Haloti Ngata and the elephant

Note: Haloti Ngata plays professional football for the Baltimore Ravens.  He is a defensive tackle, and, even by the standards of his position, he is enormous.  Haloti Ngata is also one of the best names in sports.  I love saying it.  On Monday night, 12/13,  I watched Haloti Ngata and his team play in a nationally televised game.  On Tuesday night, I had the following dream.

My name is Haloti Ngata.  I am a rhinoceros.  I am walking down a lane in what seems to be a suburban landscape.  Flat and open.  Almost pastoral, but the grass is well manicured.  The weather is pleasantly nondescript.  I know my death is approaching.  I am not aware of anything I have done to bring this about.  No divine punishment, no disease, no misplaced vengeance.  I am not scared, and I have no questions.  What is coming is inexorable.

Death is approaching in the form of an elephant.  I have never seen this elephant, but I know that it is larger than any I have encountered.  I can smell him.  A mix of dung, trampled grass, age old dirt and dust.  A dryness to it.  In the distance, I hear him trumpet.  Soon, another trumpet, louder.  The odor is more pungent.  A feeling of looming immensity, doom.

I step through the doorway of a house I cannot see and enter the room I knew would be there.  It is where I, Steve/Haloti, spent the first eight years of my childhood.  The front room has wall-to-wall, dark green carpeting.  To my immediate right is an open staircase.  Two steps up, a landing, then, turning left, a long flight up.  Heavy wooden  balusters its entire length.  I will wait at the top of the stairs for the elephant.  My plan is to charge down as soon as I sense him begin to step on to the lower landing.  Leverage, momentum, surprise will be on my side.  I, Haloti Ngata, will die, but I will inflict some damage before the end.

The trumpeting is loud, the smell overpowering.  The elephant is here, just inside the house.  I wait, calm and determined.  I feel the elephant about to set foot on the landing, and I begin my charge.  We meet and find ourselves locked in an exquisite equipoise.  My horn is directly below his throat, his tusks below my belly.  I cannot jerk my head up to inflict a wound.  He has not yet been able to force his tusks into me.  But my strength is flagging.  Time is on his side.

I wake up, but the dream does not leave.  Haloti Ngata, the rhinoceros, is now a being apart from me, as I look at him locked in his terminal embrace.

A reverie overtakes me, and I am Haloti Ngata again.  I am back at the top of the stairs, waiting.  Once more, I sense the elephant about to set foot on the landing.  Perhaps I have begun my charge fractionally later than before.  Or maybe the elephant is no longer surprised.  His trunk reaches around my front right leg before I can reach him.  He uses my momentum to pull me up over his head, whip me around, and slam me to the floor.  Even though there is no pain, I know I am seriously injured.  Perhaps I can move, but I only want to curl there in a ball.  The elephant still has his trunk around by leg.  Up, around and crashing down again.  Still no pain, but I know my injuries are mortal.  Just as I know that the elephant is not through with me.  I feel nothing, desire nothing.  Then I am being twirled in the air.  Blackness awaits.  Nothing matters.  Death and I have made our acquaintance.  And I still have not seen the elephant's face.