We have slipped into November and my fairy tale this month is Goldilocks and the Three Bears. I have a horrible feeling i will put some horrible adult spin on this story that makes Goldilocks more morally deviant than necessary and the bears more wild. But hey, maybe i won't, maybe this time i'll keep it simple. 
In the mean time I want to make some blog notes about The Tinder Box because i have really enjoyed inhabiting this world. 
Once upon a time a poor soldier was returning home from war. He was foot-sore and world weary and the soles on his boots were gone, so to gather strength, before heading to town, he took a little rest under the branches of a great oak that stood by the edge of the road. As he sat eating the last of his rations an old woman came by. She stood for a while quite quietly then asked what his plans were for the future, all the time admiring his mighty sword.
"Why to raise some money old mother" said he "for as you can see I'm down to stone broke"
"Well" says she "I'll give you some help if you will do one small favour for me"
"Fire away" says he "what is the help ? And what is the favour ?"
"Well" says she "you see this big tree that you are sat with your back to. If you climb up into it's branches you will see that it is hollow inside. Climb down into the hollow and you will find three caves with three dogs guarding all the gold, silver and copper your heart desires. If you take my apron and put it on the floor the dogs will lay upon it and you will able to help yourself to all the gold, silver and copper you want. All that i ask is that you bring me the tinder box that you will find in the cave. What say you soldier will you do as i say and ask ?"
"This" thinks he "is a no brainer" so he responds with a casual "sure, no problem old woman and thank you" 
She unties her apron and gives it to him and he climbs up to the top of the bole of the tree and sure enough there is a hollow that goes all the way down the centre of the trunk as is quite common in very old oaks. There's a rope tied fast to a branch hanging down, and so carefully he climbs down until he reaches solid ground. From there he can see that within the roots are three vast caves. He goes into one and there is a dog with eyes as big as saucers sat upon a great chest filled to over flowing with copper coins. He lays down the apron upon the floor and the dog sits itself on it while the soldier fills all his pockets with coins and his knapsack too. Then the soldier bids farewell and the dog gets up off the apron which the soldier picks up and takes into the second cave. What's in the second cave ? A dog with eyes as big as dinner plates sat upon a great chest filled to over flowing with silver. It's pretty scary but the soldier lays down the apron. And just as before the dog sits itself down while the soldiers empties his pockets and knapsack of copper coins and refills them with silver. Then as before he bids farewell, the dog gets up and he picks up the old woman's apron and goes into the last cave. In the last cave is a dog with eyes as big as wagon wheels sitting on a great chest overflowing with gold coins. And so the soldier repeats what he did in the second cave. Now with his pockets and knapsack filled with gold he goes to climb out, remembering just in time to look for the tinder box which he finds quite easily and slips into his top left pocket which is only one left with any room. Then with some effort he climbs up the hanging rope and down to where the old woman is waiting. 
With a smile he thanks her and goes to take her leave. 
"But wait" she says "where is my tinderbox ?" 
Whereupon he takes his sword and chops off her head. Leaving her there he walks on into town. When he reaches the town he goes into an inn and asks for the best rooms the innkeeper has. He looks a bit shabby and rough but the colour of his money speaks for him and so the innkeeper gives him the finest suite and from there the soldier heads out to buy himself new boots and beautiful clothes and proceeds to become quite the most popular man about town. 
All's well for a while, until his money runs out. Then when it does he finds himself forced to take residence in less salubrious lodgings and his new found friends drift away. 
One night as he is sitting in the dark and cold he picks up the old tinderbox that he found in the tree. Just for something to do he strikes it and as the spark catches the wick of the candle stub sat on his bare table, the dog with eyes as big as saucers appears and asks what his master wishes for.
