In a land deep of reflection
Actually, when she sits too long, she gets leg cramps, ergo:
There sits a maiden, sometimes standing
She cannot look anywhere else (even when she is standing up stretching) but can see the reflection of what is going on around her through the mirror. Seeing everyone else have fun, she would like to as well but cannot. She’s stuck to her mirror or else. Or else what?
The key is the second part, delineated by asterisks and squigglies, which I love so to use as a section break: *~~*~*~*~*~*~ (Actually, I used to only use asterisks but upon hitting the carriage return, Microsoft Word kept automatically formatting the asterisks into a page-wide like of square dots, very irritating I’m sure you agree.)
The only famous Gorgon in mythology (that I know of) is Medusa. Hence the “immortal hair” in
Her sisters two at least as fair
Gorgons both: the immortal hair
Recall that although Medusa was so ugly that the sight of her would turn you to stone, although she once was, according to some versions that have cropped up through the millennia, a ravishingly beautiful maiden.
"In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid(Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a ravishingly beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," but when she was caught being raped by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged Athena transformed Medusa's beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn onlookers to stone. In Ovid's telling, Perseus describes Medusa's punishment by Minerva (Athena) as just and well earned." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medusa For more about Gorgons: For more about Gorgons, click here.
Yeah, that’s pretty fu**** up but it’s you guys telling these idiot stories, lol. Note that her two sisters are gorgons with immortal hair. Medusa is the only one of her sisters who is mortal, and thus killable by Perseus. (Recall that Athena gave Perseus a magic shield that doubled as a reflecting mirror so he could behead Medusa. Yeah, women don’t get ahead because they work against each other. What did Medusa ever do to Athena anyway?)
Some more recent versions have Medusa changing with the darkness.
And when the sun spit shriveled rays,
Her hair turned in a vastly maze
of dark and emerald ablaze
that met none of her awesome gaze--
chimera called Dusame.
I like this version better because it gives her a break from always being ugly.
If you rotate the letters in her name (I forget the word for that little trick), Medusa becomes Edusam, Dusame, Usamed, Samedu, and Amedus. Edusam sounded too masculine. Usamed and Samedu sounded too Arabic and that wasn’t the vibe I was working towards. Amedus sounded too similar to Amadeus.
Dusame, unlike her original counterpart, appears to have a conscience. Instead of turning men into stone, she refuses to look at anyone and instead looks only into the mirror.
The mirror looks for her instead
of her own eyes, to which it fed
forbidden sights behind her--led
her to such things as she would wed
fastly to her eyes.
It gets old of course, looking into the mirror. In one version of Medusa, Medusa was so vain that she boasted that she was fairer than Athena in Athena’s own temple. (A Cute Children's Retelling is here.) I think this version was confounded with the story of Andromeda, whose mother, Cassiopeia, made the famous Boast of Cassiopeia about Andromeda’s beauty so that Andromeda had to be sacrificed on some rocks that fell into the ocean. (The rocks didn’t actually fall, they were in a formation of a cliff.) Anyway, Perseus, who happens to be flying by on Pegasus, who sprung from Medusa’s body after he decapitated her, saves Andromeda. All good and happy.
In my version, the conscience-stricken Dusame would love to go out into the great fun world to have fun but she cannot. Suitors actually come, or are they there to kill the Gorgons?
They come to see the sisters three,
heroic with a certainty,
that in their curse they bear gladly
are free to wave most luridly
at suitors all who fast decree
to slay the sisters famously.
It never ends this way, only
more turned to granite cruelly
not from fate but intensity
of finding more and differently.
For Medusa’s gaze does not lose its potency in death and would be a great weapon in battle. That’s what “turned to granite” means, turned to stone.
That means if you kill her and want to use her stony gaze as a death-instrument, you have to kill her with her eyes OPEN. I bet you never thought about that, huh? I guess the men who come are not suitors in the literal sense. They might be if the Gorgons weren’t so dangerous, but some men like them that way, I’ve heard. ;-)
Notice also that there are no less than TEN, count them, TEN lines that rhyme. That's why I liken this to Edgar Allen Poe's the Raven: Once upon a midnight dreary while I wondered weak and weary over many a curious volume of forgotten lore. Suddenly there came a rapping as of someone gently rapping, rapping on my chamber door...I did that from memory so forgive any errors.
So, one day, a suitor comes
Two steps forward, whistling lowly
He has come to see the holy
of the Gorgons, changing solely
at the break of eve.
The only one that changes is Medusa, her sisters were born Gorgons and are thus immortal. Medusa was changed into a Gorgon and went to live with them, as they are the only ones that can withstand her petrifying gaze (besides other immortals, of course). This nice suitor wants to be a hero like all the others and intends to cut off Dusame’s head as a trophy and weapon of mass destruction:
Looked through the glass but for a flash,
He lifted sword and made to slash
her slender throat a deep red gash
But can he do it? Not very nice considering how Dusame is considerate enough to keep from killing all the mortal men that come to woo and/or kill her. I guess you’ll have to read and find out!
Dusame in the Mirror Page
Again, I would like to note that I am totally against analyzing literature of any kind, but if it helps you to read it, I will be a sell out. I would also like to write full-time, so if you would like to see one of my screenplays on the big screen one of these days or find a book of mine in the bookstore, or meet me at a book signing, lulz, please spread the word, many thanks! =-)
Many other poets have found Medusa as an inspiration. Here is Sylvia Plath's poem on Medusa. Kinda' like mine better because it rhymes, lol. However, as an artiste (with an "e" at the end), invidious comparisons have no place in real art, wink wink.
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