Steven Hunley
01-03-2012, 11:54 PM
http://youtu.be/XqECFy_qzkM
Come Rain or Come Shine
by
Steven Hunley
‘More strange than true...
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.’ ---Theseus—Midsummer’s Night Dream
In a cabin outside Aspen a roaring fireplace takes center stage. The foreground is littered with throw-pillows, earrings scattered willy-nilly, and champagne corks once shot ceiling-high now lie like funny-shaped soldiers asleep on the floor. A painting, oil on canvas, reveals a nude woman. It’s The Robing of the Bride by Man Ernst, circa 1939, with highlights and shadows in just the right places. Peggy Guggenheim gave it to our couple when they stayed at her palazzo in Venice. A green demonic Tangata Manu, or bird-man, serves his new queen and is holding a broken spear.
Glistening snow on blue mountain peaks surround the cabin like an ancient unfurled backdrop complete with wrinkles. Under that, nothing but ragged green tree lines in every direction, made of rugged white granite cleaved with blue foaming waterfalls, falling, forever falling, into calm limpid pools.
Our couple likes it that way. Romantic is their singular flavor.
She got the risqué mouth. He got the slicked-back hair. She got the turquoise eyes, he got the coconut pair. He got handsome. She got style. They got everything…like a child.
He owns the moves that let her know what he wants. It’s her, only her, and that’s what counts.
Since each one is the other’s wonder.
Somerset Maugham wants to do a piece on their “relationship.” Man-Woman kind of thing. Figures he’ll do a novel, “Of Human Bonding” or something like that, kind of a sequel with a happy ending. Decides to make the setting someplace exotic, Tahiti or the Marquesas for certain. He needs to smoke a sophisticated cigarette and think about it while reviewing galleys from his publisher.
He, brash and hopeful, determined, out of his mind in love, meets her due to their messages crossing accidentally in space, on their way to the Hughes satellite, never expecting an outcome like this. Then the dreamer awakens. Her reality tastes sweeter than his wildest sugary dreams.
She, apprehensive at first, with no hope for their future, changes her outlook entirely. And why not? She’s a hopeless romantic at heart. She’s a work in progress who’s a work of art. Like the Beatles once sang, she’s a woman.
Synchronicity plays its part with dragonflies and coincidences, hinting that nature has a hand in their meeting. The importance of symbols does not escape our fearless duo, no more than they escaped Gauguin. Paul knew what it meant to be “savage”.
Maupassant insists they eat a croissant in his presence. Wants to see them place pieces of warm white dough in each other’s mouths with pale well-formed fingers. Wants to get all sentimental about it in a markedly French sort of way. Can’t wait to watch them play “in like lightning-out like a comet,” like the course of his literary life.
Billie Holiday singing Come Rain or Come Shine in the background. Old recordings sound good, even with scratches, especially when they match the weather. Raindrops provide soft counterpoint to the music of her fire-engine red nails tapping on a crystal cosmic watch face. The harsh cold and wet outside are tempered by the fireplace and each of our lover’s attitudes. Feeling close was never a problem with these two. They own the patent on snuggling. Only they made snuggling Chic, and brought it back into fashion.
We mere mortals who once cursed the cold thank them profusely.
Nice and cozy like. An auspicious occasion for sure. The indicators are indicating like crazy. Size small black lacy negligee tossed with reckless abandon on the red Persian carpet. His belt wound like a cobra in the same place. Small tins of glimmering tea candles dance around the rim of the bathtub. Her special oil with the cap that opens with a SNAP results in hair pins lost in couch cushions. No respect for undergarments, it’s a literary tradition.
Oberon is accused of ripping off Titania’s undergarments, and later, after his passion was satisfied, felt remorse, and replaced them with silver lacy spider webs, woven by the goddess Arachnid, on the occasion of her deflowering.
The reason our couple gets on so well is that he lets her be herself, whispering one magic night, across a perfumed pillow, her shell-like ear just a breath away,
“Be as thou was wont to be. See as thou was wont to see.”--Oberon
She’d always wanted someone she could trust. He always hoped to find some understanding, so…
A cell phone accidently left on vibrate falls off the edge of the bed. Thank God for stainless steel.