Now, for a long time, the soldier has been thinking about the beautiful princess who lives locked behind dark walls in the centre of town. Her beauty is legend and he would like to see the princess so he asks the dog to bring her to him so that he may look upon her. And thus it happens. The dog goes to the palace and brings the sleeping princess on his back to the soldiers lowly garret. And yes she is as beautiful as legend has it. The soldier plants a tender kiss upon her lips, she stirs but doesn't wake and the dog takes her back to bed safe and unharmed. 
In the morning at breakfast the princess sleepily relates a dream she had in the night to her royal parents. 
"I dreamed i was atop a great dog and the dog took me to a room where a man was waiting. He kissed me but he did not speak and then the dog brought me home" 
The queen was suspicious. She spoke to the princess' nurse. 
"Tonight please keep awake and watch the princess while she sleeps i think something is afoot"
And so the nurse stays awake. And the next night the soldier inflamed by the thought of the princess strikes the tinderbox again and the dog with eyes as big as dinner plates appears and asks what his master wishes for. And the soldier asks that the dog bring him the princess so he might look on her again. And so it happens. But this time the nurse follows the dog and marks the door of the house in which the soldier lives with a red cross. Then she goes home to sleep. The soldier once again kisses the princess and this time she opens her eyes just for a moment before the dog returns her to her chambers. After which he marks each door in every street across the town with a red cross. So it is that when the next day the queen sends out her soldiers to arrest the young man the soldiers are unable to find him because all of the doors are marked. 
The queen's lips purse. The soldier dreams of one more glimpse of the beautiful princess. And the princess wonders who the handsome man she has dreamed of for two nights in a row is. 
And so it goes that on the third night when the soldier strikes the tinderbox and the dog with eyes as big as wagon wheels turns up and asks him his wish the queen has filled the princess' pockets with flour, which gently trickles out of the holes that the queen has made and so a trail is left and the dog doesn't notice and so the soldier is found even tho' the princess is returned safe and unharmed just as before. 
Safe and unharmed but not unaware for this time she had woken and they had spoken for some time and gazed into each other's eyes and fallen in love. 
But that's as it goes for the soldier is in gaol and sentenced to hang. But still he has hope for his prison is just below street level and as a young butcher boy passes he calls him to come and for a coin to get the tinderbox from his lodgings which the butcher boy does. And so it happens that as he stands at the gallows with a great crowd watching the king asks him if he has any one last request. And the soldier ask for a pipe and a smoke and as he lights the tobacco with one, two, three, sparks from the tinder box the three dogs appear and tear down the gallows and gobble up the king and queen and all the high and mighty which means that the princess and soldier who love each other madly can live happily ever after together without interference or judgement. 
And that is the story of The Tinder Box. Or my rough re-telling. The Tinder Box is a Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale. Every time a story is retold it changes a little. A story is a living thing. It meets the teller and listener and belongs to them in a way that is particular to them. When I read a story i can inhabit every body and every thing within the story. So in this, I am the soldier, the old woman, the dogs, the princess. I am the innkeeper, the friends, the royal parents, the nurse, the butcher boy, the crowd. I am the walls of the town, the bark of the tree, I am the wind that shakes the branches of the tree, and the stars that look down on land and sea and bear witness to the goings on from before they were visible to human eye, and i am the soldiers boots, the old woman's apron, i am the tinderbox and i am the spark. 
I am the spark. And you are the spark. And each one of us will be our own version of whatever we imagine ourselves to be. And whilst we are what we imagine we are also ourselves, flesh and blood, our concrete being, real, substantial, not-imaginary. But that's the way it goes with stories we slip into them, swim naked into thoughts and feelings borrowed from another mind, another's once upon a time. And our own story, our own life, is that too, a river flowing, a story being told.
