Circus Elephants and Star Trek

Having just finished reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen, I must say that apart from this book being rightly named #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list it is a prime example of a well-written, well-researched work of fiction.

When many people pick up a book at their local Barnes and Noble or the library, very few actually ponder the process that occurs to put that book together. I’m not talking about printing and binding and advertising and book deals, I’m talking about the process of forming the story.

When you become a writer, you read things from an entirely different perspective. Every paragraph of every scene must be captivating to the reader and your descriptions must never beat around the bush, but jump headfirst into the shrub.

I recently heard someone tell me that she’d been carrying around a troupe of characters in her mind for years, like lugging family photo albums around in a suitcase wherever she went. She would find herself wondering how her characters would behave in certain situations or “what they were up to these days”. But she added that she never brought her characters to life on paper because she simply couldn’t write fiction. I tended to share a similar feeling towards the genre until I was properly corrected in class one day by Tim Brookes, author and professor at Champlain College.

In the third grade, I vividly remember my teacher telling me that I should not begin writing a story unless I already know what the ending is going to be. This piece of advice couldn’t have been more wrong. Brookes laughed when I told him that I’d been lugging around this philosophy for so many years. He explained that no author knows the ending of the story until she gets there. And still, she reserves the right to change her mind and change the story. Stopping yourself from writing before you’ve started is the worst thing that a writer can do.

Brookes continued to pass on countless bits of knowledge and strategy regarding both fiction and nonfiction writing. One tidbit I found particularly helpful was the idea of writing in scenes. Instead of forcing yourself to write your entire novel from beginning to end (a daunting task), begin writing small, detail-rich scenes. Focus in on the place, the characters, the action, and bring the scene truth and life. Just because it doesn’t fit into a bigger novel-sized picture yet, doesn’t mean it won’t later. I found that once I got going writing small scenes, soon I was able to string them all together to create a larger picture.

My other favorite piece of advice from Brookes was his emphasis on good research. A writer cannot write a probable fictional story without having substantial research to make everything feel real.

This is exactly what Gruen did in writing “Water for Elephants”. Throughout reading the book, I could not only sense the small scenes she may have worked within to create the story, but the intense research she conducted on the subject of train circuses is crystal clear. Anyone could have written a lazy story about some guy working on the circus during the depression, but Gruen made the story feel plausible and substantial by integrating such detailed elements of her research.

What I like even better is that Gruen ended the novel, not with a flowery dedication, but with a note that opened the window to her writing process. She conveys the sheer enthusiasm she had for studying the history of train circuses and the way she came about writing the book. Originally planning to write another novel entirely, she came across the topic while reading the newspaper one day and soon found herself hoarding photography books on circuses and taking an a trip to the Ringling Circus Museum in Sarasota, Florida.

Gruen says, “I spent the next four and half months acquiring the knowledge necessary to do justice on the subject, including three additional research trips…The history of the American circus is so rich that I plucked many of this story’s most outrageous details from fact or anecdote…”

Here in this little town, there is a sizeable young man who works at the local CVS Pharmacy stacking shelves of hair product and Band-Aids, bragging to every passerby who will listen about the sci-fi novel he is writing.

Despite the fact that I simply stopped by to pick up my prescription or buy a birthday card, I always get cornered (I let slip at one point or another that I am a writer) and end up listening to his latest inspiration or appreciation from/for Star Trek.

I will admit science fiction and Trekkies are not my thing, but writing is my thing. I can tell by the years he’s spent bragging about this novel that’s too complicated to explain, that either he hasn’t made a dent in the project or it’s far too complicated for a reader to enjoy.

The trick about writing is, yes, to write about what you love, but you must also write well enough to make others love your story too. Stacking shelves and supposedly dabbling in martial arts “to get ripped for summer” is all well and good, but I would suggest that if science fiction writing is what he wants to do, then he should do it with his whole heart. Every waking moment should involve jotting notes and researching, developing character and practicing the art of making dialogue sound genuine.

I found myself muttering as I walked out of the CVS, “For Christ’s sake, if you’re going to call yourself a writer, at least do the profession some justice.”

To some, writing may seem artsy, inspirational, isolated, and whimsical. But in reality a story only starts with a whimsy. The real work comes soon after, and believe me, the leg work and heartbreak involved in research, editing, and editing some more is not always pretty.

