Empathic apes

I was profoundly moved by Hariod’s recent post and found both the style and the content of the video that followed fascinating and instructive. I hope the post and video are as meaningful to you as they were to me.

Hariod Brawn's avatarcontentedness.net

Orangutan mother and kids. By Patrick Bouquet, Chantilly Orangutan mother and kids. By Patrick Bouquet, Chantilly

The year is 1955, and far from the nearest village, somewhere within the Northwestern jungle region of Thailand, a 48 year-old Englishman and ordainee to the Buddhist monkhood sits quietly in studious attention. A few feet away, a female ape sits, arms carefully wrapped around some precious possession. The monk first chanced upon her the previous day, and due to the curiosity roused in observing her melancholic countenance, has remained respectfully nearby to her. A trust has developed, the ape sensing the monk’s gentle disposition and harmlessness. He really ought to be making his way to the village for alms, yet somehow senses that he should stay. A silent, palpable communication has developed between the two, and slowly, carefully and deliberately, the ape, her sadness still etched upon her face, finally unfolds her arms and offers a first sight of what she…

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16 thoughts on “Empathic apes”

    1. I have no doubt that many of my readers will be as moved by your post as I was! Something strange happened though. The picture at the top of the post is gigantic and covers the sidebar. Did my reblog come out looking normal on your screen? I’ve written WordPress to see if there is some way to fix it.

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      1. The picture file size was very large Karuna, and so yes, it appears lager than life here too. I have no idea whether you can edit it or delete it as I have never re-blogged another’s article myself. As an alternative, I could email you an MS Word file so that you can simply put the whole post up here if you like.

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      2. Interesting that yours is larger than normal on your blog, since it is a normal sized picture when I look at your post. Your solution is a good one but let me see what WordPress says. They usually get back fairly quickly.

        Do you have the picture set for full size or large on your blog? If it is set for full size I wonder if you changed it to large if it would change it on the reblog.

        I will get back to you after I hear from WordPress. This is an interesting mystery.

        I may just leave it like it is if there is no way to fix it. It is certainly striking. Maybe it is one of those “there are no accidents” events.

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      3. Yes, I always use the largest images I can for clarity purposes and to do justice to the artists who produce them. Perhaps WordPress will come up with a solution, because a re-blog should reproduce well in WP format of course, otherwise the whole concept is a bit of a mess. Do let me know once they have responded Karuna, and I will send you the MS Word file if you feel you must alter the layout. H ❤

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      6. Yes, it is quite blurry. I’ve done full size pictures before and they have never covered the side bar so something else is at work. I will enjoy the mystery and hope it resolves itself or a resolution is offered by WordPress. I’m also about to do some other scans on my computer to see if something is up.

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      8. I wonder what happened with mine. I haven’t heard back from Word Press yet. Sreejit suggested I try removing the picture from my media gallery but I’ve been holding out for the possibility it could be fixed. I did check the media galley though and it is a normally sized picture there.

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      9. I heard back from WordPress. They told me to go to CSS in the customizer and gave me the link to do that. Once I was there I was to enter the following:

        .entry-content img, .post-format-content img {
        max-width: 100%;
        height: auto;
        }

        And low and behold it was like magic. The picture was corrected immediately! 🙂

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      11. I love the magic that occurs when correct code is applied. I took an online html course once so I could build my professional website. I wouldn’t want to do it as a job but it was so much fun to find the one letter or symbol that was wrong and see the finished product materialize in front of me when I fixed it.

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