These GIFs always leave me wonderingâŠ.
Do whales dream of flying?
Of soaring with their flippers among clouds like they do among currents? Do they imagine themselves launching their bodies out of the water and into the air with ease? Do they dream of falling up towards the sky? Do they see the black sky of night as another deep dark ocean they could swim through? Of leaping over islands and coasting over continents?Â
Is there joy in it? Or would these be nightmares to them without the soft support of a liquid environment? Would they miss the ease with which water transmits their songs compared to airborne sounds?
And dolphins! Who sleep with only half their brains at a time, and are essentially in a perpetual state of half-dreaming, do they leap into the air with such abandon because they forget, in that way only dream-logic makes you forget, that they canât fly?
I think about this too, when I remember the times in my childhood where I would dream about being some four-legged thing, and the ease and comfort with which I would be able to move with my spine being horizontal rather than vertical, the weight and pressure suddenly absent on my back, legs and neck. What a relief it was, to be re-aligned with the horizon, instead of trying to rise above it on only two legs.
I think about this when I remember one of my few dreams of flying. In it, I am a thing with no name, and only vaguely shaped like a manta ray, but I am flying effortlessly towards a brilliant sunset, in a constant state of chasing the sun for an unknown reason. But the reason did not matter, there was only that sunset, and the softness of the clouds, the freedom from gravity, the release from verticalityâŠ.
And then, the ultimate dream of flight Iâve had, of being an immense and dark thing in space, traveling through the void with no restraint at all. There was no up or down, no horizon or meaningful sense of direction or scale. There was only the freedom of being a black thing, in a black void, making and hearing no sound but still seeing everything and feeling everything with senses I still canât understand but somehow knewâŠ
 Until, in my blissful wanderings I come across an object that looks fascinating to me. It is round and colorful and spins, the colors banding all around itâs girth, and it is b e a u t i f u l ⊠It is not bigger than me, and is of a different shape, but I am enamored with it anyways. And I suddenly feel the pull of itâs mass in what I now remember is called gravity, and if I let it pull me towards it, I risk ruining itâs magnificent gassy stripes. Best to keep my distance, however much I want to feel it more.Â
At a safe distance I drift around it in all directions with ease, looking at it from every possible angle and never once feeling the disorientation of an uncomfortable perspective, until comes the moment where I notice that a small oval section of it has a bright red spot that I canât hep but recognizeâŠ
I am staring at Jupiter and itâs Great Red Spot.
If I am capable of such dreams, then can whales, too, with their brains much bigger than mine and their lives sometimes so much longer, imagine themselves taking flight?
Do whales have dreams like these? Do they dream of swimming close to the moon? Of flying over mountains and getting a closer look at them? Do they dream of brushing away stars with their tails like so many bright and pale jellyfish? Have they learned to navigate by the stars? Do they have their own constellations? Or do they imagine the space between the stars in the shapes of things they know?
Do whales dream of flying, and all the things that flying implies?
Do whales dream of flying�
jbbartram-illu
jacobvanloon
annaxmalina
theartofmadeline
turnnoffyourmind
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