It wasn’t that long ago.
I found myself yelling, almost screaming.
I was standing outside, it was a bit chilly.
Wearing a black winter coat, close to the entrance of a metro stop.
I had just told him that I was going to take a coffee instead.
And I started to make my way.
‘Why are you always so angry?’
The person I was shouting at asked me.
Just shortly before I started to walk.
I wasn’t even offended that he said that.
It felt more like a compliment.
Because he was so full of himself, that it didn’t occur to him that he had done something wrong.
It didn’t even cross his mind.
But only he could notice that I was angry.
In his mind it was me, who was the problem.
The question was legitimate in his eyes.
Something I could see, because he was comfortable when he asked me.
In that sense I wasn’t even angry to receive such a question.
At least not the reason that I was yelling at him.
And I didn’t answer what he asked me.
Because it was just a way for him to make me feel small or put me down.
Since I was the one standing here, yelling at him in public.
Again legitimate for him to ask that question.
But the absence of my answer.
The silence there in the crowd, next to a metrostop, is what the story is actually about.
A song I once heard.
Syren, by a techno DJ.
I looked over so many times at the visuals during his live performance.
There was something I couldn’t put my finger on.
There was something about that song, that dance of the siren.
The movements and the beat kept me asking myself.
What is this story of the Syren really?
It reminded me of Odysseus, of the Greek myth.
Where Odysseus has to save his crew from the sweetness of the songs of the sirens.
A story I once heard during high school.
I was always so tired during that time of teaching.
And the stories could barely keep me awake.
Perhaps with the knowledge I have now about this story, a resemblance that is close to that reality.
That the sound of a voice can do so much wonder.
A call in the voices of those sirens, that would make all men so soft.
Not be able to continue their journey.
Fallen by the sounds of the sirens, that would make them feel drunk in love.
To be lured into a rock island, where they would find their ultimate death.
But that wasn’t really the siren call that I was experiencing when I was shouting to this person.
Not that long ago.
And so I was thinking of another myth.
Involving a siren.
I will call her the siren of the water.
Since I don’t know the official name.
Or perhaps there is, but I didn’t find it.
A love story of a siren, living underneath the water.
Where soldiers needed to pass a river, where she was living.
Once they would see her, the men would do everything to seduce her.
Also because she was all covered in gold.
Soft to say she was really beautiful, so I can’t blame those men.
But the call of her siren, was a trick to see who was real.
And when they would hear the sound of her song, one by one would fall in the water.
Grasping to air, but of course it was too late for that.
Or they would attack one another, leading to a horrible death.
But there was one man just standing there.
He just stood there in the water, looking at her.
Resistant to her song.
Or at least what she believed.
Because she didn’t know that he was deaf.
They danced all night long.
And she couldn’t get enough of him.
Although deaf, he wasn’t blind.
He was mesmerized with all the diamants she was wearing.
And while the night was falling, the birds started to sing.
They fell asleep in each other’s arms, till the next morning.
Siren looked around, when opening her eyes after that night of dancing.
She found herself alone.
Without the deaf soldier, by her side.
Or at least what she thought.
She stood up.
And noticed something different.
She looked around.
Again.
And couldn’t believe her eyes of what she found.
All her diamants were gone.
She ran to the river.
A place she could call home.
And saw the soldier standing there.
The sadness was too deep for the siren and she started singing another song.
A song the deaf soldier was able to hear.
And so he ended up death as well.
What the moral is of this story.
It is hard to tell.
I believe there are different things to get from this myth.
Men are only after beauty and women want someone who can look deeper than that.
And although there might be someone that can stand the test of women, still women need to protect themselves.
Since it showed that the soldier took the diamants when the siren was sleeping and couldn’t resist what his eyes were telling him.
And I believe this is why women have this kind of power, named a siren.
To make sure to not be misled or fooled over.
However, it is still also the responsibility of women to not act out of fear and trust the process of falling in love and understanding their own beauty.
To come back to my own story where I yelled at someone in public.
Where I had own my reasons to do that.
I was angry for sure, but not in the way that you would think.
Not out of compassion for myself, because I wanted to get my message across, or that I needed to release that emotion.
But to give this kind of negativity back to the person where it belonged.
Sometimes yelling is the only way to express it.
To make sure they will disappear and never come back again.