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Michelle talks about stories she loves to tell.
What are the stories that you have strongly related to?
A number of the Grimm’s stories have been very important to me, like The Briar Rose, Rapunzel, Ashenputel, The Iron Stove and The Six Swans. Snow White has sharp edges and I keep cutting myself on them, but it’s in my pocket too, along with The Goose Girl and several others.
Some of my favorite stories are the most well known. Because they have been so often told, they hold a lot of human experience. Take Rapunzel, for instance. Many people can relate to being imprisoned, constrained, raised up by someone who wants them to think in a very specific way. Maybe it’s the ivory tower of academia, or a hierarchical work culture. Or a parent with high expectations. Whatever it is, if you’ve been cultivated and you’re suffering because of it, you may be drawn to Rapunzel.
Rapunzel is the name of a plant, interestingly enough. She was raised by Dame Gothel, who is a sorceress and a very good gardener. Gothel would probably be quite happy to genetically alter her plants to get the biggest and best results—maybe not the most delicious or nutritional. But her products will look perfect, and they’ll probably sell.
When you go to places in fairy tales that have been well-told, you can feel the power of the other souls who have been there. Standing in Rapunzel’s tower and looking out her window, you soon discover it’s more than a symbol. You experience her tower. You might notice that her tower has only one window. It has no door, no stairs—no exit. When I stood in Rapunzel’s tower, I realized that we’re all walking around in Rapunzel’s tower. It’s our own body! We look out through the windows of our eyes. Who’s getting in through our eyes? What is Dame Gothel teaching Rapunzel? What is the prince teaching her? How does she see through her own eyes? I began looking very differently at myself and others during the time I spent in the tower of Rapunzel.
In our world we think, “Oh, here’s a story, let’s read it and then put it aside and read another.” With fairy tales, the more well-read or told a story is, the more power it has gathered. People keep coming back for a reason. They add things and take things away. Their insights remain in the atmosphere. The stories become gathering places for collective wisdom, the wisdom of the ages.
There are versions of Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, Rapunzel, Snow White, Beauty and the Beast, and so on, all over the world. Their themes go back perhaps ten thousand years. I think of them as little capsules of collective human experience that have been sent through time. They persisted through the dark ages, when natural wisdom was scourged and people could be burned at the stake for saying heretical things. They might have been muted to whispers in the nurseries, servants’ quarters and cottages, but they survived. Perhaps because they did not take place in this world, they had a good disguise. They have used the power of illusion to stay under the radar, to be seen by the eyes that can see.
Are there stories you tell that are not so well known?
Yes, and it’s the joy of the storyteller to find some rare gems. The Crystal Ball in Grimm’s is a rare gem. So is the Hawaiian story of Hiku and Kewelu. I love The Dark Princess, a modern literary tale by Richard Kennedy, and Prince Lindworm, a Swedish story about a disenfranchised son who becomes a dragon. He’s the dark twin brother you find in various forms around the world.
What connects all the stories you like to tell?
That’s a good question. I remember a filmmaker once saying that the masculine story is an adventure, and the feminine is a love story. Comic or tragic, it’s got to be about love. That’s the story I’m after. I don’t mean romantic love necessarily. I mean the love to carry on when things get so mightily bleak that you can’t put one foot in front of the other.
I’m not particularly interested in stories about conquest and victory over the dragon. I want to hear about the person who is attempting to contend with the dragon.
It’s one thing to slay the beast and ride home with the prize. It’s another thing to ask, “Who is the dragon? What does the dragon mean?” If, as Carl Jung said, “God is in the diseases,” then maybe it’s not enough to get rid of the “evil-doer”. Maybe, on the larger scale of things, we need to know our “enemies.” They’re purposeful and necessary to our spiritual development.
I want to know stories about people who approach the dragon, get burned, and then approach again, get burned, and then approach again. How do we wrestle with the problem of the rancorous wounded beast? Obviously, the hero wants to protect the village, forest and field. Everybody wants to live in peace. But how does one get to peace without nuking the enemy and creating a bigger dragon than the one you’ve already got?
In fairy tales, some very interesting and magical allies come to the aid of protagonists who are wrestling with dragons. In the Swedish story of Prince Lindworm, an old crone who lives in the bole of a tree appears to an unfortunate shepherd girl who has been forced to marry the King’s son. He’s a horrible creature, a long worm known as a lindworm. How did she get so lucky? Because she’s the most kind-hearted maiden in the kingdom! The King’s dragon son has already eaten his first two brides and the King hopes that if the third girl is nice enough, maybe she won’t get eaten!
The shepherd girl is very distraught, as you might imagine, and when she hears the news of her fate, she runs out of her tumbledown cottage in tears. She stumbles through the briar patch, and gets herself all scratched up. There’s no place for her to hide, no place to run. She collapses in a little clearing, and weeps. Just then, a tiny old crone appears. She’s got a round face and merry eyes, and she says, “Tell me my dear, why is it that an old crone like me finds the world so sunny and a pretty girl like you wears despair on her brow?”
The girl tells the old woman her fate. There’s nothing the old one can do to prevent the marriage. She does, however, know how to deal with a lindworm. She gives the shepherd girl precise instructions about what to do on her wedding night. The plan requires the girl to command the beast to shed his skins while she herself sheds her slips, so in the end, they’re both going to be naked as newborns.
It’s quite the battle scene!
How has a story been healing for you?
Prince Lindworm has helped me in my own dealings with dragons. It suggests to me that we need to find a way to engage our “enemies” and disarm together. The shepherdess can’t do it alone—if she were to take off all her clothes, she would be eaten alive like her predecessors. Both parties must reveal themselves, come to trust. There’s more to the story, and I won’t go into it here, but this “battle scene” in the love chamber is extremely painful for both the lindworm and the shepherdess. They have to do the opposite of what they’ve been conditioned to do. The dragon has to feel pain, and the shepherdess has to inflict it.
What I am most passionate about in this lifetime is learning to love. It’s really that simple. I think I gave up all my other agendas to just do that. I recently found out that when my mother went into labor with me, my father was reading her Dante’s Inferno. I don’t know how many of the nine circles of Hell we toured, but my life has read a little like that. It hasn’t been all that easy, nor has it gone the way I expected it to. But it has been beautiful—in large part because of the fairy tale. To me, she’s the old siren, the fairy godmother, the great, great grandmother with whom I’ll be speaking till the end of my days. She keeps it real!
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