Further Explorations by David Russell is today's feature on One Thousand Worlds.
Further Explorations-
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Further Explorations-
Energised by their lovely liberating experience, Janice and Cedric are determined to ‘spread their wings’ and take the world by storm, a two-person conspiracy. They head off physically in different directions, but remain in constant depth communication electronically, ever comparing notes, monitoring each other’s minds and experiences for a depth of mutual understanding. They may meet again fully equipped with a great depth of self-knowledge, and a knowledge of each other’s depth. They negotiate giddy peaks of high finance; Janice even does into ‘dreamscape’, making a pact with the devil. Further delights of sensuality are explored by both, with exotic partners; the depths and shallows of life are all embraced …
About the author-
b. 1940. Resident in the UK
They beamed at each other, sizing up their physiques
again, comparing their respective performances which had led up to that climax.
Then Janice breathily broke the silence. “You were an astral rocket, surging,
grounding, resurging.”
“And you the booster supreme.”
After a final hug, they wistfully shrugged, along with
smiles and suspicions of tears. “We’ve both got our planes to catch,
darling…we’re all wired up.” They turned their backs on each other going down
their separate lanes.
Janice and Cedric’s bittersweet parting, executed with
watertight composure, froze that moment of perfection. Their state-of-the-art
arrangements, so efficient in sustaining long-term contact were so effortlessly
executed—miraculously, none of the hitches either of them experienced with
their other contacts—that they simply had to have been exquisitely
premeditated, but all the more because, regarding functioning in the immediate
present, they were both prone to fumble and stutter.
Yet, there was a sense of permanence in that kaleidoscope
world of fleeting acquaintances. Shattering glasses always sharpens, enriches
the vision. Closet pyromania fantasy makes every dreamer dynamic—visions of the
inferno, crashing of all solid architecture, but with the stench of charred
flesh blanked off. Such an abundance of good looks and vibrant expressions
passing by on the streets; it felt that any one of them had destructive
potential, mighty cataracts at close quarters. The diffusion of that potential
sustains the world’s equilibrium, global spark potential.
As they lived so exclusively for the depths, the buoyant
currents of life had forced them up to the surface, to embrace the shallows,
while sustaining their ability to forsake them, in perfect control of their
natural buoyancy. That was the precarious stability engendered by their
conjoint imbalance, melding of premeditation and blind panic, undermining and
invigorating—generating a zest for life through the threat of its loss. But
privately, they both missed the comfort of a little warming clumsiness. Living
without it was like negotiating ungritted ice on a road—so easy to be injured
if the path is too smooth, and the ugly, grinding monster can be a saviour.
If it was a matter of being nourished by
the celebrity images, there was some potential there of Hugh Grant meeting
Renée Zellweger—weights adjusted just right without painful drab dieting,
though they were both thorough in burning away the calories. Perhaps next time,
they could let go a little, though each of them always looked naturally spruce
and together. Their negatives were revealing full images in the darkroom, the
changing room, the transformation room, under the common denominator of its red
light—great to contemplate the universal monochrome, fabulous the flaunting,
waving of the leanness to reach out for their ideals.
It is good that kindred souls sustain
contact when travelling in opposite directions. Vacua are good for slow-tempo
reflection…
Geographically, their paths and areas had
been quite close since childhood. Their respective parents’ careers had been
near parallel in terms of both town and position in the hierarchy. Minute
adjustments, of course, could easily have driven them oceans apart. But as
things actually mapped out, in the cold, fluorescent light of reality,
early-life setbacks were happily avoided while their protective shells
hardened. Their respective cynicisms had come to full fruition and then their
sophistication cracked and burst with full pollen prior to their encounter.
From the bottom of the jaded fatigue of disillusionment, they could only rise,
bubbles in the bottle, beaming at all their onlookers.
Now they would expand their disrobing into
global recklessness. The repartee, live and
electronic, proliferated and ricocheted.
They’ve got the right to do
what they want to do with each other and keep themselves to themselves, and
don’t bother anyone, thought Janice.
“Yes, I appreciate that the
boundaries of tolerance are shifting dramatically, but we can’t just stand
still…” mused Cedric.
Having speculated so long, so
timidly about becoming swingers—and with a great deal of initial revulsion,
they had at last done so. Having lagged so long in the rear, they had jumped to
the head of their queues without jostling, without pushing. The tides of change
had broken down each one’s formidable, well-tried barriers. And in this case,
miraculously, the reality made a snug fit with the anticipation and reverie.
They made high fidelity recordings with their memories. Ok, so there might be
subsequent evaporation, a dry, crumpled-parchment residue, but perhaps
renewable with a suitable inundation.
The museums are so
state-of-the-art now when there is such a polarity between their
structure-shells and their contents. Those obscure vaults long ago lost the
allure of their inaccessibility. So many now can be satisfied by reproductions
or flickering images of their contents. The antique facades are now so brazenly
open to the stonemason. Mentally, perhaps physically, they would become
daredevil athletes…
They simultaneously fired that
starting-gun of supreme adventure at each other. “It’s time to burn the boats!”
Theirs was the ice-skating
giddiness of euphoria, with its swirling skirt concomitants—its figure eights.
Janice felt a few querying ripples about her orientation. Sometimes it felt it
was fuzzying and melting round the edges, the aesthetics of concocting an
eclair. She did appreciate beautiful women, those ballerinas, runners,
swimmers—yes, and skaters! She loved to see herself as she would love others
to see her, galvanise the cameras, be their elusive, flirtatious magnet.
Cedric did indeed have some
androgynous, near-feminine grace about him. Perhaps this had been a precious,
isolated incident to compare, contrast and counterpoint, manipulate the borderlines,
her mirror-image, melting the gender barriers including her gaining some
desired hardness—or maybe massed mirrors, modulating every angle. Or did
she, at heart, wish to stand before eternity as a crystalline statue—posthumously
fulfilled? A pilgrimage to the great melting-pot seemed called for. In her
fantasy, she could coach him to become her ideal. They had both enjoyed
their mudlarking as kids, before appearances took over and they polished their
presentable interfaces for the smooth world.
Again, they had attended many of the same cycling
rallies, but never meeting, each radiating impeccable chic with
state-of-the-art crash helmets, elbow and knee pads. Superbly enjoyable events,
great heady highs without hangovers, defiantly streaming past those harassed
motorists in their traffic-jam queues—neither had witnessed a crash.
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