Kim Antieau - The Old Mermaids Book of Days and Nights: A Daily Guide to the Magic and Inspiration of the Old Sea, the New Desert, and Beyond

The Old Mermaids Book of Days andNights

A Daily Guide to the Magic and Inspiration of the OldSea, the New Desert, and Beyond

Kim Antieau guides you through ayear of wisdom, humor, beauty, inspiration, and love in these dailyquotes from her own writings featuring the Old Mermaids and some ofthe other wise and mystical characters from her books and stories.See what gifts Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid, Sister Laughs A LotMermaid, Mother Star Stupendous Mermaid, Sister Sheila Na GiggleMermaid, and others have to share with you all yearlong.

Also by Kim Antieau

Novels

The Blue Tail

Broken Moon

Butch

Church of the Old Mermaids

Coyote Cowgirl

Deathmark

The Desert Siren

The Fish Wife

The Gaia Websters

Her Frozen Wild

Jewelweed Station

The Jigsaw Woman

Mercy, Unbound

The Rift

Rubys Imagine

Swans in Winter

Whackadoodle Times

Short Story Collections

Trudging to Eden

The First Book of Old Mermaids Tales

Tales Fabulous and Fairy

Entangled Realities (with Mario Milosevic)

Nonfiction

Counting on Wildflowers: An Entanglement

The Salmon Mysteries: A Guidebook to a

Reimagining of the Eleusinian Mysteries

Cartoons

Fun With Vic and Jane

The Old Mermaids Book ofDays and Nights

Kim Antieau

Published by GreenSnake Publishing

Copyright (c) 2012 by Kim Antieau

Cover image, She Was Half Wild, copyright(c) by Nancy Norman

All rights reserved. Used by permission.

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in memory of my mother,

Mary Kelly Antieau,

who was an Old Mermaid at heart,

and for

Delia, Ellen, and Terri,

who made it all possible

Origins

I cant be sure, but I believe this book might bethe one the Old Mermaids put together when they lived in the OldMermaids Sanctuary after the Old Sea dried up and they made theirhome in the New Desert. Sometimes they needed reminders of how tolive, how to be, how to laugh and dance. So they went out into thedesert at dawn, at dusk, in the middle of the night, and theygathered together the wisdom youll find in this book.

They pulled this word out of the dry desert air andthat word from the flooded wash during the monsoons. They coaxedthis sentence from a chorus of coyotes howling love songs at themoon, and they found that sentence shimmering in the dew on aspider web near where the Old Woman and Old Man of the Mountainslived. They enticed this story from the bark of the Old Sycamore,and the Old Saguaros whispered that story to them the night theirflowers bloomed and the bats came out to drench themselves innectar.

Every word, every sentence, every story here ismeant for you, for each of you, to heal, to amuse, and to mystify,to remind you that you are loved and you are swimming in your owndivinely perfect self. You are magic and so are the OldMermaids.

The Old Mermaids remind us to swim, dance, walk,play, love, and create in beauty. It is the Old Mermaid Way.

Kim Antieau

novice, Church of the Old Mermaids

January 1

She who laughs a lot laughs alot.

Sister Laughs A LotMermaid

January 2

Sometimes I feel the Wild pulsing in my own soul andI know it is Nature speaking to me, through me. I feel as though mycreative force and my passion for the world is Nature working herart through me: I am her art piece.

Under the Tucson Moon

January 3

Sister Ruby Rosarita Mermaidadjusted to life in the New Desert after the Old Sea dried up morequickly than the other Old Mermaids. Of course she missed the OldSea and all that was within. But she knew the Old Sea was in theclouds, her blood, and in every cell of the Old Salmon who madetheir way up and down various creeks and rivers. So it wasnt thatshe didnt love the Old Sea as much as the other Old Mermaids; itwas that she loved the New Desert, too.

The First Book of Old MermaidsTales

January 4

Someone once told me that when welose our dreams, the land dreams for us.

The Desert Siren

January 5

Actually, it wasnt quite a houseyet. The Old Mermaids were still building it, with the help of someneighbors. They used mud and straw and stoneall materials from theold dried up sea. As they built the house, they let the mud andstraw and stone tell them stories. They listened to what the cactiand coyotes and crows had to say, too. The neighbors had morestories. The stories made the work easier, and the house seemed tolike the stories. It shaped itself beautifully around them and thisland. It was a piece of art.

Church of the OldMermaids

January 6

Saras breathing quickened. She felt strangelyhappy. She remembered other times when her mother had gone down tothe beach without Sara and her sisters, times before a storm. Eventhen, Sara had felt as though she should be with herher place waswith her mother singing to the sea.

The Fish Wife

January 7

Perhaps a journey up the mountainswill do, Sister Bea Wilder Mermaid said.

The Second Book of Old MermaidsTales

January 8

She kissed me, Murphy said. Thenshe bent over and picked up the most beautiful shell Ive everseentiny and shaped in a spiraland she said, You know what thismeans, dont you? I shook my head. She pressed the seashell intomy hand. Whenever you find a seashell it means a mermaid has foundher tail and is free again. And then she dove back to the sea andswam away. I never saw her again.

The Fish Wife

January 9

Today I was remembering my oldScottish grandmother. Whenever she saw us or whenever we left herpresence, she gave us a blessing. May the strength of the oaktrees be thine, she would say. Or excellence of travel be onyou. So today I would like to say to you: Joy of night and day beyours. Joy of sun and moon be yours. Joy of all the wildflowers beyours. And may the love and affection of the entire world be yoursas all of my love and affection is already yours.

Jewelweed Station

January 10

Grand Mother Yemaya Mermaid was excited by theprospect of creating thirteen comforters for the Old Mermaids. Itis saidalthough I cant be sure its truethat she began by askingthe Invisibles of the place if she could please find and pick uppieces of the desert to use to create the quilts. And so shegathered up leaves from the mountains and forests. She foundbranches there, too, and the bones of many creatures. She gatheredup feathers and the whispers of dreams on her way down. On thefloor of the desert, she found prickly pear pads and the skeletonsof cacti. She gathered up the clucking of the quail and the hootingof the owl. She found flat rocks, more feathers, and the songs ofcoyotes. One day she found seashells in the wash. She kept lookinguntil she had thirteen. Finally she sat under the night sky andcaught the dust of falling stars. She scooped up moonlight at thesame time.

The First Bookof Old MermaidsTales

January 11

Moon Day. A butterfly the color of my name did tellme that a Big Spin was coming our way. I was standing by Mr.Grants wisteria, which hung over his fence and down into our yard,when Ruby Butterfly, this jeweled metamorphosis of a cattypillar,landed on a bright green wisteria leaf like some kind of wingedoracle and looked straight at me; we exchanged glances, you knowthe way liked-minded and soul-bodied creatures can. We understoodeach other down deep to our transfigured and transforming cellularparts.