We are Mermaids

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“You don’t have to be useful. You are not required to come up with something to say.” In reading this poem, this line stuck out to me. For mainly one reason, some humans, spend a lot of our lives trying to figure out our purpose, and I have struggled with this. Trying to think why and what we are supposed to do with our lives. Many times I have felt that you are only important for actions that set you apart from others, that you have to be this huge important person and change lives and pave the way for millions of people. While those people are important, the ones who don’t make “revolutionary” changes are just as important. I don’t need to rush myself to be someone or do something huge to recognize the value and importance of myself. Maybe our purpose isn’t to be “useful”l or to change the world, maybe our purpose is to just enjoy life and love one another. Changing the world doesn’t have to start or end with changing a million people, it can be changing yourself, your community, and your loved ones. I am sure this line can and has been interpreted in many different ways but this line and the last one were extremely comforting to me, there’s no need to rush in life or stress over things we cannot control, because as Stephanie Burt says, “Some of us are going to be okay,” and I know I will be one of them.

We Are Mermaids

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I didn’t know what a thermophile was, but after looking it up I see that it is a bacteria that thrives in high temperatures. I wonder if Burt included this to show how the Ocean is a harsh place, yet a place of origin. The fumaroles that the thermophiles feed on are arguably some of the earliest catalysts for human life. Burt then references more Ocean dwellers like zoarchids, known for being sluggish and consumptive. To me, Burt is highlighting the fertility of the Ocean. They want readers to know that the Ocean is the birthplace of humanity. The first stanza also hints at the origin of life on Earth, calling the Ocean “life-giving.”

Later in the poem, Burt references the liminal spaces of the “harbor” and the “estuary.” Why did they surface liminal spaces? The estuary, between fresh and salty waterways. the harbor, a place between the human world on land and the Ocean.

I wonder if this poem serves as a reminder that if mermaids exist, then we evolved from them. Burt repeatedly hints that the Ocean is the origin of all living things, and the title of the poem “We Are Mermaids” furthers this idea. Maybe this is a calling for us to acknowledge all that has come before us, all the species that lead to humanity.

What does Burt mean when they say, “Some of us are going to be okay.”

Final Essay Proposal

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Through an exploration of physical and figurative trauma depicted in the Sedna story and “The Water Will Carry Us Home”, these narrative tales serve as symbols of rebirth and new beginnings for their respective communities. By incorporating trauma into the narrative of transformation, they teach valuable lessons about sacrifice and resilience. The communities specifically learn that through female adversity and sacrifice, there can be beauty and renewal.

Both tie into..

-Importance of both being woman and female-centered

-Sedna was powerful and slaves were not: why that matters, even those with power face unwilling sacrifice

-Power/strength

-Regrowth/Rebirth into something more powerful 

-cultural recognition that demands a retelling,

Extra Credit Discovery Blog: Sirena

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The origin story if Sirena can serve as a lesson for the children it is read to listen to their parents. This story is set in Guam and is about a Chamorro girl named Sirena. She is infatuated with the water and swimming in it. One day, her mother is in need of some assistance in the kitchen when she asks her daughter, Sirena, to “-come, take this basket from your brother and fill it with breadfruit from auntie’s. Hurry, come directly back.” As she was on her way to her Aunts house, who so conveniently lives near a river bank, Sirena is convinced by the birds in the sky who begin diving in the water that she must join them in their play. It would seem that Sirena stayed in the water a lot longer than she had realized as the sun leaves the horizon and the realization that she has not fulfilled the errand her mother sent her on has not been fulfilled.

When she returns home, Sirena is scolded by her mother as she, figuratively and literally, curses her saying “Sirena, if you ever go in the water again, you will become an ugly, fat fish!”. Sirena then runs away from this scolding and flees to the river, and hops in. She chooses the water as she felt that her connection to it far outweighed the life she had on land. To her surprise, she did not turn into an ugly fish, but “-instead, [formed] an iridescent tail stretched down from her waist.” She whispered goodbye and that goodbye is to have said still echos across the land. Despite the fact that Sirena sort of got a happy ending, I feel it still gives a warning to the severity of not listening to your mother and failing to be well behaved as an outlined duty for children. I feel like the story argued that you either listen to your mom or you live an entirely different life; there is no in between.