Here with The Tinder Box it seems to me, from research combined with my own being, that it is a coming of age story. It's a shock when the soldier cuts off the old woman's head. But one source i found suggested that the old woman represents the mother. Her decapitation is a decisive move towards adult independence and freedom from a parental tie. If the old woman is the mother then my reading is that he has been to war, come home to rest and recoup, goes down into the family tree, is given resources that allow him to make a life of his own. The layers of connecting tissue that flesh out the bones of a story are subject to individual interpretation. To me it figures that, if the old woman is his mother, the apron she lends him might be good manners and grace, that the dogs, who feel to me like untamed drives and power, need to be offered courtesy and respect if we want them to serve us and give us what we need. 
And there is so much more. The fair-weather friends, the princess, even bit parts like the butcher's boy and the innkeeper, each character offers a new insight because each one would tell the tale differently. Each one meets the soldier from their own unique perspective and so it is in life.
My fairy tale a month project that i began as way to keep myself upright at the beginning of this year has been a great gift because fairy tales have been one of my go-to sources since i was a child and investing time, thought and activity in knowing a single story means that those i have chosen are now a part of me, the colour of them is embroidered onto my skin and  the tone and timbre is set now in the beat of my heart. 
I am using waft-y language. I feel a bit waft-y today. Giving myself a fairy tale is, i guess, a light form of escapism. There are more harmful ways to escape. On saturday I was drawing with my granddaughter. We were talking about drawing unicorns and i asked her what kind of tail she thought unicorns have, this is a question that vexes me very slightly. We also talked about what colour unicorns are, i thought they were white, but she said "oh no, lots of colours". Then i said something and she gave me a stern look and said that our drawings wouldn't look realistic. We were quiet for a moment. And then she looked at me and i looked at her and we smiled because we knew that however we saw unicorns was going to be imaginary because neither of us had actually seen a unicorn that wasn't out of someone's imagination. It was a special moment. 
The border between real and imaginary is pretty clear but it isn't solid and one person's real can be another's madness. When I say I am the wind in the trees or the stars in the sky i know that I am in reality, just me, Becca, but as it happens just-me-Becca can also stretch out of my solid self to imagine how it is to be a star or the wind or another person or a bird or creature or whatever. My imagination is the starting point for empathy. The word empathy stems from the greek em - in, and pathos - feeling. When we empathise with another it means we are allowing ourselves to meet their feelings, to momentarily merge so as to know what is happening for them, in them. 
The merging thing is disconcerting. It happens in crowds. It happens often between lovers and good friends. It happens in friendship groups and families too. And when we pick up a book or watch a film or play a video game. It is why we might bond over iconic figures they represent a part of ourselves and when we meet someone who also relates to that figure we meet ourselves in them. Which Harry Potter character are you for instance, see how you instantly like the people who choose the same body to inhabit or who are friends with our chosen form ? Is this what binds Trump's supporters ? Is his obvious isolation and grand deflection of pain something that his followers recognise and feel fellowship with ? My imagination veers away from trying to understand, or empathise with, him and the greater body of his fan-base. 
Aversion is an alternative form of empathy perhaps. Something in another body (singular or plural) is unattractive. Generally unless the thing or being is in your face the response is to not see, not know, to refuse to witness. It is perhaps why being born witness to is such powerful medicine. And perhaps why, as a species that has done spectacularly well, we have become more and more narcissistic and needy, see me, hear me, know me, I am important, I am worthy of attention, it is hard in a crowd to attract attention perhaps it is enough to be part of the crowd. But crowds are dangerous, they demand a conformity sticking out in a crowd is not safe, it invites rejection. As someone who has misfitted since forever i have learned to err away from crowds and cliques now. My belonging is more often met in solitude than company. And loneliness is harder to bear in a crowd than alone. 
None of this really has anything to do with The Tinder Box story. But then again maybe it does. The Tinder Box is a very ordinary human journey in many ways. And it is that human journey that i pondered on during October. My journey, and the journeys of others both known and loved, and not known, or not loved. All of us are travelling from one fixed point, birth, to another, death. And how we get to our end point is not always going to be easy. The gift of empathy from others will make it easier, will smooth our path.    