Hemingway drops by to return fishing tackle. Says he caught a big one but sharks got to it first. Ate it like hungry hyenas he shot in Africa while on safari in the Heart of Darkness. Papa is real Conrad. He invites them to get drunk, take a train to Pamplona to run like crazy in front of angry bulls. Insists they wear red berets. Wants them to meet Mary and have a Marguerita while he types away at his wooden desk with his sleeves rolled up, continuing an endless safari to find the proper words for his magic scribbles. You know Papa. All good readers know Papa.
When our man regards his woman’s throat, sculpted white Carrera marble, it gives him the notion to cover every inch of her with baby kisses. He understands, that unlike the Venus de Milo, her pleasured hands will soon respond in kind.
When our woman regards her man, she takes his immediate measure to see how he will stand up under pressure, only to sigh when she calculates the results on her exquisite physique.
Steinbeck has invited them over next week for a glass of California wine. They make good company and therefore good copy. Besides, they’re Californianos too. The winter cabin outside Aspen is only a love nest, not their permanent home. That’s up on the untamed Pacific coast, tucked away in California. Gotta keep things in the family, that’s what John figures. New writers owe old writers plenty. It’s a reciprocal thing.
Only one thing on our couple’s minds, pleasuring each-other in every way possible. Time to get animal.
Uh-oh, watch out.
I feel like I’m drifting into dangerous waters here. Maybe I should drop anchor.
I’d write more, but then it would get all erotic-like and much too full of fun to be taken as “serious literature.” I can’t do that. If I do, in a hundred years this piece of work will never be in high-school textbooks. That’s what I want, my place in the sun, Come Rain or Come Shine. I wanna end up in a ratty old textbook full of hastily scribbled phone-numbers and crude nasty drawings, with ripped-out pages, dog-eared and neglected remnants left over when students didn’t want to read aloud in class.
“Mr. Hunley, I can’t read aloud today, my page is missing.”
Musty, dusty, torn and frayed, smelling like an old text book, on the splintered back shelf of the school library, waiting my turn to be-recycled. That’s how I want it. So play it careful, that’s what I have to do.
I gotta stop here.
It seems such a shame. Seriously, it bothers me more than you. But you’ll get over it if you have any imagination. You can always fix it.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them. –Theseus
After all- I didn’t want to offend, and neither did my friends.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear. –Puck, and me too. Sorry, I got no manners.
© 2011 Steven Hunley with the help of Bill Shakespeare.
Come Rain or Come Shine
by
Steven Hunley
‘More strange than true...
The lunatic, the lover, and the poet
Are of imagination all compact.’ ---Theseus—Midsummer’s Night Dream
In a cabin outside Aspen a roaring fireplace takes center stage. The foreground is littered with throw-pillows, earrings scattered willy-nilly, and champagne corks once shot ceiling-high now lie like funny-shaped soldiers asleep on the floor. A painting, oil on canvas, reveals a nude woman. It’s The Robing of the Bride by Man Ernst, circa 1939, with highlights and shadows in just the right places. Peggy Guggenheim gave it to our couple when they stayed at her palazzo in Venice. A green demonic Tangata Manu, or bird-man, serves his new queen and is holding a broken spear.
Glistening snow on blue mountain peaks surround the cabin like an ancient unfurled backdrop complete with wrinkles. Under that, nothing but ragged green tree lines in every direction, made of rugged white granite cleaved with blue foaming waterfalls, falling, forever falling, into calm limpid pools.
Our couple likes it that way. Romantic is their singular flavor.
She got the risqué mouth. He got the slicked-back hair. She got the turquoise eyes, he got the coconut pair. He got handsome. She got style. They got everything…like a child.
He owns the moves that let her know what he wants. It’s her, only her, and that’s what counts.
Since each one is the other’s wonder.
Somerset Maugham wants to do a piece on their “relationship.” Man-Woman kind of thing. Figures he’ll do a novel, “Of Human Bonding” or something like that, kind of a sequel with a happy ending. Decides to make the setting someplace exotic, Tahiti or the Marquesas for certain. He needs to smoke a sophisticated cigarette and think about it while reviewing galleys from his publisher.
He, brash and hopeful, determined, out of his mind in love, meets her due to their messages crossing accidentally in space, on their way to the Hughes satellite, never expecting an outcome like this. Then the dreamer awakens. Her reality tastes sweeter than his wildest sugary dreams.
She, apprehensive at first, with no hope for their future, changes her outlook entirely. And why not? She’s a hopeless romantic at heart. She’s a work in progress who’s a work of art. Like the Beatles once sang, she’s a woman.
