Once upon a time there was a whale who lost her way, and found herself swimming up the river, all the way to the centre of the city.
The water was dense, the tidal pull strong, and the whale did not know that it was captured. It still dreamed of the sea, as people began to gather on all the bridges of the city, trying to catch a glimpse of it.
The whale breathed and stared at the people staring back at her with wide eyes and gaping mouths, until breathing became distressing, a hopeless drawing of dry air into cracking membranes, the slow shrinking away of life.
An unearthly silence descended over the river.
And the people, enveloped in their stunned silence, unknowingly paid witness to the death of miracle, right in front of their un-seeing eyes, as the tide shrunk away to expose the undreaming carcass.
In the whale’s deep eye one could see the lights of the tall glass buildings that towered over her appear like an image impressed on a wet glass plate, gaining in opacity as the whale’s gaze turned hollow and remote.
It was dark when the first people walked away, shuffling along the bridge reluctantly, as though released from a spell, one whose broken promise intoxicated.
And when the tide folded itself like a sheet over the unmoving shape of the whale, gently washing by the banks of the river, there was nobody left to watch it disappear like a half remembered dream, our own image fixed forever on the surface of its dark, unblinking eyes.
This fairytale is a warning.
When we walk on the riverbank, the shattered bones that we glean in the sand will be the fragments of our own forgotten miracles, broken into small pieces so that we may finally see them.
Not knowing yet what the rest will be, we shall gather those pieces and re-member the songs that we wanted to sing, then put them back in our mouths so that they may keep us on the side of the human.
Our hands will be dirty from the job of unearthing the fragments- some of them rusting, some of them eroded to almost nothing. And the river’s dampness will percolate through the pores in our skin until we too will become a little broken, a little eroded, but never ashamed.
And then our song will rise, because with the digging comes the promise of a transgression across the ages, matter seeking matter through time and space on a journey with a sacred destination, a place in which to be delivered again, with the intention of asking for thanks and forgiveness upon arrival.
We will know that we are home when we find the embers, still smouldering in the shattered hearth. Removing the ash, we will blow until the pale heat twists into flames again.
We will stare into the fire like we did before, until the furious red glow burns itself into our eyes and erases all memory of the river, of the whale, of our stilled bodies looking down, of our unmoving hands, unable to protect the miracle.
We open our hands now, and inside them we find seed again.
What must we do now for this seed to sprout?
RAFT- A London Story 