They lay sprawled over furniture and floor like discarded underwear – crumpled, disordered, hard to ignore, distracting of gaze, - one was sleeping on the wooden pew – sanctified sprawling.
Bet Boticelli’s “Madonna of the pomegranate” never imagined that her icon grasping infant would grow into a young man who would sprawl with such presence.
New Scientist has published Christmas reading entitled “100 Things to Do Before You Die (plus a few to do afterwards)”. Thought it unfortunate at the time given the Boxing Day Tsunami. I was interested in Home Lab: Measure the speed of light with chocolate, - involves chocolate and judicious use of a microwave and then there was Home Lab: Weigh your head – Though admit that I thought immersing your head in a bucket of water was distinctly something to encourage another into.
Searched the booklet for motherhood, for fertility rites, for ritual with ripe pomegranates and found nothing, ziltch, squat – closest article was “Learn to have multiple orgasms. Oh, don’t stop now ..” but did not read this since it will be irrelevant now I am embracing celibacy as one of three New Year Resolutions. Did not even allude to any moral equivalents to pomegranates and Persephone.
Ritual with ripe pomegranates is massively undervalued – and for that matter underrepresented in the new media. You might complain about the absence of the root vegetable dialogue in most communities but when you look for the pomegranate you find yourself in a pomegranate Serengeti.
An ancient middle-eastern icon of the womb, because of its blood red juice, flimsy membranes and numerous seeds (for numerous read 840 - the smallest number divisible by 1 through 8.) – the pomegranate was carved on the pillars of Solomon’s Temple as a symbol of fertility. It’s Hebrew name, rimmon, comes from rim, to bear a child. Descendant of Eve and all that.
Ahh that vexed status of motherhood. I read that Berber women drew a circle on the ground and flung a ripe pomegranate into the centre – seeds expelled prophesied future children. Those Ellen Bass “slick seeds” all over. What it could not have prophesied is the number of young men you will find sprawled over furniture and floor when you stagger through to feed the dog on a Saturday morning
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