The griffin is probably my favourite mythological creature, surpassing even dragons. Dragons, wyrms and wyverns are often used as symbols of evil or destruction and chaos, but the griffin escapes that reputation because whilst majestic and mighty, it’s not exactly devastating. You could bring it down if you had to. Yet it seems just large enough to ride, and since my secret obsession with flight has never had anything to do with wanting my ride to breathe fire, the griffin is the creature I dream on more than any other. I mean, apart from real life dogs of course.
There is a griffin god in my secret fantasy world, and he’s probably the least combative of them all, being a mount for the goddess of laws and civilization. But the aristocratic family that take him for their patron have the words ‘On the Wings of a Storm’ as their family words, because in the history of the Divine Wars, the griffin, being the nimblest and fastest flier, was the one who heralded the war. Like a flash of lightning preceding the roar of thunder, the griffin rides the gathering clouds of a storm just before it strikes in full force.
It’s the reason my personal mark is a single bolt of lightning comprised of two jagged S’s. I never put that much thought into it back when we had to come up with a monogram for Design Technology class when I was still in school. But the more I think on it, the more fitting it seems. I had a stormy, stormy family life as a kid, violent and turbulent on nearly every front. Yet the most striking thing about the dysfunction was how everyone wanted to sweep it under the rug. The more I talk to people about that sort of stuff the more I realize that it’s fairly common. Families don’t discuss their own dysfunctional relations with each other, even clear victims of abuse. The importance of maintaining a sunny image for the outside world was paramount.
Well I say bring on the storm. I’d rather stir things up, rip away the rug, uproot the stifling ideals than suffer the false peace and the silent injustices.
Come forth from the corners of the world
To protect, to revenge, to transform
Out from the corners of the world
On the wings of a storm.
Yeah there’s a chunk of lyrics preceding that little concluding bit but that’s for my personal notebooks only for now. There might even be a melody and scribbled notes for it for the piano (but that’s definitely only for me).
The Third Floor Corridor 