“Love and learning…That’s really all there is isn’t it?”—John Williams
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Intimacy and openness, nakedness and trust: it was method to their art. It was essence to their love and, as of bodies in the last—in make—they enwrapped in intertwine, one losing self in other and becoming of a One. One’s make and lead into becoming of the other, and from the other, new inspiration of the first in both deepening and expansion of Creation’s regenerative eternal.
Such was their essence. Such was their art, medium of find and inspiration, as she read in openness of sofa lie from pages a John Williams novel. It was winter in the story, an ideal of romance, escape, and manifest of a love-ideal, that for a moment, was.
She read in the story of snowfall covered hills across an Ozark winter scene, a cabin in the woods where “in the evening they sometimes lighted the oil lamp and read; but more often…sat on folded blankets in front of the fireplace and talked and were silent and watched the flames play intricately upon the logs and watched the play of firelight upon each other’s faces.”
She looked to him across the room in openness of same, fire of the hearth in heat and light as each read inside their worlds and, too, held conscious and presence in the other’s.
It was not a winter scene, no snow but sky of rolling depths of gray with squall of rain and softer waves of mist in passings. The weather kept them in. It kept their fire kindled, warming in sustain of their private openness. It was not an Ozark scene but one of near, last of Shawnee and Osceola plains before meet and end at said plateau. Through open door with vantage view, she stared on the sodden scene: rolling gray, rain-mist’s sound soft on patio speaking hushed through the frame; naked of the trees, held last of leaves darkened in the damp, over winterkilled tallgrass plains tanned and bluestem-maroon in season’s dying away.
A story started in her mind, but it was only a beginning—tail of the tiger—but she knew that it was had if she could only keep and strengthen hold.
She gazed to him again in read in rest before the hearth, his eyes upon the page and attention—she knew—on her.
She felt a warmth, inspire’s begin, and in the feel she rose leaving book in sofa’s rest. From lie she rose to upward sit, from sit into a stand.
Hearing, feeling, knowing her movement, his own shown attentions turned. She moved, slow and eased, soft body-sway to stand beside the hearth adding wood upon the burn and turning, intimate of eyes’ invite, she inquired in a gaze.
Eyes and stare, he answered in affirm and movements and adjustments for her join; slow and gentle kisses as she lowered, and deepened when arrived and in her rest. Their take and hold’s then intertwine—sensation in their Oneness—of art and essence romance-lived that in after would be written, saved, and shared away as love made into page.
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“They learned to be together without speaking, and they got the habit of repose…For hours at a time she would sit at the tiny desk against the wall, her head bent down in intense concentration over books and papers, her slender pale neck curving and flowing out of the dark blue robe she habitually wore; Stoner sprawled in the chair or lay on the bed in like concentration.
Sometimes they would lift their eyes from their studies, smile at each other, and return to their readings; 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 behind her and let his arms rest lightly on her shoulders. She would straighten and let her head go back against his chest, and his hands would go forward into the loose robe and gently touch her breasts. 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.”—John Williams, Stoner