Variations on a Theme

By Huck Fairman

Variations on a Theme is a collection of five short stories and two brief memories, or memoirs, looking back on former loves, attractions, and college. The theme uniting the stories and memories is love and attractions between men and women. The writing styles vary, as do some of the story/memoir locationsNew York City, Vermont, Rome, Italy. The stories are mostly contemporary or occurring in recent decades, but one memoir looks back at the 60s.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 22, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543465068

Huck Fairman

ATHENA Parthenos/Promachus, is Huck Fairman’s fourth novel, following HYMN, TALES OF THE CITY, and NOAH’S CHILDREN. When not working on fiction, he has been active in the environmental movement (CITIZENS CLIMATE LOBBY, SIERRA CLUB, 350.org) seeking solutions to global warming and writing a guest column on local and national solutions in a local newspaper.

Book preview

Copyright © 2017 by Huck Fairman.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017917345

ISBN:      Hardcover      978-1-5434-6504-4

      Softcover      978-1-5434-6505-1

      eBook         978-1-5434-6506-8

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 12/11/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

769976

CONTENTS

MEMOIR – I.

PRELUDE

SONGS AND STORIES

COLORS

Aloft

Into The Park

NIGHT

THE LAKE

PIAZZA DEL POPOLO

DREAMIN’

BREAKFAST

MEMOIR – II.

REUNIONS

MEMOIR – I.

PRELUDE

A wedding in Northern Vermont. A friend’s daughter.

Rooms booked in a rolling country inn. The ceremony unfolds the next day, on the grounds of another former farm, now inn. Guests walk in the sun together up a gentle hill, to its crown overlooking an endless valley stretching away green and golden to the west. The vows are personal and heart-felt.

A reception and dinner follow, murmuring in a converted cathedral of a barn. Dining first, in a smaller room, chatting with friends of the parents. Then, in a great, high-ceilinged chamber, dancing.

He dances with the bride’s mother, until she urges him to dance with her younger daughter standing to the side. He does.

An astonishment, a joy. For though they are separated by decades, he feels they dance in harmony, mirroring interpretations, rhythm, responses to the music, which range across many styles, communicating non-verbally in that other language, a sharing of sensibilities. He’d encountered this before, twice in his life, but never so completely.

The evening returns, from time to time, in him alone. No one else knows. It is as if he visited a new planet where he encountered a single soul. They spoke for a while, moved to the music, then parted, never to meet again. Two from different worlds. How did it happen? Pure chance? Or does some force in the universe engender these moments? Does like attract like, drawn as if by gravity?

Why then so rare? The universe is essentially infinite. The chances, therefore, must be infinitesimal. And yet, from time to time, they happen. One particle in our local group is drawn briefly to another. Is it music, melodic vibrations pulsating through the spheres, that alerts and attracts? Leading to the intensest of rendezvous? Is it the recognition of shared sensibility, shared perception, shared expression? Sharing what and how our ears do hear? What sets our souls to singing?

And yet, because there is so much filling us, we little creatures on this tiny, lost planet, in one of the spiral arms of our galaxy, that we even exist as we do… is a miracle. That we understand much of it is therefore unlikely. Nonetheless, sometimes, we do connect, which is but another . . . miracle.

FIN

SONGS

AND

STORIES

Music plays in their minds, as they lie together on their backs atop the hills and valleys of their worn old queen. Smiles rise to the ceiling, then slowly scallop down again on songs of joy the two sing to themselves, portions of ballads and folk, lines from operas, all flowing together in their minds and hearts, capturing the beauty and truths which speak more deeply than they could ever, of this endeavor.

As they do, he wonders, what it is about this second, but most profound and penetrating mode of expression, music, that reaches in so deeply? What is it in the tones and tunes? Is it the mere sounds, the chords and crescendos, the melodies?… Or is it the lyrics that reach into us and remind, that open feelings, thoughts… each other?

He tips his head slightly, to look at her, in profile. Sensing this, she smiles. In this, to him, she is beautiful… kind, intelligent, desirable… infinitely, he thinks, even if he cannot completely understand all that she is. And in this moment, it occurs to him that, in some ways, their love may never exceed what they feel right now, in this evening together…

As if she’d heard these thoughts, she offers a metaphor for who they are together, a few lines from a familiar song, sung softly, then altered, for them: "Well I heard there was a secret chord, that David played, and it pleased the Lord… but you and I… love music… don’t we…? She smiles deeply and shifts her shining eyes over to gaze at him, adding, Yes, we love music, don’t we."

Hallelujah, he whispers, as his mouth and cheeks stretch and burn with happiness, at her singing, her variation, and her affirmation of their love. Wanting to join her, he softly adds: "And it goes like this, the fourth, the fifth, the minor fall…" She joins in, under his rising voice, the major lift… the baffled king… composing Hallelujah… Hallelujah… Hallelujah… Hallelujah… Whispered over and over.

For some moments they savor these sounds and feelings… savor the pleasure of sharing, of voicing as one.

An opera lyric rises out of his memory, which he whispers to her, Vissi d’arte… vissi d’ amore…

Yes, vissi d’amore, she sings before lifting herself enough to lean close over him, whispering, Anche mio, mio amore, and kisses him deeply.

In their pressing together, lip to lip, both experience a feeling beyond words, which only music approaches.

Rolling back, she settles again shoulder to shoulder. To both come other songs and melodies. Ah…! they exclaim to themselves, there is so much!… so much… From all the individuals and styles and cultures… even the birds… calling to each other… Is that what we’re doing? she wonders. Calling, reaching out, saying here I am, for you. Seeking, speaking, telling of our love… our experiencing of life?