So top hats off to Sara Gruen, who not only wrote a phenomenal story, but insists that other writers honor the process it takes to be good at your craft.

Whether you’re writing about circus elephants, dressing up for Star Trek conventions, or stacking store shelves with speed and precision: do your thing justice and do it with passion.

All This Love and Nowhere to put it.

Last June, I was completely lost. I was suffering random bouts of crying, an inability to hold a stable romantic relationship, low self-esteem, and what seemed to be a constant state of stagnancy and confusion over what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

When I freed myself from an abusive relationship and relocated back to my hometown in Connecticut in September 2009, I thought my family and friends would welcome me home with open arms and warm words. Instead, the reality of it was that everyone was rather distracted; my family and friends had busy, full lives of their own. Still, part of me silently craved the comfort of someone waiting for me to return safely.

The weeks and months went by quickly as the changing leaves soon made way for snow, and I haphazardly attempted to settle myself into a routine. Go to work, run errands, eat, walk my roommate’s dog, sleep. To the random passerby, I appeared to be a well-adjusted twenty something moving seamlessly through the obstacle course of my 22^nd year, making ends meet and still having a little fun. On the inside, I was screaming.

In late March of 2010 my grandfather fell down. He tumbled to the floor unable to get up, and having lived alone was not discovered for over 26 hours. Suddenly, the one man I always perceived as an invincible genius was now lying in a hospital bed, dehydrated and weak.

Six months before, Grandpa Jim and I had begun writing a book together. An accomplished professor, coach, golfer, and stock market mogul, Jim Williams and I teamed up to write a book about everything he knew. In the months that we worked together, I learned more about him than I did during the entirety of my childhood. I saw him belly laugh for the first time. Not a warm and fuzzy man to say the least, he was strong willed, smart, intuitive, and unrelenting. He didn’t quite know how to connect with his three granddaughters until we were capable of taking notes during a lecture and legally trading on Wall Street. He was intimidating, yet incredibly efficient. He insisted, above all else, on his independence despite having suffered a slow, unnamed degenerative neurological problem. (He’d refused to see a doctor for 15 years) Through the month of April, despite the confines of his hospital bed, he continued to work, shuffling through piles of news articles on his lap, calling his business partners and waving a high fist at CSPAN when the DOW began to dip.

When he passed away in May, it didn’t seem real. The day after my 23^rd birthday I spoke at the memorial service in my finest of black dresses. At the reception, I kept asking everyone if they’d had enough to eat because I couldn’t think of anything else to say. I returned to my apartment, where every flat surface was covered in gaudy floral arrangements, and at last I cried.

I think this is when the cork popped off the bottle, so to speak. The pleasant, composed mask I had worn so dutifully over the past half year just wouldn’t hold up anymore.

When I could no longer afford to stay in bed all day, shifting from sad to livid to lonely and back again, I threw on an old sweatshirt and went looking for a solution.

I finally stumbled into the office of a local therapist, Irya, and desperately tried to explain the way things were going, and how I’d come to land exhausted in her office chair. To my dismay she informed me that I was not crazy or beyond help, or even abnormal for that matter. I was simply a confused young woman, with divorced parents and a hiccup in my plan. Simply put, this was no news to me, yet I wanted to know why I’d been (seemingly) fine up until now, then suddenly sideswiped by overwhelming emotions and a strange combination of fatigue and restlessness.

Irya told me that in order to work through my present emotions, it may be helpful to sit down and “talk” to the little girl version of myself: the imaginative four year old, scared of the monsters under the bed and being left behind. She recommended that I address the little girl before the makeup, and the steady job, before boyfriends and bills, before I worried about being responsible and polite.

Though somewhat painful at first (literally, my throat cramped and chest tightened) this strange exercise began to help. This is when I realized that just as my family seemed too busy for that little girl back in 1991 (and the big girl in 2009), I had been too busy to notice her too: too busy to notice that she needed to be recognized as an important part of my personal history and that she still existed very solidly as a part of my present self. I finally allowed myself to mourn. Mourn the loss of my innocence, the loss of love and trust, the loss of my grandfather and colleague. It was never a quick fix, but change and healing began to occur like a slow leak.

One particularly average Thursday morning in September, I awoke having made the first solid decision I’d made in years. I was going to India and I was earning my Master’s degree. My plan was to find some answers, write, unabashedly communicate with God, and study elephants.

