pachyderms and paper

It is now, yes now that a Melville arises and creates the great work of literary daring demanded by the new century. It is full of allusions to those brave souls who came and went before; George Orwell, Ernest Hemingway, T. C. Boyle, many others who will be gathered sooner or latter. These pioneers were willing to hazard attempts to scale a wrinkled grey Goliath. Puny minds will share a boat with a tiger  but only the free est, craziest and those most willing to attempt the near impossible would share a field with -yes, share a page with- yes, share an afternoon with, and oh oh ouu share a peanut with an elephant. 

  Oops, see I said it; share anything with an elephant. Attention memory, the elephant jokes, the elephant anecdotes, the children genre swarms with flies on the backs of elephant stories. Elephants are like air, water and hair, just about everywhere. and SOON TO BE NO MORE!

  My wife is ga ga over the beasts. She is transformed, transmuted, transcended, harmonized, rectified, invigorated and just name it, all this by spending a week with her giant Thailand pet "wan-na" ! She is inscrutable , a laughing, insatiable, joyful , "wan-na". Men, old men young men, never middle age men, go to Thailand for_______well maybe teeth repair but never (no more) for elephants. 

 

 Thai elephants, the abandoned behemoths, draw thousands of female teachers from all over the world to spend a week maybe two riding, climbing and bathing and snorting in a brown stained river. Next, hours preparing repetitive tasks for a daily climatic moment, the parade, the parade of all parades-- hooray for the elephants! 

  Ladies of the world have gathered and are making paper from elephant dung. Move over darlings and Horton, the new kingdom a new Asia is rising on the backs of the gentle giant beasts, no longer on the backs of fair young ladies. Teachers are drawn to these abandoned giants as once to Krishnamurti or Gandhi, dare I say Christ. 

  I overstate, yet men of the past took stock, polished the wallet and trekked to far away spots to tea and pee in the bush and hunger for a shot. A precise , intense moment to shoot an elephant and return to humdrum, a Man with trophy. I find it a refreshing change that now the world's teachers flee for a short two weeks to hot, humid forests in the highlands of Thailand to commune with lumbering , long snouted, taciturns. 

 They carry no gun, no arrows, just the faces of their young students to whom they soon return with pictures and smiles and a heart of joy.