Symbology
When I was little, I collected unicorns.
I don't myself remember the genesis of this collection; my earliest memories surrounding it are of looking for the statues at my father's tobacco store and having to be really, really careful when I dusted them, because many were made of glass.
My mother has told me it came from a series of nightmares I had. My parents had heard/read that a good cure for nightmares is lucid dreaming, so they taught me that the unicorn was a symbol that let me know I was dreaming so I would know not to be scared. Apparently it worked.
And so unicorns made me feel safe, and my parents encouraged my collection.
(You will notice that this just moves the "why" question back a step -- it answers why the collection of unicorns, but does not answer why the unicorn itself. That I have no answer to.)
So I collected unicorns, and made my dad repair any that got damaged in earthquakes and/or moves, and some of my favorite figurines are still with me today. (I always preferred the glass ones -- which tended to break, of course -- and the pewter ones, which are mostly still around.) I fantasized about having a unicorn of my very own. . . but just as often wanted a pegasus, and had no interest whatsoever in the goat's beard or lion's tail, so in most of my fantasies I rode a winged, one-horned horse.
When I got on the internet in 10th grade I had to choose a screen name, because that's what you did -- at least, that's what you did on AIM and ICQ, which was where my friends had their internet presences. I spent an afternoon trying to figure out what to go with -- given names are boring, I wanted something symbolic. I hit on "PhoenixRising," but it was already taken and I hated the idea of having to add a number to my name, so I flipped it to "PhoenixFalls." I ended up being happier with this name anyway, because I loved the melodrama embedded in it, the implied downfall of an immortal creature.
(I was not a Goth. I don't have a clue why not though. Probably because all that black in the Southern California heat would've made me miserable, and I was miserable enough as it is. Also, I don't like make-up.)
(Yes my ideas of Goths are terribly stereotyped. What other sort of Goth could I have been? There actually weren't any at my high school, because they all went to the rival school that had an Arts Magnet!)
(Also, tongue planted firmly in cheek here. I love Goths. Some of my best friends are Goths. . . wait a sec, that came out wrong. . . *wink*)
I have clearly been PhoenixFalls ever since, mostly out of laziness (still using the same email address on Hotmail that I got all those years ago, and I have no interest in spending another afternoon coming up with some screen name I like better) but also because the melodrama still does it for me.
The thing I just noticed today is that there is a curious. . . symmetry isn't really the word I want. . . correspondence? A certain affinity that those two mythological creatures share. The unicorn, which came to symbolize the incarnation of Christ, and the phoenix, which always symbolized reincarnation. . . birth and rebirth.
Obviously they come from different mythological traditions, and I had no idea of any of the folklore associated with the unicorn when I was using it to cure my nightmares. The symbolism has also never been what drew me to the animals -- I mean, it was a little with the phoenix, but I was drawn more to the fact that I simply loved the images of the phoenix. And actually, I think I tried a whole bunch of names with "dragon" in them before hitting on it. . . so it might just have been the association with fire that I wanted at first.
It's also curious to me because the whole birth/rebirth cycle still isn't something that lights me up -- the stories I've crafted of my identity don't feature those themes at all. Were I to choose a mythical creature today based solely on how well the myth seemed to accord with my personal mythology, I'd probably choose a centaur, or a hamadryad, or even a brownie.
And yet, there it is.
Bizarre.
I don't myself remember the genesis of this collection; my earliest memories surrounding it are of looking for the statues at my father's tobacco store and having to be really, really careful when I dusted them, because many were made of glass.
My mother has told me it came from a series of nightmares I had. My parents had heard/read that a good cure for nightmares is lucid dreaming, so they taught me that the unicorn was a symbol that let me know I was dreaming so I would know not to be scared. Apparently it worked.
And so unicorns made me feel safe, and my parents encouraged my collection.
(You will notice that this just moves the "why" question back a step -- it answers why the collection of unicorns, but does not answer why the unicorn itself. That I have no answer to.)
So I collected unicorns, and made my dad repair any that got damaged in earthquakes and/or moves, and some of my favorite figurines are still with me today. (I always preferred the glass ones -- which tended to break, of course -- and the pewter ones, which are mostly still around.) I fantasized about having a unicorn of my very own. . . but just as often wanted a pegasus, and had no interest whatsoever in the goat's beard or lion's tail, so in most of my fantasies I rode a winged, one-horned horse.
When I got on the internet in 10th grade I had to choose a screen name, because that's what you did -- at least, that's what you did on AIM and ICQ, which was where my friends had their internet presences. I spent an afternoon trying to figure out what to go with -- given names are boring, I wanted something symbolic. I hit on "PhoenixRising," but it was already taken and I hated the idea of having to add a number to my name, so I flipped it to "PhoenixFalls." I ended up being happier with this name anyway, because I loved the melodrama embedded in it, the implied downfall of an immortal creature.
(I was not a Goth. I don't have a clue why not though. Probably because all that black in the Southern California heat would've made me miserable, and I was miserable enough as it is. Also, I don't like make-up.)
(Yes my ideas of Goths are terribly stereotyped. What other sort of Goth could I have been? There actually weren't any at my high school, because they all went to the rival school that had an Arts Magnet!)
(Also, tongue planted firmly in cheek here. I love Goths. Some of my best friends are Goths. . . wait a sec, that came out wrong. . . *wink*)
I have clearly been PhoenixFalls ever since, mostly out of laziness (still using the same email address on Hotmail that I got all those years ago, and I have no interest in spending another afternoon coming up with some screen name I like better) but also because the melodrama still does it for me.
The thing I just noticed today is that there is a curious. . . symmetry isn't really the word I want. . . correspondence? A certain affinity that those two mythological creatures share. The unicorn, which came to symbolize the incarnation of Christ, and the phoenix, which always symbolized reincarnation. . . birth and rebirth.
Obviously they come from different mythological traditions, and I had no idea of any of the folklore associated with the unicorn when I was using it to cure my nightmares. The symbolism has also never been what drew me to the animals -- I mean, it was a little with the phoenix, but I was drawn more to the fact that I simply loved the images of the phoenix. And actually, I think I tried a whole bunch of names with "dragon" in them before hitting on it. . . so it might just have been the association with fire that I wanted at first.
It's also curious to me because the whole birth/rebirth cycle still isn't something that lights me up -- the stories I've crafted of my identity don't feature those themes at all. Were I to choose a mythical creature today based solely on how well the myth seemed to accord with my personal mythology, I'd probably choose a centaur, or a hamadryad, or even a brownie.
And yet, there it is.
Bizarre.