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| Elephant footprints. Source: Wikipedia |
Our
minds are chronic recorders. Voracious feeders. But if our output doesn’t
measure up with the intake of electrons, we limit our potentials as the
creative individuals we were created to be.
If
these land behemoths could convert their physical and metabolic process into
literary accomplishments, there would scarce be room for all the books produced.
Elephants are herbivores and spend up to 16 hours a day eating plants. An adult elephant consumes 140–270 kg (300–600 lb) of food a day. – Wikipedia
Apparently,
if most writers could eat (feast
their minds on life’s voluptuous magnificence) in a fashion similar to the
elephant’s rate of consumption and actually work
(bend their backs over their desks to create) like healthy, adult eleph-ANTS,
the world of fiction and creativity would be a pretty combed-out spot.
Elephants are a symbol of wisdom in Asian cultures and are famed for their memory and intelligence; their intelligence level is thought to be comparable to that of dolphins and primates. Aristotle once said the elephant was “the beast which passeth all others in wit and mind.” – Wikipedia
There
has to be some sort of balance, though. I wouldn’t have you work like an
elephant and eat like an ant. If you tow this lackluster line eventually,
you’ll start imitating yourself. Your work becomes repetitive (like you’re
going around in circles), you dry up from inside out and the magic fizzles away,
as a direct result. And there’s nothing more gruesome than the death of the intellect.
No other misery is quite as appalling as a man who stops thinking, quits being
imaginative.
Danger
awaits the writer who writes more than he reads; who goes through life without
really living it up. Playing his own role as an actor and flaunting his stuff.
The
internet reeks of information. You can find stuff on the news, talk-shows,
films, soaps, the radio, the dailies and, the world around you. There’s always
a phrase, a word, some picture to spark up your muse.
But what do you do when you are
all alone by yourself?
Elephants
can’t go through a forest or path without leaving their mark. It’s unthinkable.
Their footprints are like giant ‘Periods’
in the sand punctuating their passage with emphatic, decisive dots.
What
can you take away from all this talk? If elephants were writers, would you be
in business?
Let
your pen bleed.
Akpan
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