I get through shit by putting my head down and one foot in front of the other, so I’m not going to say much about my cancer surgery tomorrow except fuck cancer and that I should be fine.
Moving on.
In the meantime, while I’m recovering, here are a few flash nonfiction pieces for you. Be kind to one another, friends.
The Loneliest Whale in the World
There’s a whale swimming through the cold waters of the north Pacific who doesn’t belong to any pod. He has no family or friends because he sings at such a high frequency no other whales can hear him. This is a baleen whale—a blue or humpback or maybe a hybrid of both—so he has four heartchambers as big as our whole bodies, but no one to warm even one of them. If he’s a blue whale he’s the most massive mammal on earth, and think about that for a moment, how small he must feel when no one ever answers his call.
Every year from August to December recording devices in the Pacific pick up his song. He travels as far north as the Aleutian Islands and as far south as the California coast. Since his migration patterns don’t follow those of any other baleen whale, scientists have concluded he’s never come in contact with any other of his species, and here I must take a moment to think about these scientists in an observatory listening late at night, searching the soundwaves to see where he might be in all that vast, empty ocean.
Imagine, then, listening to the repeating ping of sonar or the white static of the speakers day after day, hoping for a brief moment of song. Imagine always waiting for a reply in an endless sea of silence, a call going out but none ever answering back. How often have we hoped for the phone to ring, for the closeness of a voice over vast distances? How many connections have we missed in a lifetime? We wake in water, suspended in the serous fluid of the amniotic sac, and these same scientists say we can hear our own mothers and fathers through the thin skin, which makes me wonder how they feel when, just for a moment, they hear the whale’s song at the right soundwave and know he’s still searching for someone who will sing back.
This story reminds me of an endless black ocean, all of us trying to stay afloat. And I’ve done enough writing and raising my voice to know there should be some moral here, which means I should say something about the misfits among us, the square pegs in round holes, or only the loneliness we often feel we are drowning in. But there’s no moral: I just wanted you to hear, and be sad alongside me for a moment.
Captain Kirk
As children watching reruns of Star Trek we made fun of the way he talked, all halt and pause, full of invisible commas, but, I say now, anyone who had to beam down to so many planets would be full of pauses. I’d never say a thing, afraid of how people would hear me, especially those with foreign bodies or alien brains, bigger than mine. Most of us don’t even like dinner parties unless we’ve altered ourselves with alcohol, all the sociability and salad forks. If I asked you to meet for drinks right now in the dark unexplored bar below us, you’d pause, full of the fear and anxiety of our times, worried what might happen out there, all the danger and inane dialogue. You’d think about what to wear and what to say, always wondering when you could get back into your pajamas and watch the world fly by on the big screen. It’s far easier to stay home, imagining new places and planets. Far safer to sit in the Captain’s chair, where you can do whatever you want, without anyone thinking there’s something seriously wrong with you, unless, of course, you open your mouth.
Weight Room
I never liked the clink of heavy weights or the expelling of heavy breaths, the heavy way we boys maneuvered as men around the weight room, lifting things and setting them down again just to show we could. I didn’t like the big belts that were supposed to protect our small backs from all the heavy lifting, nor the jocks we strapped on to protect our most private parts. I didn’t like the adrenaline and anger some boys aimed at the weights, as if gravity were designed to keep them down. I didn’t like how fights broke out afterward, how we grunted like apes, how, in the bathroom, there was always a turd someone thought would be funny not to flush.
But what I hated most was the way, after a while, our bodies began changing. The big among us got bigger, and stronger, able to lift more and more, until they thought, there in their small skins, that the only way to lift the world was strength.
I pity so much your "loneliest whale in the world." It sounds this whale not the only one the loneliest in this wold. Wish you the full recovery!
I second your Fuck Cancer, and I wish you a swift recovery. And I felt an especially strong ping reading the whale essay.