On Personal Mythologies and story cores and circles of light

[permetaform]

I spent part of today trying to explain the story of The Little Matchstick Girl to someone who, in hindsight, I don't think ever had a childhood story. Or not the kind that The Little Matchstick Girl was to me.

I remember first hearing this story one night flopped on my parent's bed. My dad told me the story, and at the end of it...I did not have words, then, for how incredibly shaken that story made me. I don't think I have words for it now, even. I'd stumbled off to bed, and I don't remember sleeping.

The story, as it has made it into my personal mythology, as I remember it and perhaps not necessarily the way it was told, is this:

An orphaned little girl sold matchsticks that she made on the streets of a town solstice eve, as she had ever done to feed herself. They weren't selling well so she still had a lot and by and by her eyes fell on a the window of a home nearby. It was golden inside, family around a table and the light spilled out in buttery puddles and she could almost touch the warmth through the cold and the dark around her.

She lit a matchstick and then it was like she was in their circle of light and warmth for a brief moment, until the matchstick went out and she was alone again.

She lit another one and it seemed like they were closer and she imagines the smell of the food on the table and the voices around her and before that match went out she lit another one.

The next day they found her, frozen, with used matchsticks all around her; she looked happy.

This is the story I know; or rather, that I remember, that is part of me. I kept returning to the thought of this story, even though it made my stomach curl up on itself.

I mentioned to kintail yesterday about the heart of a story, and essential core that attacks the animal hindbrain of people, and that doesn't let go.

For The Little Matchstick Girl, for me, it's the image of that solitary little girl, in the darkness, with a match, and by wish or will or strength of imagination taking herself to a place where she's not so alone anymore.

Fiat Lux

let there be light
He didn't really understand, I think. We dropped the topic. And it makes me kinda sad and kinda frustrated because he stated that he doesn't really read for pleasure. I cannot comprehend this. Or rather, I can comprehend it, but I can never comprehend *myself* giving up pleasure reading. I can't imagine living without a personal mythology.

This is my creation myth, that once there was darkness, and then there was one spark, and then there was more and more and the universe exploded into something beautiful, ending one state to begin another, killing itself to create again.

And...and I'm trying to talk out, figure out, here, why this seems so important to me to say, to work out. And.

And I realize, what is this but a personal creation myth as well? What is this, but the way that *I*, speaking as a collected bundle of thoughts and ideas, was born? Not I-as-part-of-my-mother, not I-as-part-of-my-culture, not I-as-child-of-my-circumstances, but *I*, here, thinking, writing, feeling, tearing up, *I* as vidder, *I* which I came to be, here, now. A...reason to live, I think.

Or perhaps a mythology for living.

I don't think I got that across to him. I'm happy though, that at least I figured it out, for myself.


On that note: what are your myths?

Comments

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

"The Tinderbox."

I remember a lot of the original stories, but that story sticks with me, always. I'm not sure what it is about it that resonates with me. Sometimes I make up the ending for myself because I forget it.

The Secret Garden is like this for me, too. The words of the book and the images from the Hallmark verison (read: One True Version) sort of jumble together into something very real to me in retrospect.

Those are the big ones for me, I think. :) I totally feel what you're saying, tho.

[calicokat.livejournal.com]

While people are remembering back to childhood stories... This is as good a place to ask as any, I guess. There's also this story, and I don't know the name of it, and I want to say, like...

I think it's about a chick. And the chick goes on this quest. I think to see a king. Chicks are always going to see the king. And on the way he meets this turkey, and there's a bit about him getting stuck in the turkey's gullet with the rocks, I'm pretty sure, or something about the turkey's gullet -- this is the most outstanding feature to me -- and he meets some other characters, and I think something rather violent happens in the king's courtyard, but I could be confusing it with The Half Chick...

Does ANYONE know what story this is? I know it's not "The Half Chick." Is it some expanded version of Chicken Little? T_T This has been bothering me for like... six years. The bit about the turkey!

[permetaform]

Well the fact that you forgot the ending means that the ending didn't matter...what part of the middle do you remember the best? If you were forced to summarize essence of the story really quickly, which bits would you refuse to leave out?

And oh, the secret garden! I loved that book! Something about the fact of a hidden nook that one hides away and make beautiful is just...oh, dude, yes, I know what you mean! I would always pretend secret gardens in my make believes...