What is it about the tailed fish beings who resemble humans above the waist?
Why are we fascinated with them?
Aside from the curiosity we feel about all suppposed, might-be curiosities in the world, there is our own distant past - when, once upon a time - we were water creatures ourselves.
It's that genetic echo that resonates in our own veins when we see an unexplained ripple in the sea, when we suspend our rationality and read mythologies about the Mers, or when we swim deeply underwater and wish our legs would propel us even farther - and we wonder how it would be to be able to breathe water again...
We're all raised on fairytales. As any psychologist will tell you, we never truly grow up.
We only grow used to "reality" - grow immune to flights of fantasy, and become robotic in our approach to life, all too often.
Many of us who still love fantasy, dreams, myths, and legends - ( as well as history - for I feel that history itself is so wild, so fantastic, that it's as marvelous as any created story ) - even as adults, and who allow ourselves to be lured into other worlds imagine or even dream that we, too, can dive far underwater and can glide along like fish.
Don't most of us dream on occasion of flying ? Well, most also dream of swimming unimpeded by the need for taking air.
Shrinks may call both merely a facet of sexuality - a way the mind substitutes swimming or flying for having sex - but that's far too simplistic.
It's remembrance - a genetic memory of what it was like, once, to fly from tree to tree, when we were light, lithe tree-dwellers, instead of grounded, lumbering primates - and swimmer dreams remind us of when we did actually breathe water for eons of uncharted time.
So, Mers are echoes of our own past - mirrors into a more full understanding of our long links backward, combined with what we are today.
The power and freedom of a sea being, the mystery of someone who is autonomous, self-completed, and does not need words or hierarchies, has no need to worry about self-support, who is wild, unapologetic, and engimatic appeals greatly to humans, with all our constraints and limitations.
Let's continue to dream!
And - to follow our History of The Mers by Ocean !
c. 2009, EMermaid, Inc. - Exerpt from History of The Mers by Ocean, an exploration into our fascination with Mermaids and Mermen throughout history.
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