Page 9 - Dark Matter:Women Witnessing Issue #3 - December 2015

Dark Matter: Women Witnessing - December, 2015 Issue #3 - EXTINCTION / DEVOTION

The next day, I told the dream to friends, and said I believed it was connected to the event in NYC.

Animals often come to me in my dreams, and it is not unheard-of for me to “get the news” in my dreams

before I receive it in waking life. I believe the animals want us to know what is happening—to them, to

all life. I spoke of the small, simple bundle of books in the dream, bound in brown paper and with string.

Books used to be our source of knowledge and wisdom, and now we employ high-tech, computer-

generated, visual feasts for the eyes ("weapons of mass instruction," according to the event's creators)

to engage and expand our minds. How things have changed.

Later, I thought again about the bundle of books, and replayed the dream in my mind. It occurred to me

that long before we learned from books, our wisdom came from being in and of the real world, the

natural world, with all its teachers and lessons seen and unseen—with its dreams, signs and

experiences, lived and felt. And then there was the key that would not grant me entry to the house,

mandating that I stay out in the night and wind. Only outside could I see the enormity of the elephant,

which was not part of the "projection," but the real thing, larger than life. A friend with whom I shared

the dream said her first reaction was to the key, which she saw not as a key to the house, but “to the

kingdom”—the wild kingdom, the domain of all creatures great and small.

What does it say, or mean, that in order to capture collective attention and raise awareness of what is

at stake, we must resort to tactics such as a digital display on the Empire State Building? Is not the

reality, which seems to find new and more horrific ways to express itself every day, profound enough?

The exhibit’s images were powerful, but they were representations of the endangered animals, flat and

one-dimensional, shot through with interior lights from the building's offices, taken out of their natural

context, and dimmed by the ambient glow of an overpopulated city powered by fossil fuels. They were

largely viewed through the lenses of cell phones and cameras that further distance us from the animals

and our complicity in their jeopardy, as well as our own.

What might we feel if we were to witness the lone silhouette of a real elephant, a great giant, trumpeting

against the night sky—whether out of grief or pride or love for his mate —and know, really know, that

he is one of the last of his kind? What would it be to stand with our bare feet on the earth, and feel the

ground tremble with the heaviness of each step as he walks away forever into the fog of our memories?

How long would it be, in our current world and our current minds, before we forgot him entirely? What

reverberations would be caused by his loss? Can we even begin to imagine? I cannot.

Elephants can communicate with each other across many miles, through vibrations that travel through

the earth. Underground. They can feel each other, speak to each other, even if they can't see each

other.

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