the love of a good elephant

elephants swim. and some elephants are known to swim great distances in the open sea. such as between islands in the Bay of Bengal.
i'm fairly sure i read or heard about a bull elephant who swam to a nearby island to join his girlfriend. even if it's apocryphal, it's a lovely thought.
there is a special joy in elephants swimming. i think it's the four-knee elephant paddle.

i almost travelled to sri lanka a few years ago. we would have been in kandy for the Esala Pearahara, the festival of the buddhist 'sacred tooth relic'. it's a religious pageant (pearahara) that goes over 11 days in july/august (esala), with a street parade of percussionists, torchbearers, dancers and significantly, elephants. all elaborately costumed and all very noisy. and as the festival progresses, there are more and more elephants.
somehow the thought of ever increasing numbers of elephants makes it particularly exciting.
in 1998, ex-blur guitarist graham coxon released a solo album. i didn't buy it or listen to it, but the name, the sky is too high, stuck with me as did the album cover which had a simple drawing of a pink elephant. i clipped it out of a magazine which had reviewed it. the clipping is still around in my stack of images somewhere
a winsome elephant by illustrator
mo willems
elephant head by georgia hayes
© 2007 Oil on Canvas 50 x 50cm

there's a gentleness and sensitivity to elephants. their vulnerability even though they're such enormous creatures.
the fact that they are such social animals.
like recent research which has found that elephants (unlike most other animals) acknowledge their dead, "gently touching the skulls and tusks with their trunks and feet".
personally, i like them more than dolphins.