The Anatomy Lesson

Dissecting something reveals the hidden anatomy beneath the surface, whether of siren or of human. But ancient mysteries remain inscrutable, and any amount of dissection, of the laying bare of mere muscle and sinew, of the tracing of tendons, of the navigation of meandering sutures to their source, of even the most detailed description of the circuitry of veins and arteries and the innermost chambers of the heart, will not bring us closer to the mystery of the siren. Some mysteries lie deeper than any blade can reach.

The Kiss

It is the siren's guile to have others adore her, and to allow others to imagine that their feelings for her are returned. In reality, the siren adores only herself. The mirror which the siren traditionally holds is the reflection of her own desire. For her there are no illusions, and she alone sees her true and terrifying appearance and finds herself yet beautiful, which is the art, not of self-absorption, but of complete self-acceptance.

Jewels

The siren loves adornment: topaz, carnelian, aquamarine, all set in filigreed gold worked so fine that it hardly seems within the skills of earthly craftsmen to fashion such treasures. It is not. Rather, it is the siren herself who gives these things the appearance of fabulous jewels. Were she to grant us her treasures as a gift, we would then see them for what they truly are: tangled strands of marine plants and worthless bits of broken shells: the discarded refuse of her realm. Treasures are a part of the siren's world of illusion, and her gifts as well.

Scale

The scale of things fascinates us. We usually relate the true size of something to our own human scale, but in what way does the siren measure scale? Tiny diatoms drift through the oceans like wandering stars, as the stars as they drift through the darkness above are made tiny only by distance. And the smaller fish is only small in relation to the larger fish, although it is at least as large as the siren herself. But look carefully: inside the body of the larger fish is a second smaller one - the remains of its last meal. Scale, it seems, is not only comparative and relative: it is digestible as well.

The Necklace

From each new location which she visits the siren gathers some small memento of her passing to add to her necklace: a coiled shell, a sea star, a fragment of coral. The necklace is at one and the same time both a journal of her wanderings, and a record of memories. This shell she gathered from the strand where young turtles were hatching under the moon, this piece of coral from the place of the wreck. Each part of the necklace can be seen as a page from the book of her own past. But memories can also be a burden, and the necklace grows heavy.

The Book of Hours

In what ways does the siren experience time? Coiled time spirals ever-outwards, but to her and the others of her kind, time as the passing hours of the day is as much of an illusory state as the way in which she appears to others. Her own book of hours is measured in the growth patterns of sea shells, in the slide of stars and ocean currents, in the ebb and flow of tides and in the sea's destiny.

Star of the Sea

Stella Maris: Star of the Sea. Our lady of the watery horizon. Our lady of the corals, of the starfish, of the constellations, of the shoals and reefs and the restless flow of currents. Our lady of the tides and the moon's bright pathway. Our lady of shining sorrows, whose sadness only serves to make her more beautiful. Our lady who is the most distant when we draw near to her, and who is never more close than when we imagine that she has deserted us. Our lady of all things known and unknown. Our lady of the starry darkness.

The Visitation

Seeking contact with others can be painful and perilous, and yet we persistently make the attempt. Balancing at the tipping point between a longing for acceptance and a fear of rejection, we reach out and touch the face of another, only to discover that the face which our tentatively extended fingers caress is our own. We are she whom we seek.

The Siren's Odyssey

The ocean too has its pathways, even when these pathways are not defined with the same sensory perceptions as those of the land. Tracts of ocean more vast than a trackless desert are crossed and recrossed by the siren, and only some sense beyond our own limits of vision allows us to glimpse these mysterious and otherwise-invisible traceries: odysseys relying for their means of navigation upon the subtle signals emitted by the earth itself, and by the coursing stars: meandering trails of dusty luminescence which mirror each other.

A Ghost

We think of a ghost as being a spirit of the dead, but in the siren’s world a ghost has a greater poignancy than this. To a siren, a ghost is someone still living who has become lost to herself. To a siren, to lose one’s own sense of self, that being whom one truly is, is a tragedy greater than mere death, for how can one fulfill one’s purpose when in such a state? The hapless individual must wander without direction, without identity, perhaps believing herself to be fulfilled in ways invisible to those who care for her. She loses herself in love, or in a cause, or in the identity of another, and the border between the realm of the living and a ghostly twilight of wandering is crossed without her even being aware of it.

Uncharted Waters

Sooner or later the edge of the map is reached. That line between the known and the unknown offers us a choice: either to retrace our journey and stay with what is familiar to us, or to strike out into uncharted waters and discover what the horizon has to offer. But the map which has guided our course up till now was not drawn using information gathered by someone who spent their time sitting on the shore. All maps have been created by those who went beyond the maps which they had, and slowly the indistinct coastlines of the unknown emerged. But the expansion of one world involves the diminishing of another. The more maps of the unknown that are drawn, the smaller the siren's world becomes. The siren, whose very allure draws us into the unknown, herself becomes a fading shadow whose reality we now ungraciously dismiss as a fiction, as she is forced ever further into retreat before our adventuring.

The Twin

Do we all have a double? It is said that to meet this double, this doppelgänger, is to foreshadow our own death. But meeting this mysterious twin need not be an experience to dread. Perhaps this double, our perfect twin who is our other self, really invites us to a new life among the stars, which is always a return. We have been there before.

Sargasso

The freedom of the seas, as with any other freedom, can have its limits. Entangled in drifting strands of marine plants, the siren longs for the freedom which before she had taken for granted. Will she find release from this watery net of vegetation? She must wait patiently for that moment when the tugging currents offer a chance for release, for struggle will only ensnare her further.

The Source

Patterns of growth in the shells of sea creatures all graduate outwards from a beginning. All growth spirals away from its source. At the outermost limits of growth, at the farthest distance travelled, the source is reached at last.

Spirit Writing

The mind empties, and unbidden the hand begins to write. Is it truly another voice that is speaking through us? Are the words that appear really a message from another dimension? We seek contact, but does that contact come from another, or from an unknown part of ourselves? The written words exist, whatever their origin, and we are left to wonder, and to try to understand and interpret what has been written as best we can.

The Abyss

Sooner or later even a siren will find herself at the edge of the abyss, nestling among the coral as she strains to see into the darkness beneath. A compass rose drawn on a nautical chart will indicate north, but here in the watery depths perhaps the compass instead points upwards to the surface, and downwards is not 'south', but a direction leading towards the dark unknown below. 

The Siren Dreams

What do sirens dream? Do they dream of the monsters of their own realm? Or do they dream of our world? Perhaps to a siren it is our world that is the realm of myths and monsters, of fantastic beings that might or might not be real, who are ourselves. We think of sirens as belonging to the world of dreams. But perhaps it is the reverse which reflects the greater reality. Perhaps it is we who are the dreams of sirens.

When the Seas Die

When the seas die, the siren dies with them, meeting at last the limits of her immortality. When life fades, only dreams linger, until these too fade into the darkness. We follow after these pale phantoms, too intent upon the pursuit to notice that we, like them, have also become ghosts.

END