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The Mermaid in the Mikveh.

August 29, 2012 by Exangel

by Alena Deerwater.

Oy!

The year of my thirty-ninth birthday I gifted myself three days with a hoard of Jewish women in the woods sans children.  At the time my daughters were seven and four and my entire life. This was the first time I was leaving them for more than twenty-four hours.

I could count on one hand the number of times I had done even that.

My first foray for an entire day away from Lilly, my eldest, had been to attend a “sitting” with an old Apache woman offering teachings on dreaming and dying. Now I was gathering with Jewesses reveling in our sensuality for a long weekend. My offering to the group on Friday night was an erotic reading from a new translation of the Songs of Solomon that began with an enticing command:

“Kiss Me.”

By Saturday night I had been volunteered to be one of the models for a new age fashion show depicting our version of the Woman of the New Millennium. Both Rabbi Margaret and I ended up nude as we walked a runway made up of rustic camp-like tables shoved into a long elevated path.

The year was 1998.

My scent was ylang-ylang.

 

Before all the joyful wild womenness was released into the woods, we shared a quiet moment by the river Friday afternoon preparing for Shabbat, the sabbath. These women had re-juiced an old tradition from Judaism and created a thing of beauty:

The Mikveh.
Originally the mikveh was a ritual women performed in water to be cleansed from the “impurities” of their monthly bleeding so their husbands could have sex with them. Remember in the old testament how Rachel stole the riches from her father so she could run off with Jacob? She sat on the goods when she had her period knowing dear old dad wouldn’t dare come near her during that time of the month.

The Jewish women of the Mendocino coast have a knack for transforming the very traditions that formerly turned my Jew-hating stomach into heart-full rituals that spark my imagination and transform my soul. Returning me to a people and a God I thought I had abandoned.

 

At the mikveh:
I perch on the bank of a small stream among women, some clothed, some nude, some wrapped in robes and towels waiting their turn to fully submerge three times in the one swimming hole deep enough for the task. The sun dapples through the redwoods, glinting on the water.  As witnesses we sit silently except for the prayers we chant after each dunking.

Kosher!
we shout joyfully each time a woman succeeds in getting every little bit of herself under water.
Not so easy really.
A bit of toe or curl of hair often remains peeking above the ripples.

I watch.
My butt getting sore.
Each woman strips then gathers up her heart and speaks her intention or kavanah for the year. Some offer their words to the group, like a teaching. Others whisper their kavanah into the mikveh-lady’s ear.

 

The Mikveh-Lady.
Ella, of Blessed Memory.
She taught us the ways of this water ritual. Held our hands and our hearts as we entered and exited the stream. Our job on the shore was to hold the woman’s intention as she descended into the wet.

Man, the water was cold that year.

Yelping.
Teeth-chattering.

Each body enters the stream and ducks under. But what I remember the most is how every woman’s body is different. How every woman’s body is astoundingly beautiful.

Standing naked.
Speaking to God.
Each praying to be joined in co-creating her highest good.

Without clothing, the rounded tummies, tushies, breasts and thighs; scars, moles, wrinkles and sags, all find their loveliness. Their beauty. Their truth.

My turn.
I take a breath, slip out of clothes. Remove glasses, sandals. The pebbles pinch the bottom of my feet as I pussy-foot my way to Ella, lovely Ella. I’ve always had tender soles. I turn to face the chorus of women. To my naked eye they are a kind blur of smudged faces amid swatches of color resting among the redwoods. I choose to speak aloud.

“My kavanah is to open. My heart. My body. To life. To what comes…”

Ella’s hand is in mine. I slowly slip and slide my way into the water. Up to my knees, I must release her hand or risk pulling Ella in with me.

My thighs are next. I trick them millimeter by millimeter into the stream. By the time the water barely splishes the bottom of my breasts, my feet ache from the cold.

I look up and see an old tree on the opposite bank facing me. She smiles.

“Alena-la. Take one deep breath and down you go.”

I obey, like a child trusting her mother. Dive back and under.

Aaaaaaaaaa!

I pop back up.
My breath is taken away.
Literally.

My breath is gone.
A mermaid took it.

I hear a chorus of kosher!
A prayer.

“Again,” says the tree.
I jump up then down under.

This second time my eyes open.
The mermaid spreads my arms with her arms, my fingers with her hands. My chest expands. Her tail fin delicately separates my toes and legs. I open to the water.

“Kiss me,”
the water sings. Or is it her?

Water.
Everywhere.
I need air.
She pushes me up.

“Kosher!”

“Shema Y’Israel Adonai Elohehnu Adonai Echad.” my voice croons to the tree.

“Welcome home” she replies.

I plunge in the third and final time.

The mermaid. She slaps gills on my glands. Webbed fingers pressing my neck.

I
Breathe
And
Dance
Under
Water.

The mermaid and I
Hold each other and spin.
A double-helix of DNA.
Twirling together.
Till we are One.
Echad.

I emerge – Kosher! – shining wetness.

“Ba-ruch A-tah Ado-nai E-lo-he-nu Me-lech Ha-olam She-heche-ya-nu Ve-ki-yi-ma-nu Ve-higi-a-nu Liz-man Ha-zeh. Blessed is the source of all life, who has kept us, and sustained us, and brought us to this moment. Amen.”

Entwined with the mermaid in me, I walk out of the water and onto the land.

Ella says, “Look, a water nymph. You are a beautiful water nymph. Beautiful.”

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Fall 2012: Mermaids and Other Tales

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In This Issue.

  • Who Was Dorothy?
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  • The Screaming Baboon.
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  • A Tale of Persistence.
  • A Conversation with Steve Hugh Westenra.
  • Person Number Twelve.
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  • 12 Baking Essentials to Always Have in Your Poetry.
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  • My Forked Tongue.
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In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

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In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

In The News.

If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

In The News.

Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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