Friday, December 04, 2009
696. looking
She knew he was looking as she knew the warmth on her arm and her reading slowed down or perhaps idled in the thought of being watched, of letting the silence of his looking wash over her. She didn't look directly at him but kept steady on the page so as not to break the spell but from the corner of her eye she could see his shape, feel it somehow as if he had marshaled all the tenderness of the night before into what was not a stare, not something hard and direct or even something calling attention to itself. She could not explain the warmth. His look was not of lust, he was not undressing her, nor, she thought, was it a premeditated look, a look with an agenda or even a look to understand or comprehend. The look was as a mother looking at a sleeping child, which she thought was a strange thing to think since Trev was not a woman, not a mother, but there was something beyond gender, beyond role in how he was watching her. Even the word watch seemed wrong. He was doing something different than watching, doing something more, something other. Just what that was she could not say other than it felt like the gentle warmth of a placid ocean upon the shore. There was that peace about how he sat across the room, quietly, almost without movement, as invisible as an owl. She turned a page she had not read and again allowed her mind to focus on the warmth. This warmth, she decided, was not just her imagination, although surely her mind was spinning, but the warmth was real. It had started in her cheek, just above her dimple, the one he had brushed his lips upon as if she were canvas. It felt like sunshine. But then it began to move, to grow and she felt a lightness in the grasp of his eye. The feeling moved to her chest and she felt her nipples harden, become erect and the feeling was as she had never felt, a non-sexual sexual response and she wondered if this was love or something else and she wondered if he could see her chest blossom, bud, and if he could, what he thought. For what she felt was something more than physical desire, although her body was responding of its own accord and the feeling seemed more natural than manufactured. It seemed as if a part of nature, of the trees outside and the brook that ran nearby, as if in his looking there was a flow, a tapping into some rhythm that existed on a spiritual plane or a plane other than just the senses.
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12 comments:
This chapter is experiment #2 in writing while on Zoloft. Rather than fight the lack of creative spark I decided to work with what I had, which was just the single idea of Emy becoming aware that Trev was watching her read.
Sigh, it has always amazed me at how in tuned you are with women, and the feeling of women. Your writing is very sensual. Deep. It touches ones innermost wants and desires. To be looked upon like that, without lust and desire, just looked upon with "whatever IT is". Pure. It makes me wonder...do these feelings ever really exist, outside of ones mind, outside of "Romance Novels". Again, sigh. You indeed are a very sensual man, in tuned with what women truly want.
BTW, your writing has NOT suffered any. It is still amazing. This post brought tears to my eyes, and to my heart.
xoxoxo
H
Feels good to write--quality notwithstanding. The feeling generated by writing, not just having written, but of the writing, of getting lost in the sentences and words as they reveal themselves, letting them carry me forward as if they had a life of their own, as if I were a reporter simply documenting the life or lives of others, that these things written really did happen. But above all, there is a feeling I have when I write that is different than any other feeling--a feeling without simile.
LotL, I've often wondered, outside of the obvious, what dictates gender and with my current exploration of psychoactive medication, I am more convinced than ever that we are our chemicals. I am experiencing these changes in myself as I type. Emotion has always flowed deeply within me. There was never not a time when this was not the case, outside of the last three weeks, which in part is why I have such concern with how these meds are working, because the changes in personality, for me, are quite dramatic.
To your observation, I cannot explain why in virtually all my writing, I am more comfortable writing from the female perspective than the male. If I could explain it I would. All I know to say is it comes naturally as an expression of how I see and think and feel. I don't judge it because it simply is what it is, it is who I am. I'd like to think the writing is beyond gender but I'm not sure what that even means other than to say I don't think about gender when I write. I don't think in terms of male or female, just within the character as they exist in my mind. I'd like to think I do justice to them all. ;-)
As always, thank you for the warm and affirming comment. It is appreciated more than you know.
The quality is there, by all means. Unlike yesterday, I read this post, not looking for differences, just reading, and I see no difference. I can see the emotion. It's kinda like Em watching Trev watch her without looking straight at him. If I look for the emotion it seems different, however if I read, as I did in the past, it's there. I think of it as breathing, when you think about breathing, it becomes a voluntary action, but it happens whether not not we think about it. Thus, the emotion in your writing. I think I'm babbling so I will bid you adieu.
Extending thoughts and prayers...
HUGS
H
LotL, perhaps the best news in the last three weeks was what I felt in writing this chapter, which is to say, although not full-blown as before, but there was a trickle of emotion. And I rode that trickle for all I could. The trickle was real, not forced. Significant in that this is the first time on meds I've even felt a trickle of emotion. I also woke with an erection for the first time in three weeks, which was how I always woke before--so my morning has started with the first cracks of light in the facade of meds, light that was not there before.
;-)
Dare I say it...
AWESOME
Just a baby step but still a step in a positive direction. :-)
Tree, I feel a warmth, a different kinda warmth entirely, as though I am seeing you again for the first time in a very long time. It is so, so very good to see you.
Don't worry a moment on quality. It is there. You are wired into something that runs beneath, inside and all around us all. Let it happen. It is beautiful.
xo
erin
Erin, your comment is as a warm embrace. Thank you.
As looking at the river, from the other bank, equally as stirring, every bit as lovely.
When you write of relationship, whether it has been of lovers, of grandparent/parent and child, of friendship, the purity with which you convey thought and feeling, beyond direct words, thus impossible to confine, or at least out of my range to define. Divine insight that allows you to create the kind of moments that as loving beings we live for in our daily lives, the kind that arrive unexpectedly for the most part, that differ greatly, leave us breathless and that will be among the ones best remembered. Sigh.
I spoke in the previous post of beauty and emotion so acute, so intense, it cannot be held. This is what is so extraordinary about your writing. And you shall have to forgive me if my attempts to describe find their foundation in the abecedarian. Or the un-interpretable. You not only hold it, you cherish it, you prolong it, you create it, you live it and you share it. And you do so day after day, post after post, without shattering. As reader, apart, receiving, with the ability to take and let go, the reprieve if you will of pause, of being neither character or writer, I am all but shattered each and every time.
As I sit here feeling all that this post summons, my mind drifts to lyrics that you once posted. A country song, a very long time ago, before you began writing fiction. I remember not exactly what it was about, only that it was profoundly sad, likewise I do not remember exactly someting that you said in comments, only it is so much a part of what I am trying to formulate here...
With the very first sentence of this chapter, granted is still more evidence toward the long established conviction that you are exceptionally fortunate, though it may not always seem that way, that either through election, life experience or innate disposition (the last being the one I would wager) you are aware of yourself and the world about you in a way that few of us achieve or are even aware is possible beyond the singular moments (that seem) bestowed upon us, most times haphazardly, that you are able to take such delight in your senses that even the smallest impressions make deep imprints. With such an appreciation, with such a heightened perception, savouring every nuance, where your writing seems to capture, suspend every element in sweet embrace, I am starting to suspect that in the writing, in the creation and subsequent account of such moments, you summarize. And that this is why, you can write of the same moment over and over again, as you did with Mary, as you did with the boy, as you have so many times before.
I've near drowned in appreciation. I have not known how to start a comment. The above, I'd like you to think of as preliminary notes, the first in an extensive collection, and that I am removing them, so that I might be able to begin the real thing.
Each day you define loveliness, each day my understanding of it increases.
Sweetest, this comment feels of another time, of a dream, of silver bells and off-white cups. I read it like warm tea. And like warm tea, it fills me, with your warmth. I've said it before and I'll say it again, I'd give up bread and water in exchange for your comments.
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