A few nights ago I had a vivid dream I was traveling in Thailand and went to an elephant sanctuary. The dream was so real, I could feel the heat of the sun on my face, the sweat on my lower back, the light stress headache from traveling alone in a strange, crowded place. Everything in orange and yellow and red, flickering like 35 millimeter film.
The guide told us a lot of interesting facts about elephants, and the creatures themselves blocked my path, in my way. It was some kind of message from the universe that I consider elephants.
I was sort of sad when I woke up and brushed my teeth in my bathroom, looking at my face in the mirror and getting ready for work-- everything so ordinary, every line on my face, every tooth as familiar as dreams are unfamiliar. I was vaguely irritated that I thought I had some kind of spiritually important dream and had practically forgotten it by the time I tried to summarize it to my husband (as you probably know, your dreams aren't that interesting when you relate them to others, although that's not stopping me from writing about it).
A couple of days after this dream I was walking around Target, filling up my cart as I distractedly talked on my cell phone. When I got to the checkout, I realized I had put an elephant ornament in it without really much thought. I declared it a sign and set about trying to write a poem about elephants, but can't make much out of the random stuff I learned. But they are extraordinary.
Elephants have great memories, we were taught this at some point or another. The Buddhists and Hindus have noted this because of their huge ears-- great listeners. For this, they embody not only wisdom, but compassion, because their listening and observing brings empathy. That's why the Buddha has those fat, hanging earlobes. Elephants and rats are often depicted together, the elephant being the ideal, the rat being the work needed to reach the ideal (that in itself I would need a MA in religion iconography to really interpret correctly, but I think that's the gist of it.)
When Siddhartha's mother Maya conceived her son, he came in the form of a white elephant with a lotus flower in his trunk, and the elephant entered her womb through in her side. She died three weeks later and Siddhartha was raised by her sister. The similarities to Christianity are interesting-- the immaculate conception, the savior of humanity, the divine feminine, even the names (Maya, Mary).
I also learned that elephants have a special birthing ritual where the laboring elephant brings a friend with her so she can have support and not eat her young in the confusion of labor.
But the sweetest thing about elephants is that when other elephants find the bones of another elephant, they stand around in a herd, and pay their respects by crying out.
So after all that, I didn't figure out the significance of the dream or find any good poetic inspiration. But the elephant ornament that lumbered into my cart has a broken tusk, so I took him to school and talked to the kids about him. We agreed the elephant is trying to tell us that life isn't perfect. And that there's magic everywhere. I think that's what we said (unlike the elephant, I have a spotty memory).
After some circumspection, here's the thing about elephants. They are, literally and figuratively, larger than life. In my dream, they are blocking the way, physically forcing me to look at them. The elephants are maybe questions, the big ones, threatening to swallow us up if we stand too close. The roadblocks. Should I do this? Should I do that? Am I going in the right direction?
The biggest question they ask: is this who you are?
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