the greatest show on earth, oppression, animals doing things they were never meant to do, large pachyderms, creatures of great strength and size, made to look cute and cuddly, elephants have a certain grace of movement, something i would never expect from 1) something grey, 2) something that large, or 3) something that powerful. it's a show, and expression of the impossible, or at the very least the very improbable, a piece of youth finally caught, the butterfly that completes the collection, what's left? the monarch? not the carnival, not the roller coaster, what's left? which piece of an american childhood am i still missing?