Two quotes from an old issue of Outside magazine

A quote for the Furrowing of the Brow, from an article on the Mustang province of Nepal by Bob Shacochis:

He who gathers knowledge, it is written in Ecclesiastes, gathers pain. And when you romance a dream to death, what remains is a dry residue of absurdity that will mock your passions for all eternity.

[Scene: trying to spot a tiger in India. Best way to do this? Atop an elephant, of course. The elephant's name is the Goddess. The writer is Peter Matthiessen.]

Harsh cries of Mal! Mal! (Go! Go!), enforced by hard cuts of his whistling stick upon her brow knobs and down between her eyes, advised the Goddess to get moving, which she did, but not before relieving herself of a large load of manure, which struck the hard ground like a Turkish ottoman.

I think it was the picture of the Turkish ottoman that got me.