pulled tight, ready to spring

i admire people who can capture a feeling or moment so eloquently in a few simple words, and manage to avoid melodrama or exaggeration. i'm reading "the green heart of the tree: essays and notes on a time in africa" by a.s. woudstra (another jen recommendation--read it, it's great) and this passage caught my attention and resonated with me. it's how i've always wanted to be able to describe my time in the gambia and how a part of me misses it so much.

"I am in Africa. Does this matter? Life here is no more real than anywhere else, it is just that here we feel it. We feel the wind whipping past, we hear the strange voice around us. Meaning becomes lost just as often as it must anywhere else, but here we notice it. If we were not here, we would not be so simply alive. Pulled tight, ready to spring. Watching the world around us more carefully than we ever have, keening towards sorrow and beauty both."