![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
How Measure Touch, I?
Feb. 13th, 2023 09:02 amI have perceiv’d that to be with those I like is enough,
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
~ From: I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman
I've always been taken by the incredible significance of touch. Looking at it from a purely mechanical perspective, it is rather unexciting - but when attached to a personality, it can be a source of great comfort, elation, or rapture and even at times, deep anguish. It seems to make no immediate sense beyond any instinctual drive to preserve the species, yet the need to touch and be touched has always been one of the most powerful influences in our culture.
To stop in company with the rest at evening is enough,
To be surrounded by beautiful, curious, breathing, laughing flesh is enough,
To pass among them, or touch any one, or rest my arm ever so lightly round his or her neck for a moment—what is this, then?
I do not ask any more delight—I swim in it, as in a sea.
There is something in staying close to men and women, and looking on them, and in the contact and odor of them, that pleases the soul well;
All things please the soul—but these please the soul well.
~ From: I Sing the Body Electric, Walt Whitman
I've always been taken by the incredible significance of touch. Looking at it from a purely mechanical perspective, it is rather unexciting - but when attached to a personality, it can be a source of great comfort, elation, or rapture and even at times, deep anguish. It seems to make no immediate sense beyond any instinctual drive to preserve the species, yet the need to touch and be touched has always been one of the most powerful influences in our culture.
