[photos by Freya Reder]
And then in this other dream, I had discovered the ancient secret of communicating with elephants.
Oh my, it was a beautiful space to be in.
I'm busy reading Caitlin O'Connell's The Elephant's Secret Sense, which along with Silent Thunder by Katy Payne, goes into the whole thing of how elephants pick up infrasound using spongy pads in their toes. That low rumble that just sounds like the earth curdling underfoot, rumbles they can hear for kilometres.
Its a fascinating document - some stuff I didn't know, and lots that I had just kind of guessed, having spent a lot of my younger life in the presence of these enormous ghosts. But this was different.
This was me sitting with a cache of actual manuscripts: ancient, paleolithic translations of elephant speech. Oh, and I was the chosen one who was going to be able to transmit to the world the messages of these wise old beasts, and what's more, teach people how to talk to them so that we could solve this so-called 'elephant problem' once and for all. Oh so that's what I'm here for.
And I did it. I had full on conversations with a wrinkle eyed old elephant mama crone. Words of such wisdom and depth. Not words, no, just - thoughts. Bytes of knowledge, transmitted not through the brain but the heart.
It was so cool.
I can't remember a bloody thing she told me.
4 comments:
Tam - these dreams of yours..........i love this one too. Hate that about dreams the way they vanish like mist before you can pin down the details. What was it she said to you?? I read that Katy Payne book - fascinating. xx
You don`t need to remember the words, or thoughts, she told you. All that counts is that you listened! And who knows, maybe you WILL be the one to translate one day?! When they trust you enough. You are right, who else has lived among them since early childhood AND has been University trained and can deal with words AND intuition?! This is the theme that really interests me, too. I have so often found that I can indeed communicate on some level with animals, dogs and ducks and horses and cats and goats. So why not you with elephants?
Have you read the book by Iain Douglas-Hamilton, Among Elephants? Where he describes that this one ellie mother and his wife showed each other their babies? And do you know the story of Rudyard Kipling coming to a zoo where a wild elephant was going to be killed, and then he said, Let me talk to him in Hindi, the language he knows? He is only homesick!
Oh, don`t let me go on...
Just follow your dreams, even if half-forgotten!
Yeah, the other one is cool too, once you get past the florid descriptions.
What did she say to me? Dont know. It was about love, and ancient secrets, and lots of 'oh, that's why you...' that kind of thing. Redress, and clearing up misunderstandings. And love, love, love.
The Elephant Whisperer is one of the best books I have read. It is beautifully written and really creates a wonderful sense of the African bush. Lawrence Anthony is an exceptional person and his work to conserve our world is admirable.
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