Summer reissue: Megan Dunn’s mer-moir, The Mermaid Chronicles, is an immersive, moving and funny search for the meaning of mermaids and the anchors of interests and family in the ebb and flow of life.
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What matters to you more than praise and being liked? That question has consumed me while writing The Mermaid Chronicles. I read this question in a book called Playing Big by Tara Mohr that I found on my mother’s painted turquoise bookshelf. Playing Big is a motivational book for women, according to Tara, it’s about being more true to your dreams than your fears. On the cover, the title slopes in a cursive font as though handwritten for that personal touch, and the letters are coloured turquoise.
Do you like turquoise? Do I like turquoise? Yes, but it’s complicated. Turquoise is the colour of the mermaid quotes and slogans I’ve been hauling in from the internet for years. Like this: “I must be a mermaid because I have no fear of depths, and a great fear of shallow living.” My mum gave that Anais Nin quote to me on a plaque.
But my mum was originally into purple. Seriously. When I was a teenager growing up at home Mum had a purple bedspread, a purple sheepskin rug like a muppet that had been flayed and a purple lampshade that hung from the ceiling dripping purple tassels and casting the room in mauve shade. Mum also loved to quote the poem, “When I am old, I shall wear purple.” Jenny Joesph wrote that poem when she was only 28 years old, and apparently, she hated purple. Oh Jenny.
Then, later in life, Mum switched to turquoise! She bought a little second-hand turquoise car, “I just love the colour!” She chose turquoise clothes and rings and would sometimes marvel at me, “Megan, now I like turquoise.” As though her whole character had changed.
What does my mother have to do with mermaids? That’s another question that has turned me inside out writing The Mermaid Chronicles. In all honesty the answer has to be zero. Mum was not a competitive swimmer, like some of the top mermaids’ parents. Nor am I. At best Mum was a doggy paddler, a sitter in occasional bathtubs. Me too. Neither of us were ever beautiful mermaids either, more’s the pity. Mum didn’t even have long hair!
Yet, in 2022, as I sat at my desk in my office at the IIML perched high on the hill, with a view out over the Pacific Ocean, memories of my mother kept interrupting my mermaid book. I toyed with a little hessian bag of cards tied up with a dainty blue ribbon. The bag was turquoise, I slipped it open and sifted through my mother’s pearls of wisdom cards. That’s what she called her affirmation pack. Each card featured an image of a pearl sitting in an oyster, its shell half open, like a make-up compact. The cards read things like: I take care of myself by eating a healthy diet. I give myself time to heal. Mum intended these cards to be bought and read by an audience, she wanted to help people – presumably women – feel better about themselves. She wanted to feel better about herself.
Above my desk I had hung my faded print of Waterhouse’s A Mermaid. She looked down at me, wondering if I was ever going to sort my shit out. “You alone, Megan, have been called on to tell people why so mermaids have long hair, what we eat, what we say to children and how we are saving the world,” she said, her brush snagging on a knot.
“I know, but what did my mother know about bloody oysters, nothing!?” I raged. “And what do pearls have to do with wisdom anyway?”
“There are five different kinds of pearls,” Waterhouse’s Mermaid replied. “Akoya, Tahitian, Freshwater, White and Golden South Seas and Sea of Cortez. They’re rated like batteries. AAA is the best.”
A large turquoise ring binder was splayed open on the floor containing the printouts of all my mermaid interviews. 60-plus mermaids. Over 800,000 words. That’s a lot of pearls of wisdom.
I’m in the biggest womb in the world. I’m in this amniotic thing that just girdles the entire planet. There’s the ceiling, and there’s the floor and I could stay in it forever. – Mermaid Linden
I want to be dazzled, I want to see things I’ve never seen before, I want to explode in an atom bomb of fun and happiness. – MeduSirena
The first year when I surfaced, I heard this really deep man’s voice yelling, “She’s real She’s real!” – Mermaid Rachel, Dive Bar, Sacramento.
I always want children to show me their toes. I’m simply fascinated by toes. – Morgana Alba, Circus Siren Pod.
The people on my team are stuntwomen, freedivers, and athletes at the top of their game, to do this work where you could be hired to work on set in a tail for eight hours, you have to be incredibly athletic and have a huge commitment to your craft. – Merman Jax, Dark Tide Entertainment.
If I’ve given a child life, I can definitely learn how to do this. – Mermaid Karin, Blue Planet Copenhagen.
Overwhelmed, I left my desk and walked up the stairs to see the poet Chris Price in her office. She’s written a book about lobsters and god knows I admire her for it.
“I sense you want to rescue the mermaids from triviality,” she said, sitting at her desk.
“Yes! I think I want to rescue myself from triviality,” I replied.
A woman in her 40s writing a book about people who work as mermaids will not be taken seriously. But she will be sent a shitload of memes, and many links to crocheted mermaid tail blankets.
What matters to me more than praise and being liked? My mother, my daughter. The truth gleaming dully like a pearl harvested from the ocean and held in my hand. What the mermaids told me. A world with some hope left it in, rising.
In The Mermaid Chronicles I went on a quest to hear the mermaids singing. I wanted to go on an adventure into lurching femininity, into a sea of turquoise quotes. So I took Tara Mohr’s advice. I travelled to Copenhagen with my partner Rich and our then two-year-old daughter in tow. Does the Little Mermaid statue actually have a tail or feet? I know. When Adrienne Rich wrote her seminal feminist poem ‘Diving into the Wreck’ did she swim in The Wreck bar, in Florida? No, but I did. I bought a Madison tail and I chased after Daryl Hannah, my G.O.A.T mermaid. I did things I never thought I’d do and looked and felt stupid doing them, but it mattered more to me than being praised or liked. I wanted to know what it felt like to be a mermaid from the inside out.
It’s absolute freedom, it’s weightlessness… when we are underwater, we are attending to our spirit form. Energetically, you can feel the currents move through you, it’s like going home. – Hannah Mermaid.
I’m now 49 years old and sitting here writing this in a pair of pyjamas with hydrangeas on them (purple). But if you want to know how long it takes to make a pearl of wisdom, my answer is simple: your whole life.
The Mermaid Chronicles by Megan Dunn ($35, Penguin NZ) is available to purchase from Unity Books.
First published August 24, 2024.