On Elephants and Books

July is my month. I know it.

Carls and Keegs left, but we had a rockin' time. I've decided that I am very jealous of Carly's awesome embroidery talents. She showed me how to embroider and now I want to add that to my list of 80 million crafts to do and love. That chick is gonna go far, I know it. When we went to the zoo we visited the lorikeets and two of them crawled on me. I was in bird heaven. But the elephant museum!!!!!!!! Oh my GOD!!! ….

Okay, so I was reading this book, Out of Africa – you may have heard of it-which is about this woman’s experience on a coffee farm in Africa. “If I have a dream of Africa, does Africa have a dream of me? Will the gravel on the drive remember the way my shadow fell across it…?” Okay, its not an exact quote, but I couldn’t find it in the book. Anyway, there is a section of the book about a young Kikuyu (the native people that live and work on the farm) named Kamante. He is different from other children in that he seems to know that he is soon to die and it has made him silent and grave. (He has a very large, oozing wound on his leg) Anyway, the author and Kamante form a special relationship after she insists that he let her help him and after her failed attempts takes him to the hospital where he heals. Okay, so it’s a very touching part of the book. There we were at the zoo, in the elephant museum, and I was looking at some Dali sketches of elephants and some other artists’ sketches of elephants and I looked at one of them and read the description. “Kamante” (I chuckle to myself at the name-look, it’s the same name as the boy in the book) Then I keep reading: (former house-boy for Karen Von Blixen, aka Isak Dinesen). I NEARLY POOPED MY PANTS! Once, I had been reading East of Eden by F. Scott Fitzgerald and it had talked about his time at Princeton a bunch. A month later I was at Princeton checking out the school and had the strange experience of thinking that I was walking in the same place that he had walked. It seemed a powerful experience at the time, but that was nothing compared to this. I have never in my whole life had a book come alive for me to that degree. It was amazing. I cried. (I’ve been doing that a lot lately, I think my hormone levels must be changing-getting older is weird).

The last couple of days have been gray which is poop-e cause it’s summer. My dad is coming this weekend and I think Peet should be here one of these days. Oh, oh, the sun is coming out! Whoo hoo.