A Long Distance Love Affair (6 page)

Ripe apples drop about my head;

The luscious clusters of the vine

Upon my mouth do crush their wine;

The nectarine and curious peach

Into my  hands themselves do reach;

Stumbling on melons, as I pass,

Ensnared with flowers, I fall on grass.

Here at the fountain's sliding foot

Or at some fruit-tree's mossy root,

Casting the body's vest aside

My soul into the boughs does glide;

There, like a bird, it sits and sings,

Then whets and claps its silver wings,

And, till prepared for longer flight,

Waves in its plumes the various light...

And not a sexual hint in it...just the pure pleasure of aliveness... but it also makes me think how I'd love to be with you feeling like this just now...you're my fruit too...(my very fecund fruit).  What pleasure it will be to be with you and feel your luscious clusters (sorry!....that was Wanda!) (You'll probably also enjoy feeling mine!...I've got to stop this, it's spoiling the beauty of the poem!..can't help myself...want you so much...)

I hope things are going well for you wherever you are!  I wish all good things for you....

Feeling passionately happy today despite the longingness for you....but that contributes to the passion nonetheless.

Chariette

Dear Chariot

Thank you for your lovely email!  Thrilling to hear from you from overseas.  I was resigned to silence for quite some time yet.

I'm sorry to hear you're not well.  Get the vitamins and lots of water into you and try to get some sleep. (I confess a vested interest here as your body is my major interest in terms of art nowadays...)

I am so glad you like the poems.  As to sourcing them, the source is in me. Whenever I read something that affects me it goes into me and adds to the whirling morass of emotion and feeling that I'm made up of. That's true of the effect of music on me too... Lines come drifting back to me when I'm feeling in particular ways, and it may be only a line or two, but that's enough to take me back there.  With the poem I sent you yesterday the line that came to me in the morning before I wrote to you was "To a green thought in a green shade" because I was feeling all springy..  I knew that it was an Andrew Marvell poem and it didn't take me long to find it in my shelves.  I only quoted a couple of stanzas from this poem to you. I have so much in me that I'd like to share with you....you have the effect of stirring me so much that all these feelings and associations are very intense and that's so wonderful!!

As to the Wanda vs Chariette question.  If I were you I would definitely opt for the package...It's a package you're not likely to encounter too often and you'll get double the passion!

Thinking of you as always (with very strong Spring associations of coupling, petticoats, layers, positions, fecundity, fruit, every sort of passion...)

Chariette (and Wanda as ever)

Dear Chariot

I hope you're feeling better and that you haven't succumbed entirely to the dreaded lurgy.  You are definitely not getting enough rest by the sound of things.  I wish I could be with you to kiss you better (no matter how long that took...) (And you could look like the grim reaper and still be attractive to me)

Despite my sensitivity and delicacy of feelings I appear to have the constitution of a horse.  I can't remember the last time I was sick.  The only aches I have are to do with the aching longing I have for you...

Where are you now?  How I long to look on your divine face again.  I think you know already that I often indulge myself in the luxury of thinking about meeting up with you and how it will unfold.  This is where competition between Chariette and Wanda becomes quite intense.  Chariette is just swept away with the sublime tenderness of the thought of the first contact with you being the touch of your hands and being able to gently stroke your cheek.  Wanda is blown away with just about every carnal thought of you you could imagine and being overcome with choice as to where to begin.  Both are in a high state of receptivity...  I think it will be Chariette who starts, Wanda will then take over, and Chariette will finish..  (Have you noticed that there now appears to be 3 voices?!!  Who's the third one then?? This is starting to shape up like a complete orgy!)

Thinking of you very tenderly and very carnally and hoping you get well again soon.

Chariette and Wanda

Dear Chariot

I'm feeling so happy today I could burst with it...all tied up with the excitement of the prospect of you, your lovely phone calls this week and the sun has been out all day.  Every hyperbole that was ever coined I feel for you just now (and more!).  I'm trying not to let myself get too excited but it's a barren struggle I'm afraid.  You are just coursing through my veins with every heart beat.

I bought the most fantastic book at a second hand bookshop in Brunswick Street last week (the book shop is fabulous too - organised by an obviously passionate bibliophile).  The book is called 'Palgrave's Golden Treasury of Songs & Lyrics' (you are my golden treasury too...) and it's an anthology of poems from the Elizabethan period through to the Romantics (the 19th C) and all organised into thematic sections by Palgrave who was a Professor of Poetry at Oxford in the mid 1900's with exquisite taste for beautiful works.  It's an absolute treasure trove of delight to me (just as you are...) so steel yourself: you're likely to be inundated over coming correspondence. 

