#cam ly

Coming home

Home is warmth

like vodka trickling down my throat.

Home is heat

like dwelling tears of sadness and joy.

Home is winter

knocking with iron fist upon my back door.

A quick take on Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen” for my Creative Writing class. The task was to rewrite a fairy tale with a certain “psychological twist” reflected within the tale itself.

First story, which deals with the mirror and the shards of glass.

Right then. Time to start. The day a shard of mirror fell from heaven right into the heart of men was the day the devil silently laughed. A mirror able to reflect the bad and the evil of humanity in this god created world, which shrouded the gaze of those who came to the misfortune of a broken piece piercing through their view and gorging out the warmth of their heart, which turned anything the human eye beheld as beauty into a thing they regarded as hideous and unworthy. The devil, who was sitting on his dark throne on a high mountain far away from heaven and earth, looked upon his bloodied paws and the remains of shattered glasses scattered around his hooves. He was surrounded by a crowd of bickering demons – the source of such unfortunate event of the broken mirror, the ones who ripped open the box of Pandora. In a deep husky voice, the devil whispered to his loyal subordinates:

“The box of Pandora?”, he wondered in a reasonable, almost reserved manner one would not expect from such vile being. “The mirror does exactly as it does. It reflects what is there – no less, no more…”

The demons chuckled in consent clapped their long gaunt hands together as they applauded their master. The mirror was meant to be carried by the demons to the realm of god and his angels, as the devil ordered them to show the far away world – which is alternately referred to as heaven, the manifestation of the humane imagination of paradise – their dreadfulness and insignificance of being.

“… an image as fugitive as snow.”, the devil mumbled and got up from his throne, slowly scuffed to the tall woman covered in a majestic white fur coat which was draping over her seat as she took place right in front of him. She barely looked him into the eye, instead had a brief glance over the glass pieces on the floor, looking for her own reflection in them, but instead saw nothing.

“There is no reason to your action”, she finally said in a hush, icy tone, “what is the point in showing heaven its dreadfulness, its arrogance towards this humane, distorted world? As the mirror shows an image even more truthful than what could meet the eye? Look down, where your demons have dropped the mirror. And see with your very own eyes what truth mankind will discover hidden within themselves.”

The devil thought about the Snow Queen’s words as he watched her standing up, dragging the seam of her coat along with her. Every step of hers created small ice crystals under her feet, though soon to be melted by the warmth of the devil’s realm.

The second story. A little boy and a little girl.

In a big town where space and gardens were rare and people had to resort into cherishing flower pots, there lived a boy and a girl who grew up together as if they were siblings. In the summer, they enjoyed playing together as their parents lived close to each other and their respective balconies were only one small leap away. On these balconies, their parents owned pots of roses of which they took pride in – they grew high up along a wooden arch under which the boy, Kai, and the girl, Gerda sat together and enjoyed each other’s company – during spring time, throughout the summer and autumn, until winter came. The winter was especially cruel that very year and most of the times, the two friends spent their days at Gerda’s grandmother and listened to the old woman’s tales – tales about bravery, loyalty, the love and friendship of a girl to a boy which sent her on a memorable adventure to save him from the grips of evil – indeed, it was a story about love and the good prevailing over the evil in the world. With their childlike, innocent excitement they sat on the warm carpet floor and listened, mesmerized by the old woman’s tale. But they were not the only ones, for there were a raven and a snow owl sitting at a lonely branch looming outside of the frosted window. 

“Watch.”, mumbled the owl who was the Snow Queen in disguise, to the raven, the devil who was enthroned next to her. She flapped her soft white wings and cold air began to creep through the cracks of every wall, and the few shards of glasses, like glimmering dust in the air, entered the heart of Kai, some of it even got into his eyes, made the boy yawn and rub his face. The grandmother chuckled at him, gently caressed his hair and sent the children to bed.

Third story. What happened in the Snow Queen’s palace, and what happened afterwards.

The devil and the Snow Queen met again as the first snowflakes started to vanish and buds of flowers shyly greeted the thawing sun from under the white blanket which hid them away during winter time. It was the Snow Queen’s palace high up in the mountains where no life could ever reach to. There she resided, in an empty palace of precise elegance yet cold, sterile beauty with a hundred halls each mirroring the other in perfect symmetry, yet paradoxically enough – they mirrored nothing as there was nothing to see – because only nothingness existed within her kingdom. And in the middle of it the Snow Queen sat when at home, and then she said that she sat in the mirror of reason, and that this was the only and best thing in the world. Snow was nature’s treasure, in her eyes, its tragic beauty doomed to vanish; but in the Snow Queen’s halls, they could be eternity.

“You remember what happened in those few months to beloved Kai and Gerda?”, asked the Snow Queen. “The boy ceased to play with his childhood friend, yet prefers to play in the snow with the boys of his village. He tore the remains of the rose garden in disgust, yet admires the perfection, the beauty and tranquillity of snow. Do you think the effect of your mirror makes of him a bad character? Your shards of glasses are just reflecting what has been inside of him and was not visible up until now. It reflected change – the evanescence of life, the fugacity of moment.”

The devil only nodded, as he recalls the effect of the demonic mirror in his old mind. “Perfectly rational.”, he commented as he remembered the episode of the torn rose which made little Gerda weep, as she was a girl who cherished flowers, beauty and warmth.

“Maybe this kind of coldness lays in human nature.”, the Snow Queen concluded without batting an eyelash. “That would explain the insignificance of heaven, don’t you think? Who and what are we to judge good or bad, beauty and ugliness. If you want to see the reflection of god and the angels you might as well look down on the beings he created in his image – maybe as a reflection of his image, if you want so.”

The devil smiled. “Coldness is cruel.”, said he while looking at her with cheeky eyes. “It freezes and kills. You have heard the old woman’s tale. Of the boy who almost froze to death but was saved by the pity and love of a human girl as god’s angels accompanied her brave heart to the hall of the witch.”

The Snow Queen rose from her icy throne, whipped the white fur coat over her shoulder and stepped towards her demonic visitor. “And yet the boy saw beauty in coldness. Whether you regard the preciseness of a snowflake or the gentleness of a rose as beautiful… or the girl’s optimist emotionality opposed to the boy’s rationalism as the better way to see life – can you ever really judge these imperfections, you, of all beings roaming in the shadows of the earth, devil?”

The devil looked at her, rose his eyebrows, blinked a little. “That would be quite an act of naivety, we both are aware of that.”

The Snow Queen only nodded as an answer and stepped down from her pedestal.

“Where are you going?”, he asked, feeling the cold chilling in his every vein as she walked pass him.

“To a place less ambiguous, less warm than this one.”, she said. “Where snow is forever and the northern lights are definite, there I shall reside. And I will come back in the winter to take my place. Will you come with me?”, a certain slyness he has never spotted before flashed in her eyes for only a little moment.

“I prefer hell.”, he replied dryly.

The Snow Queen shrugged and the devil once again watched her, how she started to dissolve into tiny snowflakes, like a swarm of bees of whom she was the queen and got carried away with the wind to her fated destination. At the end he stood alone in the empty hall of her palace and looked at his own reflection in the ice. He saw nothing.

This summer was a summer of crows A murder of men A disaster for truth

A soft glistering film of frost covering my window pane-

Lonesome voices which go unheard in the beginning of a summer rain As the pitch black heralds of disaster blend into the empty sky

Breathing in the dust of rusty bookshelves Sun glaring through the window pane Drowning in the waves of heat haze Melting between eternal towers of knowledge.