“Lust and learning…That’s really all there is, isn’t it?”—John Williams, Stoner
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Annie’s day was through and finished and wishing mindful escape, she rested, leaving blouse and pants in throw over back of bedroom chair. Liberated, she returned to a book, and began to read, resting in spread over bed.
Annie lain on the mattress in wash of evening’s light, an amber glow deepened and softened from brighter gold of high summer, sun’s trajectory shift with every eve in drift further to the south. Her body lain long and free in the amber light, hue richening tone to her own fair skin as she lain in openness to light and cool of the room in rest, stomach on mattress spread as she read pages of the romance aided by light of bedside lamp.
The book was a story of place she knew, a school and land written by author that never called it home but told enough for minds that did to fill and write the blanks and details purposefully absent. It was a romance, not of students, but of a teacher: a man who fell in love with a world of literature, who abandoned, but did not disappoint, the expectations of a rural family; who idealized love ever as much as the classics he read and, in life, proved for him as much fiction as the stories until in despondency and drift he encountered a gift in experience and soul that thought and dreamed as he and in the end lived what could be called an extraordinarily unextraordinary life, perhaps a disappointment if assessed by some, but lived as gift to a few affected in the brief time and intersection of lives on courses and trajectories met and shared, for a season, within classroom and walls of Jesse Hall.
Annie read the passages appearing—page by page—drawing deeper into ideal of the writer’s dream:
“In his extreme youth Stoner had thought of love as an absolute state of being to which, if one were lucky, one might find access; in his maturity he had decided it was the heaven of a false religion, toward which one ought to gaze with an amused disbelief, a gently familiar contempt, and an embarrassed nostalgia. Now in his middle age he began to know that it was neither a state of grace nor an illusion; he saw it as a human act of becoming, a condition that was invented and modified moment by moment and day by day, by the will and the intelligence of the heart…
…Sometimes, in the sleepy laziness that followed their lovemaking, he lay in what seemed to him a slow and gentle flux of sensation and unhurried thought; and in that flux he hardly knew whether he spoke aloud or whether he merely recognized the words that sensation and thought finally came to.
He dreamed of perfections, of worlds in which they could always be together, and half believed in the possibility of what he dreamed. ‘What,’ he said, ‘would it be like if,’ and went on to construct a possibility hardly more attractive than the one in which they existed. It was an unspoken knowledge they both had, that the possibilities they imagined and elaborated were gestures of love and a celebration of the life they had together now.
The life they had together was one that neither of them had really imagined. They grew from passion to lust to a deep sensuality that renewed itself from moment to moment.
‘Lust and learning,’ Katherine once said. ‘That’s really all there is, isn’t it?’”
Annie smiled, musing, holding to the thought as body and spirit warmed awash in the amber light and touched by written words.
Sometimes, the words of another speak better than us the clarity of thoughts we hold but fail to ever form or give to sound. She read the question again, did she believe it? Was that really all there is?
In her smile, eyes and mind went distant as she mused and returned only upon sense of new and changing energy.
In the doorway, she found James’ gaze watching her in her lie and length and the liberty of freedoms. In his gaze, his own face and spirit glowed not from amber light but at the sight of her in peace and soft repose, musings of her mind resonant with the amber energy of the near-autumn eve; fair skin and softer lines across covered beauty alive in evening’s glow.
Annie felt the warmth and beginning of blush, but she could not glow any greater than already in amber’s glow.
She smiled to James, observing, unstirred from her rest or musings that continued.
“What are you reading?” James asked.
Annie raised the book, turning cover for him to see: man in coat, hands in pockets, gaze of glassed and downcast eyes before a background of grey.
“How do you like it?” James asked curious to know and learn her thoughts.
Annie read aloud full of the passage that led her into thought, ending with the same spoken question, “Lust and learning…That’s really all there is isn’t it?”
James listened, still staring from the doorway, musing the words, reading her countenance, taking in, still, the full of her sight in rest’s repose, ethereal in lie and light.
“…and I think I would like to know what you believe on the words.
Wouldn’t it be nice to read and write and love well the one you do for all the rest of a life?”
She lowered the book back to bed, leaving it closed, page marked with feather found in morning’s walk. Thought still in mind, it was James she read, studying and discerning with sight; waiting for words to speak into form thought shaping still in mind.
Waiting, she raised a leg, bending at knee, foot high and circling at ankle as toes moved light: curiosity’s show through interim of response.
James witnessed, reading airy way of her body’s movements.
“It sounds like a good beginning…” James spoke, smiling from face of focusing strength, a defining and shaping of thought as Annie’s stayed open and free. She believed his answer spoke of them as well as to the story.
