Live, breathe, lyric

I live for New Music Tuesdays on iTunes.  I've spent, literally, thousands of dollars on music over the years.  I turn it way up in my little toyota, crank it and belt the words to myself.  I love that moment when you hear a line in a song and you're hooked: you know what that line means, you know how that line feels, or it's just clever and, man, with that beat it's perfect.

My favorite lines out of all of my thousands of songs? No competition, it's the lines from Summer Skin,  Death Cab for Cutie.

On the night you left I came over
And we peeled the freckles from our shoulders
Our brand new coats so flushed and pink
And I knew your heart I couldn't win
Cause the seasons change was a conduit
And we left our love in our summer skin

Everyday at 11:11

Alright. Here's something.  Hows about the Universe?

Nah. That's too much.  Too big.  Too much thinking.

Hows about wishes?

Much easier.  Wishes on pennies, shooting stars, on numbers, on clocks on flocks of birds and three-in-a-rows.  I make a lot of wishes everyday.  Maybe they're really prayers? Prayers, wishes?

Who knows? Sometimes they're one in the same, at least for me.

Did you ever make an impossible wish?  Or, at least a wish you thought was impossible and then, one days as you plod along, your impossible wish falls right into your lap . . but then you're not so sure if it's a good or a bad thing, because a lot of one-in-a-thousands had to happen for the impossible wish to breathe reality.  That's a lot of almost-too-good-to-be-true.

Elephants.

A little known fact on humans (not really): we grieve.  We humans react to the death of our own species; we are concerned about our dead, we show respect and reverence towards our dead.  Unless you're a psychopath or have that crazy personality disorder where you feel no empathy or emotion, all humans are affected by the death of our own.  

Little known fact on Elephants: Besides humans, african elephants are the only mammals that react to the remains of their own species. 

According to one study, "African elephants are reported not only to exhibit unusual behaviours on encountering the bodies of dead con-specifics, becoming highly agitated and investigating them with the trunk and feet, but also to pay considerable attention to the skulls, ivory and associated bones of elephants that are long dead" (McComb). 

Two summers ago I had one of those vividly beautiful dreams that make you want to sleep forever.  I won't go into the details, they're not really pertinent.  But, I woke with my dream still fresh and tangible but there was an added element of elephants that felt like it was critically related to the events and emotions that had occurred in my dream, despite the fact that there was not a single elephant to be found within the contents of the actual dream.  

After this dream I began seeing elephants.  I don't mean I hallucinate elephants, although that could be interesting and probably entertaining, but since then, elephants pop up all over the place: in conversation, books, pictures, posters, jewelry, t-shirts, TV, movies, stuffed animals. . . and the weirdest part is that all these elephants show up in totally random situations in places where I least expect them.  

Now back to my little known fact. Elephants react to the remains of their own species.  

My sister told me this little fact the other day while I was printing off a paper in my dad's office about adolescent development.  It was a random insertion that had nothing to do with what we had previously been chatting about.  

There's something tender about that.  Something human, something emotional.  Something in that statement that mirrors the feeling I had after that dream.  Something about elephants.