Notes:
- An elephant wearing a Santa Claus costume performs for Thai students during Christmas celebrations at Jirasart school in Ayutthaya province north of Bangkok. (Chaiwat Subrasom, wsj.com December 24, 2018)
Notes:
I can watch elephants (and elephants alone) for hours at a time, for sooner or later the elephant will do something very strange such as mow grass with its toenails or draw the tusks from the rotted carcass of another elephant and carry them off into the bush. There is mystery behind that masked gray visage, and ancient life force, delicate and mighty, awesome and enchanted, commanding the silence ordinarily reserved for mountain peaks, great fires, and the sea.
–Peter Matthiessen, The Tree Where Man Was Born
Photo: Lukas Holas. Quote: via Schonwieder
Elephants eat fruits and vegetables at the Wingabaw Elephant Camp on World Elephant Day in Bago Region, Myanmar. (U Aung, Zinhua, wsj.com August 12, 2018)
Orphaned baby elephants take a mud bath at the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage in Nairobi, Kenya. The elephant orphanage looks after 29 baby elephants orphaned by human-wildlife conflicts and poaching, among other causes. (Dai Kurokawa, wsj.com, April 10, 2018)
Notes:
After reading “this“ several days ago, I’ve been unable to shake it from consciousness. “This” is driving the underlying current of my blog post shares of African animals. Even this herd of elephants who wake to the morning sun and march in Tsavo National Park, seem to be doing so solemnly.
A worker at the Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Kenya shares a tender moment with an elephant calf. Your Shot photographer I. Ogila explains, “When poachers kill adult elephants for ivory, the young ones are usually left desperate and unlikely to survive alone in the wild.” But by being in the care of the Trust, “they get a chance to live and die of old age.”
Source: NationalGeographic.com. Photograph by I. Ogila, National Geographic Your Shot
If you were an elephant living wild in a western city…
~ Charles Foster, excerpts from “If You Were An Elephant” in The Guardian (Jan 19, 2017)
Notes:
Do NOT quit before the finish…
Thank you Susan
Elephants feast on discarded Christmas trees at Berlin’s zoo.
Recycling. Au Naturel. Who knew?
(Source: wsj.com by Sean Gallup, Getty Images)
Photo: wsj.com – A mahout bathes his elephant before a festival in Sauhara, Nepal. (Narayan Maharjan, Pacific Press, December 27, 2016)
The work of French artist Fabien Morello, 35, involves creative combinations of dreams, experiences, and his early childhood imagination. He blurs the line between reality and fiction. Mérelle’s complex works are small and he pays close attention to detail, two qualities that can be seen in this particular work, entitled Pentateuque. The piece is a whimsical sculpture that depicts a man, balancing the weight of an elephant on his back. It is made out of resin, paint, hair and fabric, and stands only 30 x 27 x 12 inches. The three dimensional form is a replica of the artist’s original Pentateuch 2010 ink drawing, both of which visually interpret the phrase “carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders.”
Source: My Modern Met
In one of his insightful talks Zen master Shunryu Suzuki said that in your practice you should walk like an elephant. “If you can walk slowly, without any idea of gain, then you are already a good Zen student.” There’s a mantra for your religion: Walk like an elephant. It means to move at a comfortable pace. No rushing toward a goal. No push to make it all meaningful. The sometimes inscrutable texts of Taoism and Zen teach that it’s important to do what you do without trying to accomplish anything. One of the benefits of a religion of one’s own is its ordinariness and simplicity. You don’t need a magnificent ceremony, a specially ordained minister, or a revered revelation to give you authority. You don’t have to get anywhere. There are no goals and objectives: nothing to succeed in, and nothing in which to fail. You can sit in your house, as Thoreau did, and be attentive— his suggestion. “We are surrounded by a rich and fertile mystery. May we not probe it, pry into it, employ ourselves about it— a little? . . . If by watching all day and all night I may detect some trace of the Ineffable, then will it not be worth the while to watch?”
~ Thomas Moore, A Religion of One’s Own: A Guide to Creating a Personal Spirituality in a Secular World.
Notes:
“Bracing ourselves for the week”
Photo: John Drysdale via Milk (Child and Elephant sitting)
The footage is being widely shared on the Wild Wings Safaris Facebook page – nearly 15,000 shares at the time of this post – and generating feedback that’s almost as touching as the footage. A random sampling of the comments:
Source: Grindtv (Thank you Susan)
A zoo in Belgium has released amazing footage which seems to show their elephants swaying in time to live classical music.