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

[aliaswestgate.livejournal.com]

That's the one! *flails*

It always struck me as once again, brutal but right. And utterlu unique as well. I don't have the same interpretation of love beyond form that you do. But the imagery is still there. It struck me as a sad story, between the giving to each other. The curse and much more when i think about it. Yet it wouldn't have stuck with me if it hadn't some power.

I wonder if we have the same book? I think i got mine from one of my canadian uncles and the art of that little thing is as vivid as the traditional stories encased in it. Art done like the old Illuminations used centuries ago. It's part of why i kept that book. The art, the obscure stories. Many of them as striking as The Little White Cat.

Many of them staying with me because they have that power and lyrical tone. That little book is one of many reasons i'm so into storytelling. (IE:mythology in its deepest essence). *grins* Fanfiction is only the latest outward aspect of it for some reason. Choirgirl, a little bit of stage acting. Devoured movies as a child, and a few striking series along with all the inane crap shown to me as a child. But the old world fairy tales stuck with me more than the sanitized idiocies. And why i go searching the world over into other cultures, to see how we differ and how much we're all still very much the same at heart.

[kintail.livejournal.com]

Hmm, my book isn't "little" -- I think it's about 9" x 12" and almost an inch thick. Other stories in it were one about the Sandman taking a kid to witness various things like a mice wedding in his dreams, and one about a proud darning needle, and a story about flowers that got up in the middle of the night and danced so they looked tired in the morning... hmm, can't remember the others for sure, it's The White Cat that I always went back to. I really will try to dig it out and at least scan a few pages.

[aliaswestgate.livejournal.com]

If you could? My copy is back at my parent's house about 200 miles east. I have a feeling it's the same book, because i remember those stories too. I think of it as little because of the one inch thick aspect of it. I have a larger complilation that is about 3 or 4 inches thick. But isn't as beautiful, though the stories are just as engaging. (fairytale geek, bibliophile? yes!)

'Hop'O'Mythumb' is another one inside it. A little boy, a giant. Seven league boots, and helping his poverty stricken family. A little red haired boy in the illustrations.

[kintail.livejournal.com]

Yes, I remember that story in it too, it must be the same book. ^_^

It was a "big" book for me because I got it when the other books I was reading were Little Golden Books and Dr. Seuss. (And I think "Fox in Socks" may also be part of my early personal mythology. >_<; Love of words and the things they can do...)

[aliaswestgate.livejournal.com]

I think my favorite Dr. Seuss is The Sneeches. Very much part of my own personal mythology, and relavent to my worldview(and of myself as well) today. I read some of the Little Golden Books too, and i remember one Beatrix Potter in my early collection as well. I wish i was back home with my parents. I could go see what i kept. *sighs happily*