What am I getting at ? I don't know. I suppose i am extolling the virtues of imagination and wishing  for imagination to be given more love and respect, because my experience is that it is those with the greatest imaginations who are often most kind, most likely to show compassion. And hell knows we could do with a little more kindness and compassion in this world at the moment. 

Maybe it is time for me to reclaim my blog as a somewhere a little less exposed. In the days and months after hearing about Jon's death i needed it as a space to air the feelings in me that were too powerful to be held in. I guess if i'd been surrounded by close connections who knew us as two together i might not have needed to howl so publicly but i wasn't; and in those first months of grief my self was so completely obliterated it has taken me this long to come to any kind of self composure. Now i am writing my grief in notebooks, old-fashioned pencil and paper have become my sanctuary; and sometimes i write him emails, which is mad because he won't get them, but writing the emails is different from writing in my notebook, and very different from writing in my blog, the emails are i guess the things i wish i could say to him, things i wish i could share, questions that will never be answered and also sometimes gripes (i would not have got away with those when he was living).
So that's the story of how i am continuing my grief journey as the shock waves spread and i find that i am still standing, still living and breathing and that the world has not stopped. There is pain and various difficult feelings to process but other matters press in and take my attention. Matters that concern me and/or other people. Matters that make clear that the river of life is still flowing, and time and tide stop for no man. 
At the beginning of the year i decided to take on the study of twelve fairy-tales/myths over the course of 2018 in part to distract me from the grief that then consumed me and in part to get myself back to my working practice. The fairy-tales are chosen at random out of a "hat" (actually a pin box filled with folded up titles) and so far i have worked on The Billy Goats Gruff, Aladdin and the Magic Lamp, Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - these two i accidentally combined when i wrote Aladdin and the Forty Thieves on the spill of paper so February was split between them, The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Puss in Boots and the Seal Bride. I am currently deep in thought, researching and making notes, written and drawn and mental, for The Handless Maiden. 
Because of my slip up in February i now have thirteen stories to work with, five of which are still unknown. My journey with each one has been very different. The first few months worth of notes are sketchy but I have a more connected body of work to be going on with for The Seal Bride, and managed to make ten linked images to illustrate and narrate the story of Puss In Boots from beginning to end. This taught me something about story telling, about beginnings and endings, and the bit in the middle.
I'm not saying any of the work i'm making is much to write home about but i am allowing ideas to flow, to pause, to flow again, to go backwards, forwards, upwards, downwards, sideways, letting the story seep into my bones, my being, my belonging. And because i choose a new story on the 1st of the month or more actually just before i go to bed on the last day of the month, i have a self imposed deadline which pushes me to work harder and to take the work i'm making to an end point even if that end is just a full stop. 
I tend to begin with a quick google search which throws up illustrations and blogs and to look at what Wikipedia says because it gives the background and the names of those who gave the story written form, and the when and where it stemmed from, often multiple locations. I also leaf through my own private collection of fairy tales for different versions. The Seal Bride and The Handless Maiden are both stories i have given head space and worked with before but all the others tho' known were less familiar. I was interested to read that during the period in which Perrault set down Puss in Boots the women in stories were notably dim and pretty and malleable because that was what was considered desirable then and there. I am not sure much has changed. The women in Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves - the princess and the slave girl - are notably more sussed and sassy. 
At first using these "children's" stories gave me something to hold on to. A structure to lean into, a stable source of inspiration, stable but not inflexible, it is the nature of fairy tales that they bend to meet the reader, a story that has survived retelling over centuries will take on the quality of the story-teller and listener because to give a story body you have to inhabit it. 
This month is the month of The Handless Maiden and it has felt very uncomfortable. The handless maiden is a serious victim, she is betrayed by those who might be expected to care for her. The first betrayal leaves her quite disabled. As part of my connecting to this story i have tried to imagine a life without hands. As a shiatsu practitioner and artist my hands are my life, my being, my doing. Who would i be without them ? How would i live without them ? The vulnerability of that position is painful. Even eating is difficult. In one version of the story there is a moment when the maiden having lost her hands discovers an orchard and eats a hanging pear from a tree and thus is discovered. 
