Ode to a Skywhale

(photo credit The Canberra Times)

 

As the sunset melts behind the distant hills, the first flight of Skywhale across the countryside of Canberra comes to a close. Suspended, floating a short distance above the ground, she hovers with a satisfied all-knowing grin across her wide chin. Huge udders adorn her head like curled locks of hair framing her face. She is a creature borne of evolution of the mind, no longer held back by the water and land that once contained her. Wings would only hinder her flight as she flows gently over the land. Ephemeral, she floats above the earth for all to see and admire her essence and experience.

So many things in life are borne of experience, why not a skywhale? She comes from the mind of an artist, carefully rendered on paper, filled with air and dreams. Does the flight of only a day, or even an hour make her any less real? Life should not be measured by duration but by immersion. The sun fades at the close of each day, even as actions remain fresh in our minds long after the last light fades. Likewise, skywhale’s flight continues long after the air has left her silk-like skin.

Skywhale’s journey evokes the phrase “flight of fancy” as it seems to express more about the creative mind than the physical world. And yet, we do not have a phrase for the evolution from mind to physical form. Create seems too small for a being of such immense size and presence. Likewise, neither fantasy, dependent on disbelief, nor imagination, an internal image of the minds creation, are adequate descriptions for this fully evolved form. She, like her image, requires new parameters of the creative process to help ground her birth and being. The fact of her existence makes her much more than fancy.

Even as she smiles, it seems that Skywhale would be a lonely Cetacea, having left the water and all her friends behind to take flight. Would that her mournful song could carry across the lands, singing of the time when her strings would be cut and she would simply float away high into the heavens.