Ode to Touch
I love to touch things.
I love my hands and the subtle tickle when I run my left pointer finger up and down my palm.
The cool surface of the rounded closet door knob,
the way my hand grasps and curls
just for an instant
to twist it
counter clockwise.
My hands bring the earth to me. Remind me of gravity’s influence over everything including my thoughts, which seem to settle when I focus on touch.
Touch, a sensation that cannot extend past the realm of the physical, demands the existential mind take a break and share the mic for just a moment. A moment long enough to disrupt a spiral of any proportion.
Sometimes my thoughts send me packing and I hit the sidewalk seeking a rebirth of rhythm.
(Have you noticed that thoughts don’t carry rhythm?)
On Sunday I sent myself out into the neighborhood, just as the sky’s orange rosy hues gave way to the stillness of night.
My feet felt the concrete through the soles of my grey sneakers. The weight of my body contacting the earth, again and again and again:
left foot lands right foot lifts
right foot lands left foot lifts
Sensory nerves give us this experience—one that we so often take for granted.
When we shove our hands into the top shelf of a cabinet and reach back so far we cannot see, somehow we are able to pull out the bag of sugar, flour, chocolate chips. The ridges of our fingerprints create tiny vibrations that help pick up specific textures. These findings are reported back to the mainframe in the blink of a blink of an eye.
If only it was easy enough to retrieve an answer from the abyss of the universe, but maybe it is the same process. Maybe it is no mistake we use the term feel it out. We reach out, look for the vibes that make sense and move forward accordingly. Perhaps there is no real difference, creating an image in the mind of what we are reaching for, navigating the mental map of the top shelf.
Touch is a sense beyond language, like everything that is holy. That is why we can’t reach out touch faith. If we could touch it wouldn't be it.
Holy is the feeling we get when we reach out.
That’s all for today. If you find yourself struck by a moment of total now, document it as a ritual of presence. Take a photo or write a short description, then send it to momentsfornow@gmail.com - all submissions will be shared anonymously.
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Until next time,
James