Configurations of Touch - Part I

We all go through life with at least a few nicks and bumps (and if that sounds like an understatement let’s clarify that ‘nicks and bumps’ is intended in a literal sense, i.e., physical). There are those odd few moments—for some of us frequent; for others incessant and reasons abound!—when the inner transmitter-receptor message stations don’t all have their frequencies tuned just right and like blundering, inept idiots we seem to struggle with basic motor skills. Touching, how this all is always infallibly timed and orchestrated in the presence of some august audience!

You stub a toe; hammer an unfortunate digit (of just a precious five!); chew through your own tongue; twist the untiring ankle which we take to be designed for the very purpose; bump your head—phew!—and I was only getting started! What, usually, is your first reaction? Instinctively, you reach for that injured portion of your hitherto unmarred physiology (Yes..,yes granted the “Ouch”s, “Yegad”s, and “ #@$#**!!”s of the world are literally speaking the first response…so you will forgive me?!) and you rub, hold, press and massage. Anything to get it to feel better. And what when your spouse, child or friend is unhappy or depressed? How do you reach them through their gloom? Isn’t it typical to caress, stroke, embrace or hug them? To reach out with your hands and touch? Touch it is then. An instinctual, natural response as deep and as old as the evolution of biological memory.

Words - to say or not to say?

The quote goes, “ That which is most deeply felt is best left unsaid”; words can be clumsy but where vocabulary disappoints a touch still holds the magic key.

How often have you wanted to express a myriad tangled emotions, all bottled up, competing to hit surface first but the sheer chaos of the bubbling, frothing mess inside you makes a hug or kiss the only immediate and fulfilling response as opposed to a litany of words? The human capacity for language and lexicon has grown and is now immense with aeons of literary works piled up in libraries around the world being introduced to young minds in schools everywhere. However, our complete admiration and reverence of these prolific and uniquely gifted writers among us makes it apparent that not all of us are capable of summoning that penetrative eloquence on demand, especially, in moments of extremes. And occasion upon occasion we find lexis seems inadequate, insufficient or simply inappropriate. A deeper mode of establishing connections takes precedence…and we touch.

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