Process of Illumination

It's possible that you have found yourself, sunning on a spotless day in your bedroom, alongside the nude figure of your significant other. The haphazard blinds, partially open, lay ribbons of light on her torso, and she steals a curious glance in your direction. Her smile wonders what crazy idea you're incubating. You likely turn to face her, return her smile, and begin caressing the inside of her buttocks.

If you have found yourself in this room, on this afternoon, it's likely nothing I am about to write will be any real news to you. Really, it's just one of those fleeting observations we have daily. For a second we connect to something directly in front of us, and move on. That's usually how I do it, at least. But every once in a while our attention can be caught askew, and our new angle of observation makes the obvious, for a moment, remarkable.

But there you are, it's a lazy weekend afternoon, you're still in bed although the slant of light is nagging you to move about your day, and the absolute stillness of the preceding morning has tuned your inner radio toward these otherwise ignored thoughts. The light is warm as you begin to trail downwards, finding the diaphanous wisps of rebellious hair escaping her ponytail down the length of her neck, the thumbprint-sized depression behind her clavicle, the slope of her breasts, the texture of her skin a fresh sheet of expensive cotton pulled smartly over a firm mattress - the king's chambers were never this inviting.

Her initial giggles and smiles have abruptly stopped, and you look up to find the corner of her lip is caught between her teeth, with the sensations below struggling to pull it out, though it threatens to egress with a whispered moan clutching its soft flesh, hidden in the damp warmth of her mouth. Her eyes are open but rolled back so that only a waxing slice of pupil can be seen, as if her sight was caught by the night sky and frozen there, alight, a week after the new moon.

It's all the cue you need to continue, and indeed I do, as you have before, I'm sure. She climbs on top of me, as eager as I am to cascade into each other, and begins to rock her hips. But I still have a cartoon grin drawn across my face, and she laughs again - a question - and brings her face down close. "What," she says, flatly but with play. Perhaps she's wondering why I'm making such an expression, the kind of grin so unflinching in face of circumstance that its devotion to my face pulls her from whatever mental recess she goes to when we have sex. I know exactly why that grin is there, and why it won't leave, and why I'm not asking it to. The grin is held in place by the hands of an idea, a realization of things that I have always assumed but never attended to. If I'd been able to both think these thoughts and speak them, I would have. I give a small try, but it proves to be one too many pins for my mind to juggle. My words catch and snag on awkward sentences which send them tumbling out of my mouth, and so I stop. We do not.



Afterward I sit down to collect my monologue before time's breeze enters and scatters my words away like oak leaves in autumn. If you've ever raked a lawn in the approaching harshness of an October afternoon in Wisconsin, you know you have to act quickly.



Detatch yourself for a moment, if you can, from the way this feels. From the physicality of it. For a moment, don't let the gentle tug of friction as I slide out of you and back in be the focus of your energies. Sex is almost always such an intense and inward thing, and the strength of touch such that it can snuff out other communication. So, just now, just look at us, and what we're doing, as if from the corner of the bed.

On such as sunny afternoon it shouldn't be difficult. Today's sky and all its daring lighting cast us in shades and tones that are unusual for this activity. Denuded by the fog of a hot shower, or fleshed out and silhouetted by a sleepy jaundiced streetlamp; these are the hues of lovemaking we're used to. Today though, the bright and playful sun has carved us into such stark relief that it's possible, for a moment, to pretend you've walked into a room where two lovely strangers were enjoying themselves. That you are a witness to, as much a participant of, lovemaking. It's an easy enough exercise with the slightest bit of will, and imagination. Here I am, your lover, normally painted in Fauvist blotches of indigo and violets and heated with slivers of unconfident light, now filled in with brash strokes of rose and peach and glowing white in my desire. I could be any one. And you, below me and flushing with effort, the color of your flesh shifted within the frame of mine, could be anyone. So if you have managed to remove yourself from the physical sensation of the sex between us you might begin to see two people, just any two people, working their way to a deep rouge while enjoying each other's company.

Now, before closing your mind to this new path and losing yourself again in your accelerating gyrations, hold that thought close to you and guard it like a candle flame outdoors, while reconnecting with your body, so that like staring into a mountain lake, you can see both yourself and its depth clearly and simultaneously.

I know I sound far too often like a crazed idiot, disconnected from reality and spouting soft philosophy. I know this. Bear with me, because trying to explain how I feel and what I am thinking is a bit like writing instructions on viewing a Magic Eye 3-D portrait; the words might make perfect sense to you but the meaning won't until you relax your sight and discover the image for yourself.

In this moment, slowly syncing our hips, the sine waves of our thrusting written on the sheets as a seismograph of bodily fluid, I feel not only my enjoyment at the sex we are having, but also a deep love and connection with all couples everywhere losing themselves into each other in the same way. I connect our tiny arc into the giant piebald circle of love and procreation. The myriad positions, the desires, the insecurities and taboos, we are by our participation in this postmeridian copulation also a witness to all instances prior of same.

And I guess, if you're not understanding me, that that might seem kinda weird. Perv, you might call me. Distracted, others have. But it's a difficult thing to express, that with each thrust, giggle and smile, I hear and see each giggle and thrust that humanity has created, and will eventually. And it's harder still, feeling thus connected , not to giggle and smile back.