Wednesday, November 06, 2019

I'm not sure how long we've been inside this whale. It's hard to tell time inside of a whale, turns out, and moreover it turns out that time inside a whale doesn't really matter. When you're in, you're in.

They tell you that you should just keep swimming, like a shark, that if you stop swimming you'll drown. You're meant to keep going until you get through. Whatever counts as a motivational speech. And so there I was swimming along, trying not to drown, and along came this whale. You'd almost have to laugh.

I know you think I'm half crazy most of the time anyway, all worst case scenarios and hurricanes for hands, and it is sort of comforting in here. It's dark and warm and sure it smells a little fishy, but the whale's heart is whooshing and thumping and it sounds safe. There's no hurricanes inside a whale. I've been in worse places.

There's no way this ends well, of course. I imagine that eventually the whooshing and thumping will stop and we will become whale fall, settling slowly to the bottom of the ocean in a sudden, deep, expanding silence. The scavengers will come scuttling around and we'll be able to hear them scraping against the outside of our whale, coming closer and closer. Eventually, sooner than we like but probably slower than we know, there will come a crack that makes it all the way through. The ocean will rush back in and there's no swimming down there, only black and rattling bones.

All things being equal, inside of a whale is probably not the worst case scenario. At least in here I can stop swimming.

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