Mother's Day
I do enjoy starting out my posts with cliches (no, that's a lie, but never mind), so here it is: Happy Mother's Day! I'd like to say that people don't really need a whole day dedicated to the person who gave them life to appreciate them, but that's a lie too, because people are notoriously...human...about taking things for granted. So, in the spirit of this whole endeavour, take a little time today to think about carrying a watermelon around your midsection for 9 months, squeezing it out of a very small opening over 12-odd hours of excruciating pain, and having to watch it grow into a big hulking sulky teenager who will at some point in his or her life profess to hate you for everything.
Anyway, I was just annotating some Walcott poetry (Literature exam in two weeks), and came across a poem called Adam's Song, which is a beautiful, poignant poem about the fall of Adam and Eve from God's grace (so the Bible goes, and I'm not Christian, so I stand corrected on any errors). The poem's message is that while divine love assures immortality, profane love humanizes us, and therefore commits us eventually to die. And in spite of his impending death, Adam continues to defy God, and sings his song of love to Eve, because his love for her is so overwhelming; and upon hearing this song, God stops weeping for the betrayal of Adam and Eve, because their love - even though it was forbidden - is so pure that it brings them salvation.
Or something like that.
Well anyway, that's not how the story went in the Bible. As I recall, God kicked them out of the Garden of Eden for learning shame from eating the forbidden fruit. First of all, if I were going to forbid a fruit, I sure wouldn't put the tree of forbidden fruit in the middle of the garden and specifically tell people not to eat it. I mean, come on. To paraphase Terry Pratchett, if someone painted a sign which said "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door, for fear of ultimate obliteration", the paint wouldn't even have time to dry. Secondly, love is supposed to be the most divine thing, and if Adam and Eve expressed such love for each other, why would God chuck them out? The only thing I can think of is that he got miffed at them for disobeying him and decided to punish them, which sounds a trifle dictatorial to me...what happened to God being forgiving and all that? Hmm.
Thirdly, this is assuming Adam and Eve existed in the first place. Don't know about the rest of you, but give me apes, neanderthals, primordial soup and Darwinian evolution anytime.