If you have a moment i recommend allowing yourself to imagine a life without hands. How would you live ? It's an other world, an other kind of being. Using the physical disability here allows me also to connect with the broken child, cast out, alone, betrayed by the father who pushed by sometimes the devil and sometimes the stepmother, was the villain who cut off her hands. The weak father is  common motif in fairy tales, see Hansel and Gretal or Cinderella for instance. The wicked stepmother too features often. Who are these people ? 
A motif is a figure that is easily identifiable either in ourselves or others. Likely we carry a box of scraps of many motifs. Some we love, some we love less. Looking at fairy stories is giving me insight into the stories i tell myself about myself and others. In my previous blogs, particularly in the months after Jon's death I spoke of his family. Called them out as monsters. Now this monster image is not one that they accept. I imagine that if i am given any place in their world it is as a monster too. So many monsters where do they come from ? Monsters are common, and some monsters are more monstrous than others.
The monster does exist; it is rage, it is fire, it is fight, it is flood, it is pestilence, it is denial, it is jealousy, it is greed, it is ugly and mean and violent, it is all that you do not want to be unless you are a monster. It is the devil. It is Donald Trump, or not Donald Trump if you are a Donald Trump supporter. For those who support Donald Trump he is a hero, a man who gives voice and license to feelings they have felt unable to express. Those feelings may be abhorrent to others but their existence is certain, and the strength of their existence seems to be growing. A thing which to me is alarming but to others is great .. "lets make America great again". What is great ? Is it strength or force or wealth or what ? Great could be humility, tenderness, care.
So i've been thinking about narratives and counter narratives and how the stories i/we create create the world in which i/we inhabit. And how there are times when a story no longer fits, like a garment that once was perfect but now is a little bit of a squeeze to get into. Or maybe a garment that never felt right. My mum used to make me wear red polo neck jumpers when i was a child and had my hair cut bowl shape, this was the identity she gave me, i don't know why, but it wasn't me and to this day i hate anything tight around my neck even necklaces and heavy scarves and i still don't love having my haircut tho i have a fantastic hairdresser and i like it once it's done. 
I am not knocking my mother for putting me in red polo necks, she didn't know i hated them, and probably most parents have dressed up their children in clothes they don't like. My middle one hated a pair of red trousers that i thought were great. And the waistcoat and cravat that he had to wear as a page-boy for his dad's wedding made him cry. This is part of life. And parents can be dumb when it comes to their kids because it is easy to forget that your children are not you and that their journey is their journey and not yours to dictate. 
In relationships that require long connection like parenting, partnering and child-ing we are inclined to create deeper and maybe more compromising narratives as a way of feeling safe. In this way the narratives can become entrenched to the detriment of all parties. I think that these relationships are surely the most difficult to break from. You may be good or you may be bad but if you have been given this role you can be sure that the stability of the social unit relies upon you being that. It can happen too in friendship circles but these are generally lighter and more fluid than family units. 
I am returning in this blog to the theme of identity which i addressed last year in my blog when i  presented myself as a piece of sculpture in the Waveney Sculpture Trail, i was told by a visitor then that what i was doing was dialogical art, art that inspires dialogue. It is interesting for me to go back there in my head, to what i was talking about. Jon's death knocked my world into another universe and my thinking before his death seems vain and vacuous. I don't know that it is less vain and vacuous now but it is met with new knowledge. The new knowledge is grief, the feeling that comes unbidden when someone you love wholeheartedly, the good and the bad of them, becomes a definite physical absence, when they can no longer reflect back at you the image they have of you, or you have of them, when your shared narrative becomes something you carry alone, when your living connection ceases.
