From October: Why the Blue Elephant?

New to blogs, I managed to delete this October entry from October archives so I am repeating it in November:



Following the example of others I know, I have started this blog. Anyone who knows me knows that the elephant has been my totem for a long time. (Maybe I will get into that later.) Hence, I call it The Blue Elephant (how fortunate that the color blue has become identified with "progressive.")

The first time Frank Pietronigro staged his annual Intergeneration event, in June 2001, featuring several gay and lesbian performers, my one-act play TURNING was last on the program. The play was set in the Blue Elephant Cafe, and director George Birimisa suggested that the whole program be presented as if the various other acts were also taking place in the Blue Elephant Cafe. It was sweet and amazing (to my mind only!) that the private mythology of a writer who had been hiding for years should now encompass others -- from isolation to community -- which was true to the purpose of the Intergeneration event. In my own mind only, as I say, the all-inclusive Blue Elephant Cafe seemed to fulfill my preoccupation with the import of a Biblical story, where the egoistic, self-absorbed, scheming Jacob stumbles into his larger self, as a member of humanity, and thereby acquires the new name, Israel (forgetting modern politics for a moment).

So welcome to the Blue Elephant Cafe where you are encouraged to give the imagination free play. If you are reading this, you have decided to check out my blog at http://bluele.blogspotg.com. With this, I have stopped making entries for October. In the future I won't send out announcements that a new month's blog is complete. If you are at all interested, save my blog site among your bookmarks, and drop in to check it out at the end of each month, or whenever.

People who receive emails from me have read my closing sentiment--and they know that Jim Eilers himself falls far short of this sentiment, although he keeps trying!

LET US LOVE, OR AT LEAST RESPECT, OUR DIFFERENCES, BUT TREASURE MOST WHAT WE HOLD IN COMMON.

From many years ago, a paper construction to represent another elephant slain by poachers: