The Reading The Writing Life Life: Chapter 1

...when you go to Africa, you are likely to see Elephants.  I have often seen Elephants, and they stick out to me as large, blatant, and obnoxious.  But really, what is the Elephant to do but be gray?  Whenever I see Elephants I see them walking along, pretending, or is it trying? to tiptoe across the Savannah.  They mean to be fairy queens I think.  They lightly pluck their way between blades of grass, only noticing how gracefully they have dodged the grass besides their feet.  Underneath their feet, whole colonies of grass are no longer living.  It is the saddest lifestyle that I have ever witnessed.  But the Elephant is oblivious to this.  It thinks that instead of feet it has wings, and that its trunk curling over its back is a proboscis to fertilize flowers with.  The Elephant is gray, but it thinks it is yellow and black.  In its feeble imagination, the Elephant prances slightly across the plains, but what I have seen is a sad creature that gently bends a blade of grass, intending to use the grass' spring to launch it back into its next step.  The pitiful behemoth only crushes the grass, and crushes anything beneath it.  "Elephant," I say, "You've deluded yourself into thinking you're a Butterfly."