Synchronicity plays its part with dragonflies and coincidences, hinting that nature has a hand in their meeting. The importance of symbols does not escape our fearless duo, no more than they escaped Gauguin. Paul knew what it meant to be “savage”.
Maupassant insists they eat a croissant in his presence. Wants to see them place pieces of warm white dough in each other’s mouths with pale well-formed fingers. Wants to get all sentimental about it in a markedly French sort of way. Can’t wait to watch them play “in like lightning-out like a comet,” like the course of his literary life.
Billie Holiday singing Come Rain or Come Shine in the background. Old recordings sound good, even with scratches, especially when they match the weather. Raindrops provide soft counterpoint to the music of her fire-engine red nails tapping on a crystal cosmic watch face. The harsh cold and wet outside are tempered by the fireplace and each of our lover’s attitudes. Feeling close was never a problem with these two. They own the patent on snuggling. Only they made snuggling Chic, and brought it back into fashion.
We mere mortals who once cursed the cold thank them profusely.
Nice and cozy like. An auspicious occasion for sure. The indicators are indicating like crazy. Size small black lacy negligee tossed with reckless abandon on the red Persian carpet. His belt wound like a cobra in the same place. Small tins of glimmering tea candles dance around the rim of the bathtub. Her special oil with the cap that opens with a SNAP results in hair pins lost in couch cushions. No respect for undergarments, it’s a literary tradition.
Oberon is accused of ripping off Titania’s undergarments, and later, after his passion was satisfied, felt remorse, and replaced them with silver lacy spider webs, woven by the goddess Arachnid, on the occasion of her deflowering.
The reason our couple gets on so well is that he lets her be herself, whispering one magic night, across a perfumed pillow, her shell-like ear just a breath away,
“Be as thou was wont to be. See as thou was wont to see.”--Oberon
She’d always wanted someone she could trust. He always hoped to find some understanding, so…
A cell phone accidently left on vibrate falls off the edge of the bed. Thank God for stainless steel.
Hemingway drops by to return fishing tackle. Says he caught a big one but sharks got to it first. Ate it like hungry hyenas he shot in Africa while on safari in the Heart of Darkness. Papa is real Conrad. He invites them to get drunk, take a train to Pamplona to run like crazy in front of angry bulls. Insists they wear red berets. Wants them to meet Mary and have a Marguerita while he types away at his wooden desk with his sleeves rolled up, continuing an endless safari to find the proper words for his magic scribbles. You know Papa. All good readers know Papa.
When our man regards his woman’s throat, sculpted white Carrera marble, it gives him the notion to cover every inch of her with baby kisses. He understands, that unlike the Venus de Milo, her pleasured hands will soon respond in kind.
When our woman regards her man, she takes his immediate measure to see how he will stand up under pressure, only to sigh when she calculates the results on her exquisite physique.
Steinbeck has invited them over next week for a glass of California wine. They make good company and therefore good copy. Besides, they’re Californianos too. The winter cabin outside Aspen is only a love nest, not their permanent home. That’s up on the untamed Pacific coast, tucked away in California. Gotta keep things in the family, that’s what John figures. New writers owe old writers plenty. It’s a reciprocal thing.
Only one thing on our couple’s minds, pleasuring each-other in every way possible. Time to get animal.
Uh-oh, watch out.
I feel like I’m drifting into dangerous waters here. Maybe I should drop anchor.
I’d write more, but then it would get all erotic-like and much too full of fun to be taken as “serious literature.” I can’t do that. If I do, in a hundred years this piece of work will never be in high-school textbooks. That’s what I want, my place in the sun, Come Rain or Come Shine. I wanna end up in a ratty old textbook full of hastily scribbled phone-numbers and crude nasty drawings, with ripped-out pages, dog-eared and neglected remnants left over when students didn’t want to read aloud in class.
“Mr. Hunley, I can’t read aloud today, my page is missing.”
Musty, dusty, torn and frayed, smelling like an old text book, on the splintered back shelf of the school library, waiting my turn to be-recycled. That’s how I want it. So play it careful, that’s what I have to do.
I gotta stop here.
It seems such a shame. Seriously, it bothers me more than you. But you’ll get over it if you have any imagination. You can always fix it.
The best in this kind are but shadows; and the worst are no worse, if imagination amend them. –Theseus
After all- I didn’t want to offend, and neither did my friends.
If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumbered here
While these visions did appear. –Puck, and me too. Sorry, I got no manners.
© 2011 Steven Hunley with the help of Bill Shakespeare.