a wind's in the heart of me...

When I was a child I remembered being a mermaid in a previous life. The memory was powerful, vivid, it was etched in my soul. I would often feel I was in the water, weightless, beautiful, skimming under the waves, at one with the sea. One minute I would feel the earth beneath my feet and the next I would be clutched with the sweet sensation of weightlessness, my momentary surprise giving way to a sense of familiarity and rightness, and I would think, “Oh, yeah, I remember doing this.”

I believed that this ability to shift realities in my memory would translate into my real life, that while skipping through my childhood days, I could will it back, patch together the pieces of a life long ago, lived beneath the sea. We lived in a neighborhood where the houses were close together, everyone's grass was always mowed on Saturday morning, we got kittened up on Sunday mornings and went to church. Our street dead-ended into the woods, in the summertime I ran through the thick foliage with my arms spread to catch the wind, mirroring the motions of gliding through the water.

I was [am] a chaser of dreams, belonging to the wild, free days of childhood. I spent my days exploring, wandering, discovering the secrets of youth. The woods provided a world of wonders, bird nests, field mice, frogs sunning themselves on moss covered rocks and white tailed deer drinking from a pond hidden in a grove of trees.

Either you remember it or you don't, I remember...my heart and soul are filled with them, the memories. At times I feel consumed by the irresistible pull of it all, the seductive call of the waves, the lure of infinite possibilities. This is where it started...the wanderlust......

This is all true except for the parts that have been exaggerated {or not!}.

A Wanderer's Song by John Masefield

A wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels,

I am tired of brick and stone and rumbling wagon-wheels;

I hunger for the sea's edge, the limit of the land,

Where the wild old Atlantic is shouting on the sand.

Oh I'll be going, leaving the noises of the street,

To where a lifting foresail-foot is yanking at the sheet;

To a windy, tossing anchorage where yawls and ketches ride,

Oh I'l be going, going, until I meet the tide.

And first I'll hear the sea-wind, the mewing of the gulls,

The clucking, sucking of the sea about the rusty hulls,

The songs at the capstan at the hooker warping out,

And then the heart of me'll know I'm there or thereabout.

Oh I am sick of brick and stone, the heart of me is sick,

For windy green, unquiet sea, the realm of Moby Dick;

And I'll be going, going, from the roaring of the wheels,

For a wind's in the heart of me, a fire's in my heels.

Oh, about those photos, the mermaid and baby are a self-portrait I did years ago, I am using the image for my tile for the water project.

 Best Buttermilk Blueberry Pancakes

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