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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:
I mentioned to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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?
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.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.
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.
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.
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?
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