Week 15: We Are Mermaids

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Reading this poem felt like a breather in a way. I really enjoyed the feelings it gave me like a peace of mind, an escape from my current life, but also to picture my life in a different way. There was a specific part of the poem that stuck with me, “It has been there since before the beginning of tragedy”. It put into perspective how big, impactful, and strong the Ocean truly is but yet it’s still neglected for what it really is. It made me stop to think what does the Ocean know that humans don’t? What is the Oceans endurance to the damage that is always done to it? From this single stanza I was able to see how my life and what I think are “major” problems are really a speck in comparison to this huge body of water.

Another point in the poem that made me picture life in a different place was, “You can spend your life benthic, or brackish” as it makes me question if life in water is possible? I decided to look up the word benthic which is simply anything that is at the bottom of a body of water and I couldn’t help to think about the mermaid stories we’ve read and how they all take place living at the bottom of the sea. So can this mean that living at the bottom of the Ocean is indeed possible? How would life be down there? Or is there already life right under our noses? This poem brought out so many questions to me as it lets me try to picture things in a different lens as anything was possible instead of being impossible.

Week 15: We are Mermaids

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Stephanie Burt’s poem We are Mermaids is the perfect reading to close off the semester. We have been studying our relationship with the environment throughout the mythology of the mermaid but this poem proposes the idea that our very nature is that of mermaids and this provides a thought provoking exploration of how we can imagine a different relationship with the natural world that is in harmony with our nature and against the capitalist model that has been taught to us.

Within the first stanza Burt establishes that our very tears, often a reflection of human emotion, are composed of the same substance as that of the ocean. Thus we are not beings separate and superior to the natural world but rather an extension of it. If mermaids are the bridge between the human and the natural world then it must follow that we are also mermaids. Her second stanza assures us that life has existed long before the presence of humanity and life was simply a matter of survival, in other words “to get through the day”. Within her third stanza she claims that there is stability to be found in this simple way of life. To try to depend on the machine of fortune is much less certain and provokes doubt. Given that we are mermaids we have the gift of choice; to try to fit into the life modeled to us by society or we can choose the stability of a life of simplicity. Her fourth stanza shows us that we would be wrong to think a simple life dull or meaningless. She shows us this by describing different organisms and how they thrive when following their nature, “The thermophiles…whose sulfur would kill a human being. They love it here”. Jumping onto the sixth stanza it made me think of our discussion in class about the modern world’s demand for originality to be seen as someone of importance. Such a thing does not exist in the natural world and, if the mermaid can live in and out of water, then we, we being mermaids, can live with or without the need of originality or usefulness. The first line of the seventh stanza reads, ” You can spend your life benthic of brackish.” Benthic means in the deep ocean whilst brackish water can be found within estuaries which are a threshold between river and open sea. So too can we as mermaids live within this threshold without sacrificing our role in the natural world.

This is a beautiful piece that I will be taking and perfectly encapsulates one of the most important things that this course has taught me.

