an ode to hands

who, what, where, when can or may I touch. Touch is a sensorial path towards being situated or situating oneself and an ‘other’ in the world: I touch and through this I embody that I am a being with a body, amongst beings with bodies, amidst the organism (the body) of the space we inhabit. Through touch, we are “singular-plural”, intertwined and relational; our boundaries become permeable. We are vulnerable, perhaps open to feeling.

from the Intro by Ione to “Quantum Listening” by Pauline Oliveros

“[…]when I touch my hand I am already in the exteriority of the world (flesh of the world). With touch, the body opens itself to the outside (Merleau-Ponty said the body orients itself towards the world to fulfill its plasticity)[…]“ — from Touching - touched by Gosia Wojas, published in Flat Journal

Maurice Merleau-Ponty, "Phenomenology of Perception", Paris, 1945

self-soothing is instinctual. our own hands press against our own bodies. the muscles facilitating the movement, the nerve endings sending the signals of contact, the entire body becomes aware of itself in a single act of touch.

I feel the smoothness of the keys I press while I type this. I feel the sticky residue of the blood that dripped off my right index finger earlier and dried up on the space bar. I touch and touch and touch and am still waiting for the touching to reach out to me first.

to touch. to intertwine. to remind that we are bodies that feel. to hold.

In the year spent alone, the hands of my shadow were often the only hands i saw other than my own. the hands of my shadow became my subject. to approach a hand was to risk losing it.