There is a type of whale, wrote Physiologus in the second century, so large that it resembles an island. Sailors tie their ships to its back and plant their anchors deep among its folds. They stalk out from their ships, thinking they have found land, to make camp upon its calloused hide. But when it feels the heat of their campfires, it plunges deep into the ocean, and all the men upon it are lost.
Distance can be difficult to fathom, especially when you are far from home. From afar even the strangest hunch of dark might seem like a safe bet. When I was young the future looked vast and promising, and yet with every year the possibilities ahead seem to shrink a little. It is no longer the case that anything is possible. I once thought my life might have some important meaning – I would achieve something significant that would have an impact upon the twists and turns of human history. I would write a book that changed the world, lead my country, invent something vital to human development. Now I have come to accept that it is enough to hold on while the whale dives and live.
Survival is no small thing. On darker days the history of the world can be read as a history of cruelty. There is the casual cruelty of everyday life, and the calculated cruelty that so often goes hand in hand with the idea of progress. During the First World War, there was a huge demand for whale oil. It was not only used to make glycerol for the manufacture of nitro-glycerine for explosives, but was also used in edible fat production, while soldiers on both sides were instructed to cover the soles of their feet with grease made from whale oil in order to protect themselves from trench foot. One estimate suggests a single battalion in the mud and rain and horror of Ypres could get through ten gallons of whale oil every day.
There are no known reports of whales killing one another, and few of those outside captivity harming humans. However, there has recently been a huge surge in whale sightings around the northern coast of Great Britain. Only a few years ago now a Sei whale was found in the middle of a field in East Yorkshire, more than 800 yards from the coast. Experts suggested that the high equinox tide must have carried it out beyond the banks of the River Humber until it became stranded when the tides retreated. Whales are classified as royal fish, and so when one dies upon the English shore the Queen is entitled to its head and tail.
Perhaps by now you are wondering where this story is going. But I am afraid these are the only facts about whales that I can recall, and without a working Internet connection or an encyclopaedia to hand there is little else I can say about them. Yet maybe it is better to leave it at this – the selection of just enough random facts and memories to hang a theory on. That is how the mind makes sense of the world, by extrapolating wildly from any arbitrary information it might happen upon. At most we see a miniscule fraction of life, and yet we are content to use that alone as a basis for our beliefs and values. Of the ever-expanding universe we know next to nothing. Of the majority of the Earth’s history, we remain in the dark. There are tribes in distant countries whose lives are beyond our comprehension, while sometimes even our closest neighbours seem strange and unfathomable to us. In short, the tiny sliver of our knowledge is far outweighed by our ignorance, and yet (or perhaps because of this) we continue pushing blindly onward in the same dumb circles, like those creatures in the deepest stretches of ocean, unaware of the monstrous and fantastic world beyond their own.
Sam Meekings is a British poet and novelist. His novel, Under Fishbone Clouds, about the collision between myth and history in modern China, was called “a poetic evocation of the country and its people” by the New York Times. He currently teaches at Qatar University. Find more of his writing at www.sammeekings.com