Desire.

In a day or so I have an appointment to discuss “touch” with a group of friends. This is designated our “amateur philosopher group” because our objective is enjoyment of good company. What is more agreeable, — than to listen carefully to ourselves, and to others wrestle with words to communicate thoughts rising up, ghostly and formless pertaining to life… What did I just write? When I pause in reflection I know the surface features of myself, but not the deeper dimensions like the iceberg, unapproachable. Others are indispensable to see what we cannot see, to help us to summon the proper words.

We have, we hold the collision effects of external “reality” upon the body. Collision effects: the vibration of the Apple watch on my wrist, the tiny glowing screen informing me of blood sugar rate that is trending down from a high provoked by Cheerios consumed over an hour ago; the pressure of keys on my finger tips involuntarily pressed to form words on a glowing screen; and one more, the club music emanating from a ceiling speaker directly overhead. (With practice I “tune out” the music.) “All of That” is raw material that my life-path (fate) presents to desire. “Desire”, that attraction of defined outcomes, which a lifetime’s layering-of-experience has deposited, to this point in time. Desire is a complex of purposes, end results that I imagine for myself, the accumulation of time upon a self. Like water level rings left behind upon a riverbed.

As I mentioned before until I pause to think about all of ‘the above’ I just live, dumbly, eyes forward to the next item on my to-do list like any other mammal living in the woods.

So I anticipate the round-table discussion of how touch mediates for us, as our very first wordless language. Of course we cannot remember the touch of a mother’s skin, with the exception of mother’s who do remember what that meant… How that language differs from the symbol based communication that freezes the external into rigid form, useful when you have an idea in mind to convey. And then there’s the torrent of procreation, the reciprocal male-female attraction. How does the binary difference, stereotyped by culture, influence touch?

Enough for a Tuesday, sunlit morning.

Now I must keep an appointment with a pile of mulch and a shovel.

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I think this tune will do for today. Desire by U2!