Read and Review: Leaving Time Part 1: The Elephant with a human in the room

Verse of the day: Luke 2:13-14

And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God, and saying, Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.

This review proved itself quite the package, so much so that I decided to separate them into three parts! Call them the three primary relationships or characteristics that made this book such an eye catcher and difficult to put down. First, lets discuss the elephants.

My thoughts?:

"Elephants memory", is beginning to take on a new meaning to me, not so much the act of not forgetting, but the significance of remembrance. "Do you remember?, Why do you remember?, Have you forgotten?, how did you forget?" Jodi Picoult's (author) elephants help personify the answer in Alice's field journals: We remember to find answers that are lost. We forget to survive after we have found them. Just as we are blessed with the gift to remember, we are cursed with the burden of recalling what grieves us the most.

This is why an Elephant will wait to attack previous predators of itself or members of it's herd. Imagine my to surprise to know that they too can hold grudges and even have a form of agenda.

Although it was all placed into scientific data by Elephant researcher and specialist, Alice Kingston, for a moment that is. It is difficult not to romanticize the majesty of Picoult's elephants in the way that Alice herself tried to. To not be able to recognize the obvious relations of their behaviors to our own way of life as humans, she wasn't humanizing THEM, she was making clear what has already been known but never fully ventured into as not to be discredited by her peers: That we as humans have never fully been alone, that in ways by science or fictional theory are connected to the animal kingdom, the elephant now being one as document-able as apes.

For this, I hold a great deal of interests in elephants now. It must be confessed until now, I'd never given the animal much thought. However Picoult has that affect on you. She'll provoke you to want answers to things you never questioned before, not only about your own life but that of the elephant species as well.

I remember being 13 and obsessed with tragedies that happened out at sea as well as ocean life, particular predators such as the great white and other giants of the endless blue world such as whales and squid. My most favorite of these being the Megaladon: prehistoric grandfather of the great white and unsolved mysteries of the Bermuda triangle, Titanic, the flaming pirate ship, ect. Anything that interested me, I looked into. Alice reminded me of such a time. Where I was hungry for answers and stopped at nothing to get them. Till this day I regret not saving my notes.

Alice reminded me how precious memory can be and through her elephants how they contribute to the grievances we endure in life. From not being able to leave the corpse of her still born for days on end, to returning to the place in which a deceased elephant once lay to pay tribute, particularly matriarchs, long after their bones have been bleached by the sun.

"For some, our troubles come from not being able to remember, for others it is the curse not being able to forget."

-E.Q

For the love of life and literature, stay prayerful, stay positive and write on!