Anthology: Notes 2 & 3

1. The Animal Odd Couple

Surfing around on the internet, I found this clip with a title that caught my eye, that showed the relationship between two very different animals. After I had chosen my anthology theme which was relationships, I realized that this theme could extend to animal relationships. In this clip, CBS observes an unusual friendship between an elephant and a dog. In this sanctuary for retired elephants, these animals pair up with one another as best friends. Among these massive elephants are over a dozen stray dogs that also live in the sanctuary. Although both groups usually ignore one another, the dog Bella and the elephant Tara are the best of friends. They have formed a distinct and admiral bond that we should all model ourselves upon.

In the clip, the two inseparable animals are seen roaming around the land together. According to the owner’s reports, the two best friends do everything together like a pair of elephants would. Footage in the woods shows this massive elephant walking down a rummaged path with her fluffy small companion. This sweet moment shown in televised broadcasting brings forth a genuine and unbreakable bond forged by these two animals.

Later in the video, the interviewees discussed a time period when the dog Bella was ill. For three weeks, she suffered from a spinal cord injury, and she lay motionless in the office of the sanctuary building. During this time, Tara stayed in the corner of a high-built fence that bounded the sanctuary office; she waited for her best friend in this little corner of 2700 acres of land. Eventually one of the cofounders started carrying Bella down to the fence daily so that Tara could see her dear friend; every time she was brought down, the two companions were excited and eager to see one another. This ritual continued on until Bella could start walking again. At the end of this clip, the news reporter says one line that puts all of us to shame, “Take a good look, America.” These two glorious animals easily put aside their immense differences and formed an everlasting bond. How is it that they can do it, and we cannot? Why is it so difficult for human beings to at least be peaceful with one another? Perhaps the answer exists very simply by the example set by Bella and Tara. We have the choice to live by this example, but the majority of us are too stubborn to take this much easier path of living.

2. Lost in the Hospital  By: Rafael Campo

A Poem About Friendship

Rafael's powerful, yet simple lines drive out a potent and tender story about friendship. His style is lucid yet the meaning of a few lines behold a delicate ambiguous quality that helps sublimate the theme of the poem. 

He first says "It’s not that I don’t like the hospital." The man seems to not detest the environment, but rather acknowledge and feel indifferent about the "small bouquets of flowers, pert and brave", and "the smell of antiseptic cleansers." Roaming around the hospital this man is lead outside by his friend to take a smoke. The image of patients outside smoking with "IV’s And oxygen in tanks attached to them" is frightful and pitiful. The fact that the ill group of people are further endangering their already "wistful" and ailing health circumstances is grim and saddening.

 As the two friends shared a cigarette and the healthy companion held onto the other's hand which was "Like someone’s keys", the moment of bondage is admirable and more significant than the gloominess of illness and death. And as the sun points down on the two friends, it is as if "they were important, full of life, [and] unbound." In this scene in which they are standing together in the strange "tiny patio for skeletons", the differences between the men are forgotten, and their moment of unity is celebrated in the source of life, the sun. In the final lines of the poem when the man "wandered for a moment where his ribs had made a space for [him]" and he thinks to himself that he is lost beside his friend's "thundering waterfall of [a] heart", this moment reaches the apex of the best of friendships. During that time of embrace or perhaps just profound realization, the man is lost, but it is a good lost; a lost into the journey of their friendship and love in which the beginning is vague and the end may be near, but the memories in between are infinite and the love is forever flourishing.