There was a power and difference in his countenance when his thoughts and energy kept on thoughts and objects held in focus; and she loved when she was one.
“I think it works well for the story, and that all good stories that have their stand-alone moments and lines that define them—that encapsulate the entirety of a moment, mood, or theme—but as to life and all there is; I believe there’s more…”
“What then?” Annie asked, raised foot’s circle’s alternating into reversed direction as she stayed, fixed in center of his focus.
His countenance stayed in its focus, following light movement of her foot to line and bend of her leg to body, long, below; eyes and expression of interest waiting when reached in finish of follow of her form.
“Learning in lust, if these are the two ideals or objects to which a life holds, no matter the depths of our knowledge seeking, maybe it is still a life lived in the shallows.”
“How so?”
“They are pleasures. Highs of ecstasy, and pains of opposing equivalent, but their existence is ephemeral. They live, die, and end with us.”
“Maybe the ephemeral is all we have…” Annie spoke.
“Maybe,” James acknowledged, “but I believe there’s more.”
Annie stayed in the amber light, but the power of its cast waned as sun set further beginning descent behind end of the western sky. Glow of her body softened as hue of her eyes empowered; change and effect of the transience and mystery of light.
“Even if ephemeral, perhaps life has part and role in the making of eternal’s greater.”
“How so?”
James smiled, affected in change of Annie’s eyes.
“To give testament to the Beautiful. To give testament to the Wonder that we encounter in this life and world. To live a gratitude for all that is, and do our part so that the miracle, wonder, and beauty—the experiment of this realm and world and testament to its truths—does not end with us.
Maybe our learning leads it back to the second and its biologic aim and purpose.”
“Which is?”
“To continue on the lineage of life and spirit, another generation to hold witness to all that is beautiful and worthy in this world, to advance in learning beyond where our own time and capacity ends; forging of another link in ideal of an eternal lineage—or until a link should fail and forever-after end the legacy of love’s continuation; to create by act and means in which God imbues continuation of life’s experiment, witness to Wonder and Dream so that learning and lust should not end with us. Maybe the more is fulfillment of love, and lust’s design…”
“To have children…” Annie spoke somewhere between question and statement, weighing and taking measure of the words.
“To create in becoming life-force and soul that after reveals levels and dimensions to learning we could never know, perceive, and discern absent the life and soul created of our love and lust; and further, by them, our life and purpose is continued: diluting, generation after generation in the further propagation of man for as long as our lineage is blessed to exist and further create…”
Sun breathed flare of amber energy in final sign before its fall. It washed in glowing strength over all of Annie as she lain, listening, and her eyes and hair shone radiant in breath of spirit-flare.
“Is that really what you believe?” Annie asked, eyes and face radiant in the amber.
“It is,” James affirmed, affected in witness to her living wonder.
“Then let us create good and beautiful babies to raise and love; who will tell and continue our stories long after we are gone and into eternity for as our lineage is blessed to be; so that the Dream—learning, love, and lust—should not end with us.”
Sky’s amber breath exhaled complete, waning in its glow. Spirit-light in Annie’s eyes remained, emanant of becoming energy in room.
“Do you really mean that?”
“I do…” Annie affirmed, spirit-energy in eyes.
James moved for Annie, holding to legs and turning as body twisted in its follow, smile’s flash over face before cover and meet of kiss as, together, they made manifest the Dream.
*****
They lain together in the after, heart to heart, eye to eye, silent save for easy breaths, immersed in moment and presence of simply being. After, they held near in presence and drifted in minds as they remained in repose reading by each other’s side. Annie returned to book of before and he into Dante’s Dream.
Annie restored where story paused as one of own was lived. Upon next page, there waiting, she read:
“They learned to be together without speaking, and they got the habit of repose…
Sometimes they would lift their eyes from their studies, smile at each other, and return to their reading; sometimes Stoner would look up from his book and let his gaze rest upon the graceful curve of Katherine’s back and upon the slender neck where a tendril of hair always fell. Then a slow, easy desire would come over him like a calm, and he would rise and stand beside her and let his arms rest lightly on her shoulders. She would straighten and let her head go back and against his chest…Then they would make love, and lie quietly for a while, and return to their studies, as if their love and learning were one process.”[i]
She held her breath in receiving of the lines, turning for view James in contemplations, reading at her side, eyes looking over page for meet and find of hers and silent exchange of telling adoration.
Heart warmed at inspiration to her read and living romance; a wonder long after amber’s rays; and within she prayed for the taking of their Dream.
[i] John Williams, Stoner.