He was geometry, a french curve in the warm light of the ambulance. An infinity of dunes of light and shadow, his voice a whispery desert wind. There was not much room and what we did was witnessed of cloth, half looking, half abandoned, to the warmth of finger and wool upon orphaned flesh; of the ache of ripe fruit, bending branch, seeded, seeking, needed, wanting, release, upon the feminine furrow. We were wordless; and fragrant. As an orchard in maturity. Wanting no more than sun and rain and time to turn both into life.He was bronze, iron, steel and steam. And I porcelain, a vase, redolent in dewy bloom. Where I had need, as the sun upon the blossom, he poured a warmth like golden honey, and I felt as his train, as coming down hill, fueled of an flammeous heat, a force exponential, growing; and I knew where I was going, where he was taking me, where there was no stopping. Above his eclipse of head and hair, one bulb rocked back and forth as vials of cure chimed in our breeze, that melodious sound of delicate glass, of pharmacology applauding. Like this it was. Life embracing life, in our metal cocoon, seeking a stay, wishing we could.
7 comments:
and I knew where I was going, where he was taking me
I love this part especially. A beautifully simple and epiphanic recognition anchored high and low so to speak, in the fundamentality of sex, all of existence in the act and all of life in the moment, and the blessedness of love. There is such an enchanting balance of tenderness and eroticism, to label, within this remembrance, such a poignant balance within the entire (thus far) narrative of Mary and Virgil that is so rich on the lessons of life. The infatuation evoked for these characters is every bit as infinite as the characters of The Story. We were wordless; and fragrant. is a wonderful example of the fluency of your writing, creative, inspired, delightful. And I love that you followed the above sentence with imagery of an orchard, which for this reader at least painted via the sun and the rain ripe oranges which in turn was so symbolic of this particular piece of writing and the series in general for reasons that reminded me of Papa's red and yellow painting, not in regards to perception but in regard to life, joy and pain, hope and disappointment, the single moment and a lifetime, orange, and it isn't that you have all these 'counterpoints' featured within this narrative, but that you have them constantly orbiting your central, gravitational (if I am using the word correctly) core. Mary. Life. The timelessness of love, the potentiality for entirety in the moment and immortality, a connective between this world and the afterlife. Life and death. Found and lost. Happiness and sadness. Past and future. What might have been and what was. The individual and the masses. War and peace. To know someone. There is so much within, everything at all times, attempting to list them is as attempting to catch every snowflake as it falls in order to show their intrinsic differences. Skimming the outerrim of the wealth of thought and feeling that this post incites in this comment for to delve would fill an eternity. If I had nothing else to read each day for the rest of my life but the current installments of 1944, it would live and breathe, inspire and affect, it would always be snowing.
As you can see, I don't even know what to say, except that as so many times before I yearn for that tick-tock of a clock on quiet days and quiet nights, of silence between words, of absorption occasionally bespeckled with observation. :-)
Because I cannot not mention it at all. Overwhelmingly poignant and expressive is the concluding sentence, I cannot even yet begin to even skim the outside.
Sigh, your words, your comments, as I have said so many times, are as my daily bread and water. I am not the same when you are gone from these pages, when your mind does not haunt my postings. Your comments, truly, are art in and of themselves and when I entertain the thought of publishing, I cannot separate what I have written from what you have added. In my mind, as clear as if I were there, as if I were Mary, not Virgil, is that first push, that first entering, that first feeling of being filled, of just holding him still, and how sublimely perfect the fit, the moment such that the act itself became something more, transcended what would have been seen to the eye or heard by the ear; and in this, is the challenge, to write the profane as sacred; to describe and justify an event, a handful of hours such that we can believe and understand perhaps how such an experience could forever have changed Mary and instead of feeling sorry for the spinster, we envy her, for to have lived but for an hour is better than to have not lived for a lifetime.
Wonderful images, as always, Tree. I love the mathematical references (it's the math teacher in me)
Decadence, true decadence.
Hugs,
Sue
Thanks Sue. You are very welcome. :-)
"...and instead of feeling sorry for the spinster, we envy her, for to have lived but for an hour is better than to have not lived for a lifetime."
To have lived him, the man, the lover, the child within him, to have lived his breath, dying, yes, even that, to have known such a love, its agony and euphoria, all these things, to have had this, if only momentarily, weighted against the expanse, yes, yes. Enviable.
S., when you write, and I read, I feel alive. As if you have the power to stop time and make my heart beat louder and louder.
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