Alexis Pauline Gumbs

The bowhead whale lives for centuries and could potentially grow forever. Researchers say their spines don’t set, so even at two hundred years of age they might still grow. Yesterday, through a dear friend, a complete stranger gifted me a whale vertebra that might be from the eternally possible spine of a bowhead whale. 

What a heavy piece of oracle. Yes. Honor the bowhead whale whose large proportion of body fat keeps them warm enough in the Arctic to outlive the various weapons used to kill them over time. I have said it before, I will say it again, fat is a winning strategy. New research suggests that young bowhead whales may even take nutrients from their bones, to further grow their baleen (the food filters in their mouths) in order to be able to eat more krill, grow more fat, live more better. Evolutionary geniuses. 

My own backbone has been teaching me something too. My pediatricians diagnosed me with scoliosis as a school-aged child, and we may never know if I was born this gorgeously crooked or if the early weight of heavy books caused a shift in how I would carry myself through this life. What we do know? The books certainly were heavy and I haven’t yet put them down. And also I walk, sit, and move in the world in a way that overstretches part of me, compresses the other side.

They say river dolphins don’t leap as much as dolphins in the ocean. Because of turbid flows of rushing water, they do not trust their eyes. Their eyes grow small. Echolocation becomes crucial. Their listening becomes more nuanced. They become experts of shape, and shape themselves to become narrow, reaching forward like the river. River dolphins all over the world (in the Ganges and Amazon rivers for example) are not close genetic relatives. But they are remarkably physically similar. They have grown common forms due to their common circumstances.

Have you grown that way, riverine? In a context that moves so quickly that looking at it tells you almost nothing. Are you evolving a deeper way of listening where you are? Could we become students of shape precise enough to move with the grace and flexibility our circumstance requires even though your river is not my river? 

They say, when the singing seal is threatened, she sings inside her throat a trill, a chug, a lock, beatboxes till you turn away. But then some others say they cannot tell. When she opens her mouth, arches her neck, is it aggressive or submissive? Is it fighting stance or friendship? Who’s to say? The singing seal is rarely seen and usually alone. It took a while to figure out how they mate at all. Like some other seals, she can hold her pregnancy like a secret, delaying implantation until she finds the right place, the right time, the worthy ice. So gestation is nine months, but not from conception, from implantation. Something happens deep inside her when no one else is around. Something only she knows happens when she’s ready and not before. 

Me too. Maybe you don’t know if I am singing or screaming sometimes. Maybe you don’t know if I want you to stay or leave. Maybe I hold my secrets deep within on my own time, and use my oversized eyes to dive so deep you cannot see. So you don’t. See me. It is something, living on pack ice and eating squid from the bottom of the ocean. And then coming up into cold air to sing. There is something that I need, but I have to go so deep to find it. There is something I have to give, but I have to give it on my own time. There is something I’m going to tell you, but first I have to make a language for myself and the place I live that doesn’t steal me from my purpose. Will you wait? There is something I’m going to tell you, just let me open up my mouth. See if I sing.