Sensation

What is it about touch that enthralls us so? The feeling of something coming in contact with out skin...be it silk to steel. Touch has the power to bring us out of the deepest reverie and observe the present in our vicinity once again--the gliding of silk over a wrist, the stroke of a finger on the shoulder, the tip of a blade tracing ribbons around the neck. Our sense of touch has the power to overwhelm us, to inspire joy or fear, lust or dread, depending on the context. What in one minute may seem the act of a murderer, the next is the caress of a lover.

It is all really just a play of power--power over others, and power over oneself. It is a matter of control, respect, domination, and shyness, all in one. A single touch can convey countless signals that no combination of words or glances could hope to get across. The concept itself is really rather enthralling and alluring. Diane Ackerman (fascinating author, I love her style) once wrote in her book An Alchemy of Mind, "Where does the self stop and the world begin? The body's limits are often explored. We learn early on about outside and inside, that we're apparently separate from the air we breathe, the ground we walk upon, the people we love. We learn that only on rare occasions can we enter into another person's body: as lover, doctor, nurse, shaman, mortician, fetus." The concept of that is fascinating. We are so separate from the rest of humanity, from other human beings, that every contact with them is precious, fragile, and the transience of it makes it that much more so.

One of my favorite questions used to be (and still is), "do you regret life being too short to try everything?" My own answer to it has always been that of course I don't...I don't regret anything, but especially not that. My original reasoning was that if life was long enough for us to try everything, we'd never really have to choose what was important. As it stands, my personal philosophy has changed a bit since the day I initially answered that question, but the logic behind it remains. I think the way one of my old teachers put it really expresses the concept best. He said, "If life was long enough to try everything, then nothing would be this precious. Because we only have so many moments, and we can only do so many things, each and every one of them becomes special and valuable." That thought has really stuck with me through the years. After all, life really is precious, we just don't take the time to appreciate that nearly as much as we should.