Thursday, February 28

The Lost Myth of the Venus-child

Dear Imogen,

You speak of the delicious Mr Depp.

Perhaps I should recount a little known myth that it is imperative your classics students become familiar with. I cannot reveal from which source I came to know of this myth..... only that it is true, and if it not be so, may the knarled hand of The Fates cut short the very string of my too, too sullied life and send me winging to the very bowels of dark Hades........

As the end of the Golden Age of the Gods approached, all-mighty Zeus, tiring of the jealous ways of his wife-sister Hera, bid Aphrodite, goddess of love and beauty, to fashion a mortal male from the very core of her ambrosia-being. This mortal male, so delightful in looks and in radiant beauty, would serve to enchant the eye of Hera, turning her watchful gaze away from the adulterous mischief of her all-powerful and salacious husband. In return for her efforts, Zeus promised to free Aphrodite from her bond to lame-footed Hephaestos, and to unite her for all eternity with her true love, the war-like Ares.

Aphrodite, unable to resist such an offer, left Mount Olympus alone, leaving even her favourite behind, the light-winged Eros, to seek peaceful and concentrated refuge on the Island of Cyprus, which island she was fond of more than any other place on mankind's earth. There she began her work in creating a male more beautiful than even that most beautiful of all mortal beings, Helen of Troy.

So consummed with her work did Aphrodite become, that she failed to hear the call of Zeus for the gods and goddesses of his realm to leave Mount Olympus and to abandon mortal men and women to their fate forever.

Aphrodite, alone in the world, continued to work as if in a timeless trance, as she fashioned her most sublime personification of her nature. More inspiration and thought had Aphrodite never before bestowed into one single task. Her spirit and mind was absorbed for centuries with the perfection of her incandescant male. All her essence of being was poured forth over these long years, ensuring that Aphrodite's child-of-mind would be forever filled with the very quintessence of empyrean beauty.

In the year 1963, Aphrodite's work was finally complete. The sublime mortal man was ready for unveiling to mankind and to the now-vanished eye of Hera.

Her creation was sent forth from the Island of Cyprus to the unlikely town of Owensboro, Kentucky, his care being charged to a simple-born man and woman.

The god-child grew into his fated beauteous form as simply as a leaf swirls in the gentle breath of restless Eurus.

And now, though the time of the Gods has passed, men and women of the mortal kingdom can still recall the supreme power over beauty of this most lovely of all goddesses, by gazing upon the pinnacle of male exquisiteness that is Aphrodite's swan-song, Mr Johnny Depp.

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