saturday was the 31st annual Mermaid Parade in Coney Island. i went for the first time last year and was positively enamored. i told my mother on the phone this week that the mermaid parade is my religion. i was mostly joking but the part of me that wasn’t joking believes in this occasion because it holds so much wonder, absurdity, adornment, conviviality, and of course the chicken of the sea (tuna). people travel from all over in their scales, sequins, claws, and glitter. there are marching bands, there are drag queens, there were Free Palestine themed mermaids this year. there was a woman dressed as the new york city sewers. this event and all its fervor breathe life into my faith in humanity. it is silly and it is so serious.
adrienne maree brown said “I don’t even remember how I was at the beginning of the call I just feel like I’m like 3,000 feet tall now”1 and this is how i feel amidst and post mermaid parade. as all kinds of violence unfold at all scales and the temperature of the atmosphere stays so high all over the planet, i need to feel this kind of tall, the kind of tall i feel when i remember that love is unstoppable.
if this note moves you please pass it on!
it is probably no coincidence that the mermaid parade is during pride month, mermaids are quite gay after all, as is so much that is resplendent and elegant.2 as i think of this, this month at this juncture, i’m reminded that pride (for me) is about feeling tall, as in feeling loved, feeling okay and even celebratory about who you are and that actually being the fuel to interrupt the bullshit, to refuse to tolerate it and so to make way for something more caring, more allegiant to life. I return to this interview with Sendolo Diaminah3 again and again:
Sendolo speaks of awe as a disarming and invigorating force in the universe. this force abides with us, sustains us. there is enough space for it, you might find it by the sea. you might find it looking yourself in the eye. you might find it wherever you are.
Prentis Hemphill talks about invitational dignity, a dignity that we can embody that encourages others to feel their own. This is also how I feel at The Mermaid Parade and when I think about people—queer and otherwise—who lend themselves to revolutionary struggle. ↩