My Chimera

I've been thinking about the Chimera a lot lately; a horrifying combination of different animals (a lion, a snake, and a goat), an agent of chaos and destruction, and inevitably slain. With lead tipped spear in hand and poised to stab her through the heart, the hero Bellerophon rode in mounted on the back of the legendary steed Pegasus, who is arguably another mythic creature that is made up of different animal parts. What does it mean to be made up of the wrong parts, or parts that do not blend seemlessly or pleasingly into each other?

In modern terms a chimera can mean any fictional beast that is a hybid of different animals. The word "Chimera" can also mean an illusion of the unrealizable variety, like a love that isn't there or a happy future that cannot be. And then there's the real life Chimerism of cats and flowers, which clearly shows the boundaries of their different parts split right down the middle. And maybe that's the trouble with the Chimera. Its seams are clear for all to see. There is a demarcation of where it was stitched together, how it is constructed, how it is non-normative, how it is "unnatural."

Or, the Chimera shows how everything is contructed, and how some are just better at hiding their stitches. Maybe it doesn't hurt to see the ways we are all a patchwork of different things made into a whole. Maybe what is deemed unnatural isn't so, but is instead just another way of living. Where is the harm in being able to see our seams, to trace where we came from, and perhaps have a better idea of where we are going?

The history and meaning of the Chimera aside, I just think they are neat. I consider both dragons and unicorns to be chimeras, even though they are their own classification of mythical beast. When does a Chimera stop being a chimera and become a whole of its parts? Maybe that's just a question of time and an accumulation of meaning.