Into the Garden, Out of Africa

Stanley Kunitz writes in one of my favorite poems, "the longing for the dance stirs the buried life/one season only, and it's gone." He's standing in his garden staking down plants, admiring the intricate world of crickets.  He's thinking about getting old and how fast time goes: the first lines are summer is late/ my heart. 

Simple ideas stated with such magnificence.  As we tie down delicate things for the certainty of storms, it's hard not to think on the metaphor of the garden and the life.  My husband noted the timid blooms of our flowers this week in the unseasonable warmth; he had to say it three times because my head was a jumble of details like calls I needed to return and things I needed to buy at the store. And those pesky birds are back, poking, talking, foraging in the dawn outside my bedroom window, waking me up a bit too early.

Here comes another settled season. What stirs in the buried life?

I'm laid up this weekend with a neck sprain. Trying not to be crabby about it.  It was at least a good opportunity to curl up with a heating pack and painkillers and Out of Africa, a movie I never saw until today.

It's an epic tome, totally in my wheelhouse. Loosely based on the life and stories of Isak Dineson (Karen Blixen, played by Meryl Streep),  it's all sweeping landscapes of Africa. Mountains, veldts, waterfalls, picnics with camp chairs and wine and marauding lions, Masai warriors. Rugged, poetry-reciting Hemingway hunter Robert Redford sensuously washes Meryl Streep's hair with river water and a jug. Love found. Love lost. The inevitable destiny of colonialization ruining everyone's fun. The protagonist learns that her deep passion for free spirited Robert Redford and desire to claim him is, predictably, about as easy as taming Africa herself. 

Of course movies, like books and poetry, stir that buried life. I find myself thinking, why can't I have a coffee plantation in Africa and go hunting with Robert Redford?  Where's my safari picnic?  I find myself Googling "teacher trips to Africa" and "scholarships for teachers, international travel." Uh-oh. I'm supposed to be saving money for a new kitchen. Because, you know, my kitchen is old and creepy.

Feeling the same sort of ennui, Dan has been scouring the internet looking for reasonable ways to road trip out west.

Kunitz asks, What is it that makes the engine go?  He answers it:
Desire, desire, desire.