Persephone Personified

Here I am. This is my blog.

I am here because Mel commands it. Mel is my instructor at Utah Valley University for my beginning playwrighting class - an otherwise perfectly pleasant person, except for the fact that we have to blog for our class.

I have returned to school and they call me a non-traditional student. That's just their polite way to say that I'm old. And being as ancient as I am (a decrepit 44 years) I am a bit of a technological hermit. Oh sure, I have a cell phone, laptop, a website and I email everyday, but I am a hold out on everything else. I have turned down about one billion invitations to join Facebook, Linked In, MySpace etc. I have never sent a text. And I have ignored the advice of many in my line of work to get professionally connected online, and most of all to blog.

I have scorned them all for two very good reasons. The first is on principle. I think our society is too fractured already. I don't text because I'd rather talk to a voice - a real person. I have to email, it's a necessity to getting things done, but I will always choose the most human, real form of communication I can. I have seen younger students around me not answer a call, but then text back their friend (you know you do it!) We are loosing the skill of real communication and connection. I find that scary.

The second reason is simply...time. Especially for the next two years while I finish my degree (theatre arts with an emphasis in playwrighting,) I just don't have the time. Again, well meaning fellow artist (actors, storytellers, writers) have advised me to market, to blog, to get Linked In. I just smile, then run for the door. I've got more work than I can get to, so I don't think spending time doing these things to get work I don't have time to do is a wise choice.

So against my moral beliefs and busy schedule, here I am... in my very own blog. I feel a bit like Persephone. You know who Persephone is, don't you? In Greek mythology, she is the daughter of Demeter, Goddess of all living, growing things. The two live in a idyllic world, roaming the woods and fields without a cell phone in sight. But then Hades, the God of the underworld, spies Persephone and want her for his wife. Does he ask for a date? Does he approach Demeter for permission? No. He thunders out of a crack in the ground in his chariot pulled by black horses, grabs her while she's picking flowers and drags her down to hell.

So this is me, being dragged kicking and screaming down to blogger hell. I guess that makes Mel, Hades (sorry, Mel.) But the story has a happy ending - sort of. Demeter is so upset that all growing things die, until Zeus commands that Hades returns Persephone to her mother. The problem is, Persephone ate 6 pomegranate seeds in Hades' garden, so she has to live 6 months out of the year with Hades and 6 months with her mother - and that's how we get the seasons, according to the Greeks. When I was a kid, I used to think, what's up with the pomegranate seeds? The story makes more sense when you realize that the red pomegranate seeds represent sexual knowledge, so there you go.

So perhaps I too may find some pleasure in blogging hell. Who knows? Maybe after the semester's over, I might find that I return to the blog time and time again.