Cosmogony
Why the Sky is Up and We Are Down
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A long, long time ago, before there were days, before there were nights, before there was even a “before,” there was nothing but a great big sleepy dark. Not scary dark. Just quiet dark, like the inside of your eyelids when you squeeze them shut.
And in that dark lived a giant, gentle whale. Not a whale like the ones in the ocean. This whale was so enormous that the whole universe fit inside her belly, the way your whole bedroom fits inside our house. She had been sleeping for so long that she’d forgotten her own name.
One day, without really meaning to, she let out the world’s biggest yawn.
And when she yawned, stars spilled out of her mouth like sparkly crumbs, scattering everywhere and getting stuck to the dark like stickers on a wall. The moon rolled out and bounced a little before it settled into place. And the sun came out last, big and warm and a little embarrassed, blushing orange because everyone was staring at it.
The whale looked at the mess she’d made and laughed so hard that her laughing shook loose a single tear of joy. That tear fell and fell and fell, and where it landed, it became the ocean. The ocean missed the whale already, so it kept reaching upward in little waves, trying to touch the sky.
Out of the foam where her tear had landed, tiny bits of her dreams floated to the surface, and those bits of dream became us. That’s why, the whale would tell you if she could talk to children (and maybe she still can, late at night, if you listen by the shore), that’s why people dream every night. We’re just borrowing a little bit of her dream back, the same dream she had when she made us.
And that’s why the sky is up and we are down: because she yawned up there, and we washed up down here, and ever since, we’ve all been trying to find our way back to each other, which is what hugs are for.
