is an earthbound goddess, the daughter of Demeter, Goddess of the Harvest. One day she’s out doing #justlittlemaidenthings in the Sicilian fields when she picks a narcissus flower—a daffodil, essentially. But OH NO, the plant is actually just a trick from Hades, God of the Dead, who brings her down to the Underworld to be his bride.

Demeter is livid. In her grief, she neglects her duties and Earth falls into an endless winter. Zeus is like, “Absolutely not, Hades, we can’t have this, send her back.” BUT THE PROBLEM IS that Persephone ate six pomegranate seeds (???) and therefore is obligated to the Underworld, at least in part. She ping-pongs between two realms in perpetuity, spending six months of the year on Earth, and six months in Hades.

And all her light feminine competes with her dark feminine competes with her light feminine competes with her dark feminine competes with her light feminine…

For a lot of women, myself loudly included, the appeal of Persephone is her dichotomy and duality. But those qualities are precisely what makes Persephone a bound woman—she’s unique in that she occupies two realms, but neither are Olympus, where the rest of the gods are drinking ambrosia and pissing the night away.

And this is the first time I’ve really wondered, “does she ever get sick of that shit?” How does Persephone feel when she returns from Underworld after the millionth time, going from being an all-powerful Dread Queen to the Goddess of Spring?

🌸💀🌸

Holland (New Jersey), fields of fire-breathing tulips, rainbow bagels, Kokiri Forest, Disney’s The Goddess of Spring, an earthy red Chambourcin, a honeysuckle-kissed white Gewürztraminer, “You know, she was just in Germany,” a giant Jigglypuff pillow, Ferdinand the Bull just being here for a good time, Taurus in the 8th house, a phone call with the man with the beautiful graveyard, family 4/20, “I only think in six month cycles,”, Natasha Lyonne on her “Pink Floyd season,” staring at the flowerbeds under slate skies and thinking about how all your life you've waited to be taken away from this.

🌸💀🌸

“I just wish I could have a completely new job, something artistic that would ground me and use my hands. Maybe I should be a florist. You know, in the rom-com version of my life that’s what I’m doing, I’m running a cute flower shop in London. Maybe that’s what I’ll do! I wonder if anyone would hire me.”

“I think they would. I mean, you don’t have experience.”  

“But I have spunk.”

🌸💀🌸

A Virgo born to a Virgo, your dream of lying in a Netherlands tulip field while listening to Zeppelin’s ‘Rain Song,” Debbie Reynolds, Carrie Fisher and Billie Lourd, swaying in front of the fireplace in a periwinkle floral print gown, The Court Jester, “I just can’t imagine how much easier our lives would be if I married into the Coppola family already,” gardenia perfume, blood manicures on doll hands, your mother telling you bedtime stories of Stevie Nicks, the freest woman in the world: “and then she’d lower her cloak and twirl.”

🌸💀🌸

Talking about your brother’s two engagement parties and asking, “If I never get married, can I still get an engagement party?” Mom, not listening, saying, “You can get whatever you want.” Your brother is cackling, you joining in with peals of laughter, and dad mumbling, “I’m not paying.”

🌸💀🌸

Explaining the plot of Natural Born Killers, the curse of eternal 🎀girlhood🎀, the pink full moon over Dairy Queen, Molly Gunn in Uptown Girls, the masturbatory angst & guilt of knowing you don’t live a bad life, Samantha Baker, Mina Harker, no boots in the house, no wine in your room so FINE, you will listen to Pulp and drink in the darkened kitchen, the fortune in your cookie: “October is a time for travel and adventure (Lucky Numbers 22, 30, 25, 38, 8, 36)," a voice in your pocket, desire, always desire, not feeling shame around being a creature of desire, supper at Scarborough Fair, surrounded by strings of crystal Easter eggs and rabbits (so many rabbits) and the waiter bringing out a chocolate raspberry cheesecake with a candle on it.

“Make a wish, make it count.”

🌸💀🌸

I wish I had the ability to move freely without constantly thinking about dying. Everyday, death chasing the heels, reminding me that time is running out.

I wish I could pursue new dreams without jeopardizing the life I’ve always wanted for myself. And I could set up real roots, whether I’m someone’s daughter or wife or not. I wish I’d stop feeling like a 16-year-old in an adult’s body, and I somehow wish to stay young forever. I wish to enjoy self-nourishment and freedom without feeling guilt, and to not bounce around ceaselessly between two worlds, unable to have a true home.

And all my light feminine competes with my dark feminine competes with my light feminine embraces my dark feminine strangles my light feminine…

No. Gray feminine forever. I am a fully homogenized person, and deserving of as many realms as possible. And all my life I’ve waited to be taken away from this, and I’m frustrated at the premise that it might ultimately be me, but I’ll do it.

…

Or maybe a vintage Blumarine slip dress.

As Always,

I Remain,

The One & Only

Mary Grace

PS, here’s the playlist, I’ll see you in two weeks. 💖🖤