Often I have to say, “I’m sorry, they’re not in season right now.” But not during the month of May. Invariably she will answer, “Artichokes!” Many times, when I’m shopping with my youngest, Eva, I will ask, “What should we have for dinner?” Thus grew Cynara cardunculus – what we know as the common artichoke. Her petals were armed with savage barbs, guarding a soft but resilient heart inside – a heart made of earth and sun, the prize of men and gods alike. Out of that, which was the heart of Cynara planted deep within the soil of the earth, grew a slender, golden stalk, with a flower that turned sunward. This he threw back down from the heights of Olympus to the rocky island of Kinaros. When Cynara returned, with a touch of pink in her cheeks, Zeus thundered into the room, gathered her body into his massive palms and crushed and crumbled her limbs like a handful of dry leaves until all that was left was her tender human heart. Then he entered her bedchamber and disappeared behind the tapestry in wait. I said at the beginning, Zeus was cunning, and so he devised a trap and set watchmen to inform him of when Cynara slipped out of the ice-grey halls to set foot once again on the dust of the earth. There’s nothing more maddening than the scorn of a mortal. And Zeus, when calling on Cynara and finding her bedchamber more often than not, empty, became enraged. These mortal longings were such that they couldn’t be satisfied, even by the flame of Zeus’ passion.Ĭynara began to sneak out, visiting her home and her mother in the evenings, walking along the sea as the sun set even though she could no longer feel its warmth. While the existence of a god is cold and hard, the human condition is a mélange of fire and ice, pain and pleasure, salted tears and love. She missed her mother’s warm embrace, the crackle of the fire on the hearth, the smell of bread baking over coals. In time, Cynara’s heart began to ache for those sun-drenched rocks that burned the soles of her feet, for the quenching coolness of the Aegean, for the salt of the sea as it dried in her hair. You see, however resilient the human heart is, it’s soft like the clay of the earth, never forgetting the stuff from which it’s formed, despite even the workings of a god. As months rolled into years, however, Cynara began to feel the twinges of lonesomeness deep within her soul. Hera was often busy with matters of royalty, leaving Zeus and Cynara to pursue more carnal diversions. Olympus.ĭays turned to weeks while their affair stretched long through cool nights like a fisherman’s line cast deep into the blue sea. Could any of us? So, on that day she took her last mortal step from the sun-baked rocks of the coastline into the cool marble halls of Mt. This was something Cynara simply could not refuse. Olympus – his mistress in an affair that would last an eternity, so long as Hera, his wife (and sister), was well occupied. Zeus would grant Cynara the gift of goddess-hood, lifting her mortal soul from the dirt and stone of this earth if, in return, she would live always near him in the home of the gods upon Mt. Then, drawing back into himself as if to stir up that FOMO we humans find so powerful, he made one last offer, something she couldn’t possibly resist. He promised her all the flowers in the fields above the sea. Zeus, being a cunning séducteur, approached Cynara in all his glory and promised her the sky and the moon if she would agree to be his lover. She was named Cynara, for the island she called home. At that moment he wanted nothing more intensely than this mortal, with eyes that burned with vitality and a face like a flower, upturned toward the sun. Their gaze locked in what can only be called, An Embrace of Fate. She stared back across the sea, eyes like fire, unfazed by his formidable divinity. As he looked out across the sparkling waters of the Aegean, his vision fell upon a beautiful young woman standing barefoot on the grey stones that stretched out along the shoreline of the island, Kinaros. Olympus to visit his brother, Poseidon, near the sea. The legend goes that Zeus, king of the gods, came down from Mt.
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