Ralph was a big whale shark, saved from a slaughter and a sushi knife by an agreement between the Taiwanese government and the Georgia Aquarium. He was a peaceful sorta fish, about 22 feet long, unlike his television namesake, swimming with three other whale sharks, Norton, Alice and Trixie.
We don't know what happened to Ralph. But he was given two extra years of life, and millions of people got to see him swimming around. His death saddens me, in an inexplicable way.
Ralph never harmed anything larger than a centimeter around, he fed on plankton. More than four million people were privileged to see this largest of fishes glide past them, gaping in awe at his surreal form.
The Georgia Aquarium is a magnificent experiment, a deeply hopeful proposition, mankind coming to terms with his role as protector of the oceans.
I have come to believe the Space Station is not a preparation for a journey to the planets and stars. It is an experiment in living on a ruined planet, a world of airlocks and hard radiation. Mankind will not be content until he has ruined the planet, and we are obliged to wear a space suit to go to work in the morning.
Ralph is dead, and I got an email from a fellow Kossack about his passing. We're all in this proposition together, from the lowliest virus and prion embedded in the deep ice lakes of Antarctica to the great whale sharks, basking in the shallow waters off the island of Taiwan. It's a long way to the nearest star, and God knows how far to the next viable planet. People still eat whale sharks. They still eat cats, too. I sat on my couch, weeping, as cages of domestic house cats were dumped on the cement floor of a Chinese warehouse, stunned and cramped together, destined for slaughter and skinning. Dogs come to a no less ignominious and cruel fate.
Kukai, the compassionate monk who brought Esoteric Buddhism to Japan, conceived the idea of the conjugate mind, united in meditation. This world lacks mercy, it is the one commodity we stand most in need of, as a species. I do not ask you to weep for the death of a whale shark, who was granted two extra years of life in the Georgia Aquarium. Weep instead for the species we are wiping out, in our ignorance and poverty of vision.