Rock-a-bye Baby Mermaid

Throughout my life I have enjoyed a
memory of lying awake outdoors. The view above me is swaying gently, so I think it is probably a swinging cradle, not a stationary crib, that holds me. My eyes are wide open and curious. There is a sense of security and delight in
discovery as I watch the blue sky overhead.

It is a pleasantly warm, sunny afternoon, and I see green leaves
against the sky. They are not maple or
oak leaves, or any other species that grow in New England, but leaves of another type of tree that I never see in my life now. I am transfixed by the sight of the exotic leaves moving gently against a bright blue sky
tinged with gold. It is a tropical sky.
Once again I remember: the leaves were of a tree that I no longer see against the backdrop
of a sky I no longer know except in my heart.

Mixed up with other
memories, I remember falling from that hammock or, I should say,
falling with it to the ground. I remember the sound of something breaking and the sensation of falling and hitting the ground with full gravitational force. The air
was suddenly and completely knocked out of my lungs and my only reaction to that
sensation was a blink or two of pure shock. I felt no pain but it was hard to get my breath back.

My mother has corroborated that
once, the rope holding up my swinging cradle broke,
bringing me and cradle to the ground. According to her, the cradle wasn’t very high
off the ground, maybe just a few feet at most, but I remember the crash as if I
had fallen from a great height. I was
unharmed, but shaken.

We're All Light

"My first memory is of light - the brightness of light - light all around."
~Georgia O'Keeffe

I'm feeling a lot of love lately, flowing through my fingertips and radiating from my eyes, hair, flippers, and everywhere throughout the universe. We're all made of light, really! If you are unsure, read The Rainbow and The Worm, written by Chinese physicist Mae-Wan Ho, who shows us how we are indeed all light.

Emergent Human

"Human nature is internally inconsistent, that our continuities with, and our differences from, the earth's other animals are mysterious and profound; and in these continuities, and these differences, lie both a sense of strangeness on earth and the possible key to a way of feeling at home here."


~Dorothy Dinnerstein, from The Mermaid and the Minotaur.

As far back in time as we have records, mermaids have existed in human consciousness, in all parts of the world. Dorothy Dinnerstein observes that ancient civilizations shared common symbols of their emerging humanity as distinguished from the purely animal realm. One of these shared symbols is the mermaid / merman, a half fish, half human creature inhabiting both realms.

I was born of the ocean from which all animal life originated, and am a part of it still, while swimming and yearning for the shore on which the first humans walked in search of the horizon. As such, my very being lives most fully in the realm of human dreams, a reminder of my origins in the salty seas and my future in the stars.