Self-identity often carries with it a need to fix down other people.  Maybe this is something i am having to come up against as i recall my relationship with Jon and work out what it is that i want to keep and what i do not want to keep. Self-identity may be conscious or unconscious, how conscious or unconscious is up to each of us to decide now and with every breath we draw and who amongst us us is really conscious. 
Going back to the Trump supporters, or the Trump detractors for that matter. Those who identify with Trump may take some of what he says with a big dollop of "yes, that's me" but with that dollop of "yes, that's me" they may also have to swallow some "i'm not sure" or even some "i don't think this is right but for the yes that's me i'll take it". So it is that we take on compromises and every time we accept those compromises we bury a little bit more of our true selves. The Trump detractors are making similar decisions "no, not me" but maybe by demonising and externalising we, i include myself in this group, refuse to see that which is Trump-ish inside ourselves. My waste, my greed, my selfishness is not prettier than Trumps but if i put it all on him i do not have to deal with it. I am less bad and that makes me "good-er". 
See every time i eat cheap cheese or cream from the supermarket i know that my purchase has fed an industry that does not fit the self i want to be. And all the time i/we are taking similar decisions day in, day out. Mostly those decisions are hidden in a crowd, i buy cheese, you buy cheese, we all buy cheese (or palm oil, or food wrapped in plastic, or factory farmed meat or take flights or "need" the new phone or i-pad or whatever), we all buy cheese and there is safety in numbers. In fact those who stray from the crowd are often looked at askance, sometimes mocked and derided. However deviation can be a reclamation of personal power. 
One of the themes that runs through The Handless Maiden is her victimhood, more than once she is treated brutally and the subject of lies and malicious talk that force her into vulnerable exile. It is however not until she acts to save herself (her self in the form of one or sometimes two children) that she is able to make a life that is not so dependent on the goodwill of others. This act happens after she has been thrown out of the sanctuary she briefly found when she was rescued. Exiled and still handless the child that she carries on her back falls into a pool of water and without thinking she reaches for the child and miraculously her hands grow back. After this she is able to meet life as a whole person, the child who was brutalised and cast out and the rescued and then exiled maiden are behind her. Her circumstances may still be impoverished but she now meets them as a whole person able to make decisions of her own and not only the subject of other's will.   
It's no good looking at fairy tales too literally. Hands do not grow back. And for that matter the father's brutality and betrayal may not be so obvious or specific. And stepmothers can be lovely. What i am picking up on within this story is the need to take ownership of our lives and in doing so we meet in ourselves a capacity to grow and be something other than the role we may have had forced upon us previously, in childhood or later. 
I have meandered through this blog and i am trying to find an end point to draw the threads together so that i can tie a knot. I am still working with The Handless Maiden and my grief for Jon is ongoing and Donald Trump seems to be here to stay at least for a while so how do these three strands connect. And what of the story, the possibility of story, which i think is what i really wanted to blog about. 
I think it is story that is the connecting point. The Handless Maiden, Jon, Donald Trump are all stories. Donald Trump is part of a vast collective story and that story varies hugely according to who is telling it. Jon is part of my story, he is also part of a collective story, his family's story, our stories do cross but our crossing points lack grace and are not generous or gentle. Sadly that's how it sometimes goes, there are times when stories conflict. The story of The Handless Maiden, having come through centuries of story-telling and travelled far - from France to Italy to Japan in just my collection - has been distilled, there is variation but the essence of the story is pretty much as is. So it goes perhaps with stories that stand the test of time. 
Perhaps it will be ok for me to come back to a little note of sadness in me for a moment, tho maybe i am being self indulgent.  To come back to my own fairy story. One of the things that is painful to me is that when i die, all that i shared with Jon will die with me, the good, the bad, the beautiful, the awful ... i don't know what i can do about this, i feel a little helpless, maybe this is my handless maiden story, maybe i have to learn now how to reach out to save that which was born out of our union and in so doing regrow my hands and find my new independent self.