Up until now, elephants rarely crossed my mind unless I was eating orange marshmallow circus peanuts or listening to “Baby Mine” sung by Allison Krauss. (I’ll give you a hint: it’s from Dumbo) But the seeds of interest were planted early.

When I was three, my grandmother wrote a series of her own bedtime stories and read them to me, in the same order, night after night until I had each and every one memorized. One particular story that always stuck with me was one that told of a family of elephants.

A baby elephant, her mother, and father would walk every day together through the jungle that was their home, and every day Father would make his daughter practice listening by commanding her to be very still, until he gave the signal that she could move again. She was a rather noisy, restless elephant and never liked this exercise, but she also knew she should obey her father, so she never complained. One day, as the family walked through the thickest part of the jungle, crashing their big feet through the underbrush, Father gave the signal to be still. Mother and child froze behind their leader, barely breathing so as not to make a sound. Just then, a troupe of hunters in search of Ivory could be heard a few feet away, slicing their path through the jungle. The hunters stopped and looked around, but seeing and hearing nothing through the thick greenery, moved on leaving the elephant family unharmed. Father beamed at his daughter, proud that she had obeyed when it had been so important; when it meant life or death.

As a little girl, I always pictured myself as the little elephant, giggling at the thought of my father leading the Dawn Patrol and resembling Colonel Hathi of Disney’s The Jungle Book.

Juvenile visions aside, humans have related to elephants for centuries in ways we couldn’t to other members of the animal kingdom. So it’s no surprise that my grandmother found them to be such a perfect medium for teaching obedience and the value of family.

Cicero wrote in the first century B.C. that “although there is no animal more sagacious than the elephant, there is also none more monstrous in appearance” (book 1, section 97). Despite the elephant’s large size and thick bristly skin, they are incredibly sensitive creatures, which may explain our long-lived fascination with these majestic animals. (Socyberty)

When I first began planning my eight-week trek through India, I was intrigued by the idea of seeing the mountains and coastlines, the Taj Majal and the city of Varanasi. I yearned to meditate in an ashram and eat red lentil Dahl with a dollop of yogurt from a street vendor. But first and foremost, I was struck by a magnetic need to connect with elephants. The way nuns describe a sudden calling to devote themselves wholly to God, I was overcome by the feeling that I have been chosen to reach out to the elephants of India.

Though, not simply any wild elephant would do; I was drawn to interacting specifically with young orphaned elephants. Because baby elephants, much like human babies, are fully emotionally and physically dependent on their mothers in the early years of life, it is especially devastating when this vital connection is lost.

Research and behavioral studies have proven that baby elephants will rarely survive without the love and affection of a family member, especially a mother. In the wild, calves are constantly surrounded by the cows and bulls (adults) of the herd, and females tend to help care for each other’s offspring. Calves will walk between their mothers’ legs, constantly making physical contact with a trunk, foot or tail: constantly reassured of her presence and protection. When a calf is orphaned due to poaching, geographical displacement, conflicts with people, natural disasters, illness, etc., they become especially emotionally vulnerable. Without the aid of an adoptive adult female or attentive human caretakers, orphaned elephants can succumb to grief and anxiety, refuse to eat, and die. (Foreign)

These animals need to be snuggled, played with, bathed, and emotionally nurtured in order to grow into well developed adults. Orphans who do not receive enough emotional and physical support during these vital years, have been known to become extremely aggressive, depressed, unpredictable, and increasingly difficult for helping humans to rehabilitate as they get older. In short, elephant sanctuaries across India are in dire need of volunteers help care for these big babies.

If only to make my calling feel even more genuine, a bit of my research arrived as a somewhat of a sign. Right around the time that my grandfather’s memorial stone was erected in the Glastonbury Cemetery, I stumbled across an interesting fact that I couldn’t ignore. In my reading I discovered that elephants are one of the only species apart from humans that will continue to return to the site of a family member’s death to pay homage to their fallen comrade. Even years after death, herds have been known to remain at the site for days at a time, mourning the loss of their loved one.

According to South African elephant researcher, Andrew Keet, “The elephant’s capacity for sadness and grief is truly unique amongst members of the animal world, as it is particularly complex in terms of emotions. While most animals do not hesitate to leave the weak and young behind to die, elephants are distressed by the situation, and continue to show signs of this grieving for extended periods of time.”

