The film The African Queen is on my list of top 25 favorite movies. I’m sure there are parts I would cringe at now as it’s in the genre of Africa as backdrop to the European invaders front-line story. But the chemistry of Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn and an edge-of-seat plot is part of its memorability. But there is one extraordinary scene that stands out above all. For me, it’s a metaphor for life’s dark moments and I find myself returning to it time and again in my mind’s eye when in need. And that time is certainly now.
The African Queen is the name of a boat and Bogart and Hepburn are trying to escape coming disaster by going down a river to reach safety in a nearby lake. The river is filled with leeches and gets narrower and narrower, choked in the surrounding jungle. They finally get literally bogged down in a bog of sorts, neither able to move forward or back. Night comes and in the depths of despair, they have no choice but to accept their doom.
In that moment, the camera pans up and out and we see that the lake they’ve been seeking is literally a mere hundred yards away or so. They are wholly ignorant of how close it is and again, are resigned to their fate.
And then. During the night, the rain comes and lifts them from their stuck position and floats them out to the lake. They awaken in the morning to their miraculous salvation.
That image has sustained me time and time again and I hope against hope that it may be the perfect metaphor for where we are. The f’in’ Senate and House have driven us deeper down into the bog, those “who live like leeches on the people’s lives” (from a Langston Hughes poem) keep shamelessly sucking the blood from their fellow citizens and selling our democracy to the highest bidder— on the day before the 4th of July, no less! Those of us fighting for life and love and freedom and justice feel overwhelmed by our country’s apparent fate, stuck in the bog and sinking down into oblivion.
So I offer this image, the visual equivalent of the night is darkest just before the dawn. We can’t see it, but the open waters of freedom and redemption are just around the bend and while we must continue to make every effort to keep the boat moving, it is the blessing of the rain from the other world that finally frees us. Whether or not this will be literally true is anybody’s guess, but better to keep hope alive any way we can. Pan up and out and see that the healing waters await us. On this day that I write, Louis Armstrong’s mythological birthday, may it be so!
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