A
gun went off, not too far away, and Talia almost bolted. I tugged her arm, worried
about her scared, rolled-wide eyes.
Summer thoughts
butterflies, elbow kisses, life beats
touch, filtered pureness, let's go into the flask of sky.
A
gun went off, not too far away, and Talia almost bolted. I tugged her arm, worried
about her scared, rolled-wide eyes.
"It's probably just somebody shooting cans," I said.
She shook her head, let her hair swing from side to side. "I'm not so sure."
Ahead, the woods opened into a field. Grass and dandelions and clover covered the earth. Some of the dandelions had aged to the point where their seed floated on the air, little white puffs going around everywhere.
Talia smiled warily. Her eyes were wet and I wondered if she still thought of the gun.
She pushed me lightly. "Follow," she said, and broke into a run.
I watched her kick her feet across green and yellow and purple and then I took off after her. She was fast, so fast, and it took a lot out of me to keep up with her. She glanced back at me and laughed.
Eventually I caught her, which meant she had intended me to catch her. We tumbled to the earth, wrestled in the warm leaves and grass, and struggled and twisted until one of us gave in.
Later, I grabbed at a dandelion, and pulled off its yellow head. She looked at me, and I could tell she had no idea what I was up to until I rubbed a streak of yellow up one of her legs, and another line across her stomach. She giggled and I felt the sureness of making another happy. I pulled her to me and hugged.
We found the flowery buds of the purple clover flowers and pulled them out, eating the tips. A delicate sweetness spread through my mouth and I soon felt like I was tingling everywhere and I kissed her and we rolled and dipped tongues to our elbows and sucked and changed and became ourselves again.
A gunshot came quickly, very close, and we struggled loose, she very scared. "I must go," she said, and I understood and then she was gone.
More thinking
the buffalo breathed saliva vapor into the air
an abrupt snort of recognition
a slow nod of head
I knew why I was there. I'd written much about beauty, about what I saw and brought out from within things, and within people. Could such a thing be accomplished with a camera, with a photograph?
I walked in, saw a swirl of photographers tightening tripods, loading film, and looking around to see how the light fell. I felt dizzy with a slight fear of knowing I would try that day to capture moments from a beautiful naked person. I struggled with my nervousness and disorientation. Why? I believed in what I felt, what I could see, and I believed in how I expressed the beauty I encountered so powerfully in my life. Perhaps the buzzing feeling that bothered me came only from taboos instilled in me from my growth in life. Crazy warnings of perversion put forth by the culture I grew up in. Can't they see?
Why should I feel ashamed or something to look upon human beauty? What could ever make us as people be that way? It makes no sense to me. Beauty just is.
When the models came forth and the photographers began clicking and shooting, I felt uncomfortable again. Like hungry predators we roamed around our prey, click-clicking, capturing an essence we'd take home and savor for days to come. I began to think this wasn't for me. What were we taking away from these beautiful people?
It had nothing to do with them being unclothed. That just seemed natural. It was strange with so many people in the room, but nobody gawked, no men leering at the females models. Up until that point I hadn't really understood male beauty, but I was glad of the male models' presence. It also felt right that some of the photographers were women. There was nothing bad here.
So what was strange to me? Was it just the shooting, like the gun?
As the day went on the swirling mass of photographers dispersed, went away from the tight cluster of the morning. I began to feel more comfortable, began to understand. Maybe human beauty could be explained this way, by painting with light. Probably not explained, for that would lessen what the human form was, but rather described, captured in a visual metaphor. Perhaps this could be a way to feel through what a lovegirl was to me, the possibilities of feminine beauty. It could be, with my writing, a door into understanding the beauty of all human kind.
