What Strange Things Exist in This World

"Island dwarfing is the process and condition of the reduction in size of large animals - almost always mammals - when their gene pool is limited to a very small environment, primarily islands."

"The smaller animals need fewer resources, and so are more likely to get past the break-point where population decline allows food sources to replenish enough for the survivors to flourish."


Dearest John,

I have written letters and letters to you but each and every one I have torn into a thirty-three different pieces and placed them in the trash. I burn them with my cigarette butts and spit on them to extinguish the flame. I don’t know how long we’ve been in Malta, searching for the remnants of the dwarf elephant. All of this island talk and these languages I don’t understand. I want America again. I don’t give a damn about these Maltese people, John. I want them dead like those damned elephants.

Look, here’s the story, the elephants, maybe some day, after the big bang and also after the dinosaurs there were some elephants, and they were not woolly mammoths John, and they were big and big and big and then they grew small and small and small because of island dwarfing. They got smaller and smaller because the god of evolution told them to do so and evolution said, “hey elephants, if you shrink then you will have to eat less fish from the Mediterranean” and the elephants started to shrink just like a grandma in old age. John I’m so sick of my father. He is searching and searching for the bones.

And I am stuck in this cabin. I don’t care about the beaches John. I’ve taken to drinking and drinking lots. I will drink beer and whiskey and smoke and smoke. I have been holed up in my room. Father finds a bone of a small child and he says, “this is a tusk,” and I say, “Old man, you are an old bastard, that is the bone of a child,” and he will tell me that he knows that it is the bone of a child but that he wants me to at least show interest in his work. And I have told him over and over that I am only interested in you, that I have invested all I have in you. I have told him that I want to have your children and that I want to marry you and maybe have a farm with goats and pigs and spider named Charlotte that might talk to all of the animals. But the animals will not talk to us, no four legs good two legs bad or whatever they said. The cows might have bells and we’ll save money by producing our own meat and crops. We’ll roll our own cigarettes and we’ll make children together. John, we haven’t had sex yet but I can tell you I can’t wait but we must wait because I don’t believe in birth control what so ever. John, I am madly madly in love with you.

Fuckin’ bugger, I’ve spilled red wine on paper. On the parchment. What a pretty word. Is parchment not a pretty word? I told myself that I would send this letter no matter what so I’ll have to hold the blow dryer over this spot before I can resume writing this letter.

John I have blow-dried the spot on which I spilled the red wine, do you see it? It has left a small purple-ish mark.

Did you know that I am drunk John? Even still, my hand writing and spelling are impeccable but I am very careful to craft my penmanship and my word choice and my spelling in such a manner that will not reveal my inebriated state, unfortunately I have done so via the text.

It is mid-May now, darling, and the island is nice and warm. If you were here and this damned exhibition was elsewhere, if daddy were off digging up voodoo witch doctor skulls in some unknown island and a komodo dragon would eat him then I would be more than happy to have you here, to have you here with me, drinking red wine with our meals, drinking absinthe after dinner.

My Mediterranean fantasy builds and grows despite my own oppression that is self-inflected. Daddy says I can come with him but I don’t want to. And I try to enjoy the scenery during the day but I can’t bring myself to do it without you.

And I keep thinking about elephants, pygmy, baby, tiny elephants that are nothing like real elephants because they’re so small and I bet that if daddy can find the tusks he’ll sell them for a lot of money and if he finds the bones he’ll sell those for a lot of money too, but not to a museum but to some private bidder who wants to add to his collection of weird odds and ends a full grown elephant that is the size of a baby elephant.

What strange things exist in this world, John. I love you, forever and always and forever.

Sincerely love always,

Elizabeth