Are you familiar with the classical story of Andromeda, from Greek mythology?
Andromeda was the beautiful daughter of Cepheus and Cassiopeia. To satisfy a boast that her mother had made, Andromeda is chained to a rock and doomed to die in the jaws of the sea monster Ketos.
The original story of Andromeda was written by Euripides in 412 B.C., and it's come to be recognized as the first damsel and dragon story. Andromeda, essentially, was the first literary damsel in distress.
I love the story of Andromeda because of its tactile embodiment of a predicament we find ourselves in all the time - fated to call up our inner innovator and confront challenges seeming impossible. Andromeda's plight captures the moment of feeling cornered - no longer able to run. On that rock in the sea, while terrible Ketos slithered near, Andromeda was wholly at the mercy of fate and her own wits.
Euripides' Andromeda was rescued, by Perseus, and happily the couple lived ever after until they both were memorialized as constellations.
I like to believe that the story of Andromeda has another facet. Were Perseus off on some quest at the time, or had be been eaten by Ketos during the attempted deliverance, I hold that Andromeda had a few tricks up her sleeve.
Our predicaments so often include challenges like Euripides' rock, his chain, and his deadly monster. But contrarily - we find no rescuer.
And so I've written a retelling of Andromeda. In my rendition, the supports available to her are more honest to what we know - unstable, transient, and even vanishing.
When my husband first read my completed version of Little Girl Can Dance, he asked - “What in the world happened to you?” In my writerly essence, the part of myself that seeks to lay out pure truths on the page had to smile.
The story isn't at all autobiographical. But to develop my tale of Andromeda, told in six smashing movements, I did indeed summon a good measure of my own pain. And I likewise wove in some bravery, creativity, and spunk. I created a child possessing the will to dismantle every falsehood.
I hope you enjoy encountering my Andromeda and watching her struggle in her catastrophe, on her metaphorical rock, beneath her metaphorical chain, accessing her wits.
And I hope that my story might offer some comfort - that when the ground crumbles, when all tethers to all sources of stability slip, there still remain the elements that have been there all along - a dire problem and a deft problem solver.
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