God’s Honest Truth

I’ve got to tell you it’s not an easy thing being a minor ancient deity; subject to the misconceptions and capriciousness of the human imagination. Fair enough if your career takes off and you’re adopted by some ambitious city-state of empire builders. Then, as your pool of worshippers expands exponentially, your form becomes refined and enhanced through many iterations of artistic practice. But if you’ve sprung forth in some parochial enclave on the fringes of civilisation, chances are you’ll be stuck there, lumbered with whatever idiosyncratic aesthetic took the fancy of your creators. Even so, if your field of divine supervision has an air of solemnity, war or death say, the reins will be applied and your representation will allow you some semblance of dignity. Fertility however; that’s just a licence for free expression to run wild; indeed by its very nature it demands a lack of inhibition in its depiction. The child-bearing hips I can live with; they’re par for the course. And the foliage continuously sprouting from the arms and legs, though a pain to keep in check (particularly with nothing but a pair of scissors to prune with), is admittedly on message. But what’s with the tiny head ? I mean, you have to accept a certain lack of perspective – the Renaissance wasn’t due for almost a millennium - but this was taking things too far. The trouble is people think of fertility and it’s all about the body. It’s all about flesh ripening and swelling. The intellect disregarded in subjugation to basic instinct and primeval impulse. Is it too much to ask that it be made apparent that I do have a brain capable of thinking beyond the next watering cycle ? Capable of arguing for a proportionately sized container in fact.