Wave to the mermaids

Bye-bye summer. Farewell to long days when everyone can play outside until bedtime, when breezes carry excited voices, when soft-serve melts on your fingers, when flip-flops flap on the sidewalk. And good-bye, too, to sand in the sheets, peeling noses and sweaty nights.

This cool graphic comes from Penniwig's.

Do mermaids say good-bye to summer? Do they miss a warm doze upon a rock? Or are they glad the tourists go home?

I confess: I have mermaids. Among them is a wildly colorful poster in my writing room. Another is a beautiful creature with scary hands on a candy dish/ashtray thingie purchased at a Renaissance fair.


And then there is the haunting mermaid on a ceramic vase that belonged to a dear friend, gone now from this world. I think of him when I see her reaching out imploringly from the waves.

What is it about mermaids that keep us enchanted, even though we've been warned?

William Butler Yeats in "A Man Young and Old: III The Mermaid," weaves the tale of a mermaid who plucks up a comely lad for her own and carries him into the deep, laughing all the way. Yeats explains that she forgot in cruel happiness that even lovers drown.

T.S. Eliot in "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" laments, I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each. I do not think that they will sing to me.

But Hans Christian Andersen gave us "The Little Mermaid," a bittersweet story where the mermaid sells her watery power and alluring voice for a pair of human legs so she can be near a prince she saved from drowning. She gives all for love and, when he marries another, she turns into seafoam, frothy and ethereal.

Piers Anthony turns tail--ha,ha--on the mythology in MERCYCLE, a wild, sci-fi/fantasy romp, which is meant for adults, not kids. In his version of mermaids, a group of experts searching the deepest trench in the Atlantic Ocean in a top-secret government project, encounter a fish-tailed woman of extraordinary attributes. The experts survive the pressure and get oxygen with bicycle-generated power. I told you this is a wild and crazy tale. The mermaid, it is revealed, is part of a Chinese experiment to see if humans can be adapted into merfolk. Okay, if you want more, you have to read it.

I am currently reading Delia Sherman's "Changeling," a middle grade/YA tale in which a girl who's been raised by fairies in Central Park has to go on a quest to save herself and loved ones. One of her challenges is to get the mirror of the Mermaid Queen--a spike-haired creature covered in piercings and tats, including a nuclear submarine she can undulate on her tail. Her mirror is not about vanity, it's about power. And you'd best be scared.

Which brings us back to why we love the concept of mermaids, who are very liberated, going topless and all that. They are sexy, playful, tricksy, murderous, but, mostly, mysterious, representing the unknown depths of the sea. Water not only covers most of the planet, it comprises much of the human body. Mermaids may hold stories we have yet to learn.

I'd love to hear any mermaid stories you want to share, but first I must woo-hoo.

I am really honored that one of my favorite bloggers, Suzanne at Tales of Extraordinary Ordinariness, has passed along the Superior Comments award to me.

Do not this panda and songbird make you smile?

This award is blissfully free of strings and rules, but it is far too lovely and feel-good to not pass on.

I hearby dub Robyn at Putting Pen to Paper for her tireless, enthusiastic and often hilarious comments on the blogs of her fellow writers.

I hereby add MG Higgins for a second Super Comments Award for fabulous and fun blogs and comments. Love that blog.