Strange Questions

Posted by J on Jan 15, 2013 in J Posts | 0 comments

We went swimming in the Indian Ocean during our first afternoon in Tanzania.

There were lots of jolts to our comfort zones: warm water clogged with trash and weeds, dozens and dozens and dozens of black bodies swimming in the surf around us, no other whites, lots of underwear instead of Eddie Bauer print swim suits and swim shirts, warnings of thievery.

I said “Mambo!” to everything that moved.

At one point, a young man said something friendly to me in Swahili, pointed out to sea, beckoned me to follow … and began swimming.

I swam after him, followed for a while, then caught up with him. I managed an introduction in English between strokes and learned his name was Daniel.

So out we swam … until I turned back, a bit fearful of the deep and Leviathan … leaving Daniel stroking alone in the distance.

I regret that, thinking my turn-back was sort of wimpy. I’m not sure what Daniel wanted, but I feel like I short circuited the moment to engage with that young man in a substantive way. I left the adventure too early or, maybe, never heard the call of the adventure in the first place.

My exchange with Daniel has been on my mind these last few days as we near our departure for safari in the Serengeti. Conveniently, I read something that spoke to my reflections last night. It’s from Mary Oliver’s new book “A Thousand Mornings,” called “The Moth, The Mountains, The Rivers”:

Who can guess the luna’s sadness who lives so briefly? Who can guess the impatience of stone longing to be ground down, to be part again of something livelier? Who can imagine in what heaviness the rivers remember their original clarity?

Strange questions, yet I have spent worthwhile time with them. And I suggest them to you also, that your spirit grow in curiosity, that your life be richer than it is, that you bow to the earth as you feel how it actually is, that we — so clever, and ambitious, and selfish, and unrestrained — are only one design of the moving, the vivacious many.

I love that.

I want to be more curious, my life to be richer than it is — Richer, indeed. I want to EMBRACE the Daniels and follow those adventures as far as they take me, however scary it might be.

To put it visually, I think it’s a bit like the photo at the beginning of this post. It’s the view out a back door to a beautiful, ancient tree at sunset … through some iron security bars.

Essentially — on this safari, and beyond — I want to get through those bars … leave them behind … and bask in the glory and the grace and the shade of the ancient trees … like W and H did later that night, considering whether to jump their scooters in to the great beyond.