How Lydia Finally Makes Us Happy
Lydia is used for the elephant rides at the Zoo, the miserable old spectacle. Yet this
remarkable degradation of wild, has reshaped and released our lives. Inside deaths are
most often caused by avoidable mishaps, but isn't death a part of life? Confused
elephants lashing out at public, unhappiness stored in a trunk. Elephants used in such
entertainment are violently trained, requiring enough beating and deprivation to break
their spirits. The spirit of her back is broken. Break her in like a virgin. We are finally
happy, like a blue balloon. We always knew that somewhere in our lives, our paths would
cross with Lydia's. She carried the cycles of children, along a circle of worn concrete, a
chain around her wrinkled grey leg, her dirty giant toenails worn down to hurt nerves.
Her sway counting the great grey footfall. A concrete forehead that would break down
buildings like a wrecking ball. Asphalt is a terrible surface to walk upon, for years and
thousands of kilometres. The tired legs that cannot speak as they ache, the concrete in
her psyche a pressure valve. We knew that as we grew up and chose our life paths, that
her torment and submission of elephants in general, would be the thing to finally make
us happy. I'm finally happy Lydia, her beady dead tormented eye, her shackled legs, her
vaginal wart that the zoo just wont fix, her tail from a mountainous backside shrouded
in piss, beyond the box of fearful children thrown onto her back like confetti and
streamers by nervous parents. Voyagers on a big ghost ship, she was creaking beneath
us. I'm not just happy, I am finally happy. She spends her life in chains, susceptible to
disease. She moves like a closed building, so that you fail to get through the door of her
terrible psyche. Psyche as big as India, this ancient mammoth outstretching all cities.
One day she attacked the other younger elephant in her compound, who just happened to
be there at the time. A situation that would never occur between female elephants in the
wild. After the death, Lydia trumpeted through her trunk. As long as we are happy, it has
all been worth it. Imagine the dreadful amount of energy it takes for an elephant to
attack and kill another of her kind. All the force built up inside her raging heart, to
continue its eruptions beneath the shoes of children, who tread on her forehead as they
leave the living ride. She was forced to alter her natural behaviour. It would be like all
your childhood you had to walk around the rim of a rubber car tyre, and if you fell in, you
got beaten and gouged with a hook. Some days I don't know where to begin my work and
where to end my grief. We each found out what our purposes were, now what can we do
about it? You were just an elephant who wanted to be quiet and bathe with your herd at
the waterhole. It builds up inside you, Lydia. You are an old mother who has outgrown
her children, growing weary beneath them. Inside a volcano is smouldering, while
humanity reaches for more happiness, the silly paper flower. It slips through disabled
greedy fingers, as empty as what we've made it into. The faces of the crowd that attend
these sad spectacles are lost to the worlds you inhabit, and now you are lost too, Lydia.
You are insane, a killer of other elephants and can teach them nothing. The amusement
park is bored behind the scenes. All that gaseous happiness escaped them like balloons,
the power of elephants is sacrificed for this. |