Week 15: We are Mermaids

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“The salt of the ocean is always the salt of tears, melancholy but at the right dilution, or concentration, life giving”. Stephanie Burt opens her poem, “We are Mermaids”, with this line. Though we cannot survive in the ocean, we cry the same salty tears. The ocean, and our tears, are life giving. I think this poem can be connected to the human condition, and the things that make us human. “It has been there since before the beginning of tragedy, when what would become us was just trying to get through the day” (Burt). The ocean has always been witness to humans, through tragedies, and will continue to be there even as we, as individuals, try to get through each day. The poem attempts to inspire a different kind of living, “We know the consistent waves…sacrificing their poise for their careers, need not be the only mode of living” (Burt).  We may not be able to live in the ocean “whose sulfur steam would kill a human being”, but we can still learn from it. The creatures, the “mottled, diffident ray finned fish… choose to nose along the floor of the rough world”. Despite the world at the bottom of the sea being rough and dark, “they love it here” (Burt). The sea creatures are content, freed from the pressures and expectations of the human world. In the ocean “You don’t have to be useful. You are not required to come up with something to say” (Burt). “You can spend your life benthic, or brackish…exploring the estuary… and congeries of overlapping shores”. Perhaps if we allow ourselves the freedom as they do, we too can “love it here”. We should be inspired by the creatures of the oceans, by the mermaids, and try to live more freely, with less expectation, as they do. We should be, and are, mermaids.

Week 15: Breaking Away of Terracentric Pressures

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The poem “We are Mermaids”, by Stephanie Burt, offers us insight into how the matter of our worth changes when we reevaluate our impact and life choices outside of a terracentric lens. Terracentrism inherently associates worth and status with ownership and visibility, whereas an Ocean-centric view of measuring our worth functions to circumvent the idea of social permanence, as the water is ever moving and fluctuating. The line, “you don’t have to be use- / ful. You are not required / to come up with something to say.”, alleviates the ingrained societal pressure that to be affirmed or seen, you need to provide some sort of profitable contribution. A terracentric view of life argues that simply existing is not only not enough, but actually leaves a net negative impact on the society around you, because you are taking up space, land, and resources. By stepping out of this rigid, constructed reality, and instead looking to the flow state by which the ocean progresses, we can dissociate from the imaginary demands terracentrism places on our worth and feel worthy just being. The poem moves ahead to communicate that even a life spent “benthic or brackish” inherently has worth, as it is still a life of exploration, of persistence. This challenges the terracentric idea that a meaningful life is weighed by the mass you can claim. The land determines your worth by how much of it you own, but the ocean allows you to own your worth alone––as nothing can be owned in the Ocean, since nothing changed in the Ocean stays.

Week 15: Conclusions/What I Learned

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The moment I saw a mermaid on the syllabus I just knew it would change and shift my perspectives. I have never in my academic career equated the environment with being anything more than a dormant and dead piece of matter that happens to give us structure to walk on and build on; nothing more. This preconceived notion was completely blown up by the literature we interacted with throughout the entire semester; and not only that but the texts made me question and identify how those conceptions were constructed in the first place. Why did I think all mermaids were white? Why was I so disconnected to the environment? Who convinced me that nature mattered less than me? Who taught me that I was apart from nature and not a part? All of these reevaluations entered my head throughout my time in each lecture.

Each text was very rich in culture and information but my favorite and most notable were the texts regarding the Blue Humanities. As an English major, I am often queried about what I want to do with an English degree; Do you want to be a teacher? What can you do with that? The Blue Humanities connects literature with the environment, evoking emotional connectivity, historically rich texts, and a projects an urge to reconnect with the environment. The genre of the Blue Humanities is able to understand that humans are very emotionally intelligent and when one connects these emotions to the environment, a “lifeless” mute piece of earth, one may cultivate care and respect towards our home. All of this action was inspired through various forms of literature, words, language, rhetoric; all encompassing traits that make up what an English major practices every day. This class made me feel like I chose a very important major that could give me the tools to change perceptions and maybe even the world. (That was corny, I know😭)

Week 15: Conclusion

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This class has been mindfully-transformative from the various topics and discussions of how they connect. Discovering the various connections that literature has with the environment through learning about mermaids has been so unique and beautiful. I have learned so much about history, cultures, science, and writing and it has been so inspiring and so fun. My interest has peaked in many different things that we have covered and I love seeing how passionately everything was taught. This will be a class that I will remember forever, and I’m really sad that it has come to an end! I look forward to taking more classes with you in the upcoming semesters 🤍🥹