She was too scared to ask what it was, and too scared to turn and run. So she put out her hands and closed her eyes. The instant the gift touched her hands, she found herself back in Nganga’s hut.
He was very impressed with her gift, and said it would lead them to Kembe. So they prepared food and water and left. As they walked, Ayana noticed that Nganga was eyeing Anansi’s gift and she decided to keep it with her even though sticky yucky spiderweb was getting on everything.
Ayana was a very brave and practical girl. The first thing she did was watch where the Elephant Bird carried Kembe, and then she ran as fast as she could back to Nganga.
He told her that there is only one way to deal with magic things like the Elephant Bird, and that is to find Anansi, the oldest and most powerful of African legends. She had never believed that Anansi was real, but if Elephant Birds were real, maybe Anansi was, too. She would have to look for his cave on Mount Kilimanjaro.
And that was how the two friends found themselves near Victoria Falls. Nganga had told Kembe that Elephant Birds liked to nest on Mount Kilimanjaro and that they were attracted to brightly colored things in the sky.
Kembe and Ayana lived in Africa, a place full of legends.
Some legends are places so incredible that people are amazed. Like Victoria Falls, a waterfall so big that it makes its own rain storms, or Mount Kilimanjaro, a mountain so tall that it’s hard to breathe at the top.
Other legends are stories, such as the ones Kembe and Ayana learned as they grew up. Like Anansi the spider, Danh the snake god of unity, and birds big enough to fly away with elephants.
But in Kembe and Ayana’s village, the biggest legend of all was about what was behind Victoria Falls. It was said that behind the waterfall was the world’s biggest cave, and inside that cave was something important and mysterious that gave Africa its power. No one knew what it was.
No one knew, and no one cared, because no one believed in legends anymore.
I stood there, staring down at a room full of second- and third-grade faces. I imagined they were wondering how boring this guy was going to be. After all, isn’t that the problem with school in the first place?
The face in the middle was my son, and he had every right be nervous. I'm the type of dad who creates voices for all the characters in a book, changes the story on the fly to see who catches me and bugs the kids mercilessly until I get everyone to participate.
It’s impossible for us in the twenty-first century to feel what it was like to see Earth from space for the first time. The power of that image, and its deep-rooted impact on the human soul in 1969, is lost to those younger than ... let’s say 50.
Likewise all the other miracles we now take for granted. Flight. Mobile phones. Instant information. Our entire music collection in the palm of our hand.
The price we have paid for instant, unquestioned access to the miraculous is a ruthless loss of wonder. Not the sickly sweet wonder of certain new agers or the manufactured wonder of TV execs, but the kind that binds us humans together in mutual respect for a mystery bigger than ourselves.
He sat there working on a script. Trying. Not because he didn't want to or because of so-called “writer’s block”, but because the ancient Greeks were right. Making art is like stealing fire from the gods, and they don’t like it. In fact, they go to great lengths to prevent it.
I've never tried painting outdoors before. It's always been inside with a model or my imagination.
I'm also not a landscape kind of guy. I'm more of a portrait, internal-landscape painter.
What I learned:
You're at the mercy of the elements. Wind, rain, sun.
Mother Nature is nuts. My first attempt was hailed out. Yes, hail. In the middle of July in Southern California.
Much more insidious than the obvious elements are the bugs. On the palette, on the brush, on the painting. In fact, you can see several parts of several bugs that strategically landed in front of my moving brush.
Suffice it to say that I now have a much greater respect for anyone who masters this whole landscape painting thing.
If you want to see how relentless the bugs were, take a look at the full resolution here. They're really visible in the water.
It’s impossible for us in the twenty-first century to feel what it was like to see Earth from space for the first time. The power of that image, and its deep-rooted impact on the human soul in 1969, is lost to those younger than ... let’s say 50.
