Once Upon a Time

Hello friends. You have reached the inaugural entry of Wishing Still Helps, a writing project I intend to carry out through the year 2010 and perhaps beyond. It is my intent to read one fairy tale each morning, the moment I wake up and before I set out to discover just what the day holds for me. Hopefully this will add a needed element of magic and whimsy to my activities, and give me something to think about in my idle moments. Before I go to sleep, I will write a response to the story that started my day. This will come in one of a variety of forms: it may be an anecdote from the day's events, a reflection on some stirred-up memory, a fictional or poetic adaptation, or a literary analysis or comparison. It is my belief that fairy tales, myths, legends, and other such stories persist in our culture through retelling and adaptation because they resonate deeply with us, reflecting deep or universal truths about humanity. It is also my belief that in times of great anxiety or fear on a personal, cultural, or global level we turn to the past and to those things that still remain resonant despite age. By incorporating these stories, most of them quite old, into this strange modern life of mine, I hope to discover what makes them so lasting and to forge new links between myself and the literary history of the world in which I live.

As for the specifics of this project, I will for the most part be making my way through Grimms' complete works, as they are the stories with which I am most familiar, and the ones I have collected in a big worn volume on my dresser. I will make occasional divergences as I see fit, and certainly encourage recommendations from you, my readers. One distinction I will make is that I intend to use only primary sources. I have at my disposal plenty of essays and other pieces of nonfiction that are assuredly enlightening, but my daily story will always be an original fairy tale or, perhaps, a modern fictional adaptation. I may at times choose to use a certain source for longer than one day. I will do my best each day to link to at least one version of my chosen story online, and perhaps to other relevant readings. The greatest resource that I have yet found for fairy tale enthusiasts online is Sur La Lune Fairy Tales, which features annotated versions of many familiar stories, explaining cultural references, symbolism, and other bits of esoterica along with links to similar stories from global cultures, illustrations, essays, and derived works. I can only hope that such a database does not render my work here redundant, and that these stories, having survived for so long already, will fruitfully lend themselves to yet another writer's fancy. Thank you for reading, and sweet dreams.