Keet explains further that because elephants live in such close-knit herds and live for about as long as humans do (approximately 70 years), they form strong bonds with those around them. When one passes away, the rest of the herd visibly mourns the death. Mothers and aunts are also prone to mourning a stillborn calf. The herd will take great care in the burial of the dead, walking to and fro in covering the body with leaves and twigs in an act of dignity for the dead. (Keet)

As I watched my mother lay roses on the stone inscribed with his name, I wondered what Grandpa Jim would say if he knew I were headed off to India. In my mind’s eye, I see his face above the wide oak table scattered with charts and magazine clippings, and I vividly remember an inference he made regarding the height of Dubai’s sky scrapers in relation to the city’s overall debt, yet I can’t quite hear the words he would say. Maybe somewhere in the middle of the jungle, or on the beaches of Goa I will finally hear him again.

After spending weeks reading news articles and perusing photo galleries and websites, my purpose only seemed to solidify. It may sound like a far stretch, but my mission to travel to India, to find salvation and stability, and try to find myself, all really comes down to these elephants in need of love. And in turn, these burly animals may teach me a thing or two about forgiveness, faith, and patience.

For years I’ve described this recurring feeling to my closest friends and family: sometimes it feels as though I have so much love filling up my heart that my chest might explode. I’m often overwhelmed by the feeling that I have nowhere to put it all.

The moment I awoke on that average Thursday morning when I decided to go to India was the moment I realized that this love inside me (as if it were tangible matter) knew all along exactly where it needed to go, and that place was nowhere close to the trivial romantic relationships that clogged my past. Loving these elephants without having even arrived yet, makes me feel as if traveling to India will help me find the love (love of self, love from a God I have yet to meet) that I seem to have missed all these years.

Sources:

Keet, Andrew. "Elephant Emotions - Grieving." Andrew's Elephants. Amelia Du Plessis, n.d. Web. 18 Feb 2011. .

"Elephant Emotions - Grieving." Animals: Explore. Discover. Connect. Busch Gardens, 01 Dec 2009. Web. 18 Feb 2011. .

Berman, Abby. "IFAW releases rescued orphan elephants to the wild in India." IFAW: Saving Animals in Crisis Around the World. IFAW, 31 Jan 2011. Web. 18 Feb 2011. .

Buncombe, Andrew. "India's elephants finally given same protection as tigers." The Independent: Nature. The Independent, 03 Sept 2010. Web. 18 Feb 2011. .

Foreign Mail Service. "The unlikely and extraordinary bond between orphaned elephant calves and children." Mail Online: World News 03 May 2010: n. pag. Web. 18 Feb 2011. elephant-calves-children.html>.

"Elephants in Myths, Mythology, and Folklore." Socyberty. Triond, 8 Sept 2008. Web. 18 Feb 2011. .

Bloody Valentine

Before Hallmark and Russell Stover convinced us all that February 14^th would be a great day to hand out sweet sentiments on colorful paper and gorge on chocolate truffles, this holiday had a much darker tone.

Arnie Seipel, a writer for National Public Radio, reported this morning that though the origins of Valentine’s Day are a bit fuzzy, historians have reason to believe this lovey-dovey holiday dates back to Ancient Rome.

Never mind candy and flowers, Roman men knew how to woo a lady.

“From Feb. 13 to 15, the Romans celebrated the feast of Lupercalia. The men sacrificed a goat and a dog, then whipped women with the hides of the animals they had just slain.”

According to Noel Lenski, a historian at the University of Colorado at Boulder, the Roman men were drunk and naked. “ ‘Young women would actually line up for the men to hit them, Lenski says. They believed this would make them fertile.’ ”

Not far off from the scene at a modern nightclub, the festival of Lupercalia also included a type of “matchmaking lottery”.

“…Young men drew the names of women from a jar. The couple would then be, um, coupled up for the duration of the festival – or longer, if the match was right.”

Don’t get me wrong; I can appreciate a good night of involuntary promiscuity and beatings with bloody animal hides just as much as the next girl, but something about the harmlessness of candy hearts that read “Tweet Me” has me loving the modern gentleness of this so-called Hallmark holiday.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/02/13/133693152/the-dark-origins-of-valentines-day