The loss of touching

[Jenne]

I don't think we have a close bead on how crucial this really is.  Babies die without it.  Humans shrivel and become useless.  You really don't know how important it is until you lose it.

Try, for instance, a disease that disallows you to open your mail.  Read a book.  Drive your car.  Without benefit of antibacterial existence.  You can't use a salt shaker.  The occasional neighborly handshake or friendly hug?  Deathtrap.

The kicker is when you can't hug or kiss your children.  The little beings you brought into life and love. Not being able to comfort them when they are hurting, not being able to kiss them goodnight or high-five them for a victory.  That is death.   That is a chamber in hell.  And I couldn't possibly wish it on my worst enemy.

When a sneeze can mean a bolus of antibiotics and a week-long vacation in your local hospital, you start to rethink the world in terms of germs and ickies.  Hand gel and soap are your only saviors.  Shower before bed, constant clean clothes and sheets.  All washed in hot, hot, hot.

Forget ice, forget fresh vegetables.  The steamier, the most scorchingest on Earth...the better.  Microbials and viruses become the deadliest of murderers...and salvation is not in love's gentlest of touches, tho you may yearn yet for the squishy embrace of a 6 year old.


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Holy Frailty, Batman!


...and so it goes.

I have to give it up to Vonnegut...there isn't a more succinct statement on the human condition than that 4-word phrase.  I was recently called out for vapid 4-word statements.  I guess the 4-word conglommerate is losing its touch, after all...

There's not much that's witty you can say about how ephemereal the actual living, biological world is.  When you capture that fragile butterfly in your hands and marvel at its intricacy, what should be uppermost in your mind (and probably isn't!) is how magnificently this creature is put together.  Its insectuous sinews and webby features are the epitome of delicacy and enticement of beauty.

To crush it, to allow it to be entrapped and pin it to a trophy case, is also entirely inevitable.  Power over our own lives sometimes depends on the power we have over other living things.  I think humans have a unique ability there, to see the dichotomy in the living and in the dying.  It's the sick and the needy we have problems with.  It's the hopeless and the helpless we least want to deal with.  Because that which is difficult in others to solve is also our closest, most chimeric quality in ourselves.

I can't imagine not being able to nurse a loved one like my husband or my child back to health, allowing someone else to do so would physically impair me to a large degree.  It's a sickness within my own psyche that I must have the power to heal, to strengthen, to give purpose to the purposeless.  What I reach for is not always within my grasp, for nature does not always succumb to nurture, no matter how hard the active party tries.  Attempts, in fact, to come between what has to be and what you want to be can eliminate much good that could come in the interim.

It's not that I'm spouting words of wisdom here, these are simply the tired thoughts of a weary nursemaid.  I have no other real outlet for expressing the excruciatingly slow process that is my life in action and nonaction at this moment.  I am in constant wonder at how all this comes about.  I'm forever in a patient waiting room.  With no windows, and no doors.  There's only a desk, with a white-smocked nurse behind it, and only she can spell me my hours of anguish and pursuit.

And the more I think about it, the longer it takes.  So, I will put these words to commitment, and think no more. 

[Jasper]

As a closeness junkie, I agree completely.  I think I would completely lose my shit if I couldn't steal the occaisional hug from my friends.