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

[scarletseraph.livejournal.com]

Allah said to the South Wind: "Become solid flesh, for I will make a new creature of thee; to the honour of My Holy One, and the abasement of Mine enemies, and for a servant to them that are subject to me."

And the South Wind said, "Lord, do Thou so."

Then Allah took a handful of the South Wind and He breathed thereon, creating the horse and saying: "Thy name shall be Arabian, and virtue bound into the hair of thy forelock, and plunder on thy back. I have preferred thee above all beasts of burden, inasmuch as I have made thy master thy friend. I have given thee the power of flight without wings, be it in onslaught or retreat. I will set men on thy back that shalt honour and praise Me and sing Hallelujah to My name."

As far as faerytales go... When I was very, very young - probably before I could even read the book myself - my aunt and uncle gave me 'Fairy Tales from Around the World'. It was set around East of the Sun, West of the Moon - divided into four sections, with each Wind telling a different set of stories to the young girl who was searching for her Prince.

Then my grandmother found a huge, ancient book of faerytales at a yard sale, and brought it home for me. It was full of the old stories; the gory, morbid stories. Grimmies and Andersen and Lang and things I can't even identify. The Snow Queen. My favourite, though, was always The Colony of Cats. I wanted to be Lizina so very badly. ^^;

I don't know what happened to that one. *Mourn* I found a complete illustrated Grimm's at Goodwill a few months back, though.

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oh man, that was a GREAT story! I've never read the Colony of Cats before! Maybe it's searchable on Amazon?