I was dipping into some poems by Keats and Shelley and Wordsworth on the way home last night.  Many of their poems reproduced here reflected the Victorians' preoccupation with death (they were probably justifiably preoccupied because it was such a common occurrence given the living and working conditions of that time).  I read one that I shouldn't have called 'On an Infant Dying as soon as Born' and had to quietly wipe away tears.  It took me back to my own darling baby stillborn daughter and the terrible grief and utter desolation of coming home with full breasts and empty arms...  God what a roller coaster of emotion I'm feeling just now...Need to move on to something else.

I have really come to appreciate the healing powers of the sun since I moved here.  When it appears in Victoria, you can see spirits lifting everywhere - this is the first time it's been out again since I mentioned it to you some time ago!  I just want to sit and feel the warmth of it on my back.  I'll love to feel the warmth of your hands (and other things!) on my back.... I'm so looking forward to being with you!  I'm as excited as a 6 year old waiting for Christmas.  I feel like I'm about to plunge off a cliff hang gliding for the first time:  a heady mixture of extreme trepidation and extreme exhilaration.  I am sure you will make me soar to the heavens though.  I want you to "kiss her until she be wearied out" (her being me of course - well all three of us!) - and I want to do the same to you.

   "See the mountains kiss high heaven,

    And the waves clasp one another;

    And the sunlight clasps the earth,

    And the moonbeams kiss the sea -

    What are all these kissings worth,

    If thou kiss not me?"

Just longing for you...

Dear Chariot

What a long weekend it's been and long long nights.  Never have I been so willing to wish my life away so fervently as just now, with the prospect of being with you so close on the horizon.

I spent Sunday afternoon in at Federation Square at the art gallery there.  There's a special exhibition of Charles Condor on there at the moment.  He was part of the Heidelberg school but much more of an impressionist than the others of that school like Roberts.  He painted many seaside scenes of beaches in Melbourne I grew up on and he captured the lovely ephemeral misty light of early summer mornings there.  What I didn't know about him though was that he spent quite a bit of time in Paris as well, leading, by all accounts, a very debauched existence (he died of syphilitic madness in his early 40s) with the likes of Toulouse Lautrec and others at the Moulin Rouge.  His Parisian works were part of the Art Nouveau movement (which is a favourite of mine) and he painted exquisite intricate designs and miniatures and grand opulent pieces as well on silk. There was also an example there of the train of a woman's silk evening dress that he had hand painted - apparently while it was on her.. how decadent is that!  Many of the displayed works were on loan from private collections particularly from Barry Humphries which I thought was an interesting connection.

When I came out of the gallery the bells of St Paul's started to peel, which was just lovely and there were strains of a busker playing the bagpipes outside Flinders Street station which was an added joy to me.  I love the pipes (I know it's definitely an acquired taste..) but there are so many associations to the history of the Scottish race in every note and that is what I hear when I listen to them.  I'm going to arrange a piper to play at my son's wedding.

Tonight I'm going to a seminar to see one of my favourite crime authors - Ian Rankin - who is Scottish.  He'll be speaking at a bookstore in the city, so that will be a bit of a thrill.

As you can see I'm trying to fill my hours with otherness as a salve to my current sorry state (of all consuming desire for you). I feel like an incendiary bomb just now.  I think I could easily sell myself off to terrorists as a weapon of mass destruction!  Wanda is giving me absolute hell....

Longing to look into your beautiful eyes again and feel you holding me in your arms.

Chariette

Dear Chariot

Don't tell me there's more than one of you because I would be just overwhelmed!  Already am with you! 

I was musing on your smile this morning coming in on the train, and when I think of your face and your 'being' I experience a physical reaction in my body (not only the blood rushing kind we both know about...) but my upper body becomes kind of conscious to me. There's a strange thing that happens to my upper arms and chest that tell my brain that they are there and they are given over to you.  I can't describe the feeling..a kind of strange flood of experience...need to go to my poetry books to try to capture this.  I'm not doing a good job of it. But what I'm trying to tell you is that you have such an effect on me you heighten my consciousness of things normally unconscious if you know what I mean.  It's a kind of physical manifestation of my emotional longingness for you that sweeps through me uncontrollably.  It's as though my body is living the feeling of 'Oooohhh' when I think of you.