Now she says as much to him. And he nods. He had been thinking of the complexities in even one of the simplest tunes – a Bach piano solo, the Prelude and Fugue in E from the Goldberg Variations – and how, despite its simplicity, it nonetheless reaches in. And he asks, "Does not music give us a voice, a mood, a feeling… that speaks to us, and for us? It gives us, if not words, although there are lyrics, then emotion, feeling… and without that voice, that expression, we may never have as clear a sense of what moves us, individually and we two… a sense of who we are… We may never find a better form for our feeling… to share.

"And if we do not, do we live blind, in a sense? Do we live the unexamined life?… And miss the core of ourselves and our love’s?

And is that not what music, and art, can help us with: identifying, finding form and expression… and in so doing, reaching beyond ourselves to others… Is that not our salvation…? Connecting beyond the confines of our selves?

She turns her head and kisses his cheek, a long, loving kiss.

And after some moments, encouraged by her response, he goes on, It is one of the things we, men and woman, can do for each other, help uncover, help express, what we feel and think… encouraged by attention and caring.

Her kiss continues, until she feels an urge to elaborate upon his observation. Yes, we help each other unwind our many strands, that otherwise may lie wound tight in the dark of ourselves… And in doing so, we help each other withstand the buffeting world… We learn, maybe ideally together, gaining understanding… finding meaning and relief.

This time, it is he who rolls his head to kiss her cheek and brow and lips.

When he rolls back, she continues, And we share more, our histories and imaginations… our flowing, cascading selves, and loves, as they come alive, out into the air, finding a common language to convey and make sense of all that surrounds us and is in us. And what is that most compelling language?… But yes, music… It may not always be as specific as the words it sometimes uses, but it is so emotional, giving voice to that side of us… to all the suggested associations, through its near infinite variations… What else could convey, and encompass, it all?

En-com-pass, he repeats, savoring its syllables, and her utterance of them.

He wonders if imagining, composing a song or sonata is even more deeply satisfying than singing or playing one. He has done some writing, some of which is deeply satisfying to him, but music may be even more so. He loves to whistle a melody, a tune, as he cannot sing well, but his whistling is a solitary pleasure, pleasing him alone – as to other ears he is seldom consistently in tune.

He asks her this question: Has she ever composed a piece or song?

No… she sighs. Never… But some poems, yes, as you know. And you too. Perhaps poems reach close to what music offers; perhaps they offer similar expression. You and I are secret poets… fleeting composers… expressing, transforming, much of what we feel.

Yes, he agrees, we are filled with emotion, responses to the world… ideas and expression. We pass on what we see and hear and imagine, the rhythms and rhymes, our inner tunes and lyrics…

And she adds, And when we connect, we discover new things, and levels… of living, as if voyaging to the center of the Earth… or up, into the galaxies.

For a moment, each imagines this, until she adds, Galaxies slowly spiraling near and through… other galaxies… Is that what we are?

He laughs softly, at these images, and their miraculous rendezvous – that they can talk together in this way. He remembers that they have approached these ideas and feelings before, but never as elaborately. And he is pleased that they have now gone beyond, deepening their awareness. And he recognizes that this is, for him, for them, love. Like appreciating like. And he tells her as much and thanks her.

Deeply she smiles, and breathes. Yes, we are lucky to share these voicings of our minds and hearts, our full range: the small, the narrow, the immediate… the exquisite… the infinite.

"’The infinitude of the private man,’ he exhales, to quote Emerson."

Emer-son… she pronounces and imagines. To have been inside his mind… What a trip!… A voyage through a New World… for Europeans.

He exhales, saying, I like that, and that we have both read him, and others, and can share their thoughts and observations, their passions and their music. Amplifying ourselves, finding insight and clarity… a mirror… a microscope… These others become our partners in a sense, enlarging us… providing a common language, their histories of thought… these songs of ourselves… What a wealth, what an inheritance !

With her hand, she finds and squeezes his – their ten fingers moving and gripping between them. His other hand rises and floats over her before it descends and lightly traces her stomach and breasts. Sharply she inhales… nearly rolls over onto him again, to begin love-making… but decides to wait, allowing her excitement to re-channel, for now. She wants to see where their thoughts will carry them, where their cerebral love-making will go.

Hallelujah, they harmonize again, in mouths and minds. He half-whistles its melody. Barely audibly she repeats the first lines of another stanza, "Baby, I’ve been here before; I know this room; I’ve walked this floor…

I used to live alone… before I knew ya."

He repeats these lines, under his breath, I used to live alone, before I knew ya.

Both recall glimpses of their earlier existences, before they knew each other. Another song, from that time, comes back to him, which he softly sings,

"They say everything can be re-placed,

that every distance is not ne-ar…

And so I remember every fac-e

Of every man who put me her-e."

Yes, she agrees, The beauty of awareness… rendered in music… moving and opening us, allowing us to hear others, to speak our hearts… It helps solidify experience, providing a base on which we stand, and from where we gaze… and convey and share.

Oh soave fanciulla! he attempts to sing – not well… He laughs a little at his awkward effort, but then smiles recalling those who have succeeded: two tenors’ renderings. The world’s gifts scattered through the nations…

Inspired by this, she rises and glides to their stereo where she finds and quickly puts on a CD of La Boheme. He watches her naked form, her back and shoulders, her hips and