The Texture of Sushi

Salmon is cool on my tongue, and sweet. No matter how I try to remember, its smoothness is always a pleasant surprise, the creaminess of the fatty ripples a decadent treat.

You can never know what someone else is thinking--across the table, across the street, across the ocean. No matter the glimmers of light that beacon--occasionally, intermittently, consistently--another person's mind is always the darkness over the unbridged chasm. All I can know is the taste of the salmon, and the metallic coolness of my keys as I press my fingers against them to make sure I am there.

If your mind runs away, she tells me, grab your keys. Run your finger along the jagged edges. Look at the keychains. Touch them. Your mind will come back.

It is true. My mind travels, but when my senses call, it comes running.

I can never know another's thoughts, and why would I want to? If ever we could truly share a brain, we'd not desire so blindingly to share our bodies.

Perspective whispers in my ear: even and until then, there's no denying a shared acre of heart. In a world in which all I thought I could be sure of was the texture of sushi, that little assurance is a sweet surprise.

Cupcake

Do you ever just want to write something delicious? Something simple and sweet and... perhaps a little naughty? Something, let's say, not on your diet.

Or maybe you don't want to write it. Maybe you want to say it. You want to sit across the table from someone and swirl the frosting on. Sprinkle on some bits of sugar. Watch as the spring-hued sweets fall across the bed of icing, some of them toppling off onto the tablecloth. Then you'd take a step back and store it in your mind--the colors, the textures, the contrasts. Before you moisten the soft pad of your thumb, press it down onto the sprinkles, make them stick. Lift it to your mouth.

What you do next is up to you.

A mental snapshot... a tiny taste... pricelessly delicious teases.
But not a substitute for the whole thing.

Will you answer to "Cupcake"?

Tactile

Often folks will assume that because I am a writer, because I teach writing, I conduct my life from an ivory tower and prefer it that way. Sometimes, I find this grating. Sometimes, it hurts me. Sometimes, it hurts me because these people have been hurt themselves.

I live a life in my mind, but it is inseparable from my body. I write because I want to touch the world. Not metaphorically. Literally. I literally want to touch the world. I want to reach out with my two-week-old manicure and run my fingertips over every single thing.

"I touched all the plants at the Botanical Gardens," she writes, "until my companion asked me how I knew which ones were poisonous."

"That was one of the first things he said to me," she tells me. "'I'm a tactile person.'" I've not yet met him, but I imagine I can smooth my thumb along the ridges of her love for him.

He instant messages me, "I'm a hands-on person."

I could go on--on with quotes, on with links, on with people in my life who love to touch. Who love people who love to touch.

"I knew I didn't want to be locked in a room with books for four years," he says. "I wanted to be out in the world, making things." And I can hear the hesitation in his voice as he realizes he's saying this to a writer. If he'd said it in person, I'd have grabbed his hand, entwined my fingers with his, kissed each one. Murmured that I know what school does to those who love their own hands too much.

The best teachers show you how to use your hands to get what's on the page into your brain. And to use your mind to turn what's at your fingertips into words. Just so you know you can. Even if you choose not to.

The best teachers know that we don't yet teach each person's heart's content. Those of us who'd already loved books just happened to have gotten lucky.

"There is nothing sensual about winter."

We buy a case of mangoes, take them home, choose a few ripe ones, slice them, put them in a tupperware in the refrigerator. I put a few slices in a bowl and sit cross-legged on a chair at the kitchen table.

"Why are you eating that with your fingers?"

"Because there is nothing sensual about winter."


Actually, there is. There is a lot sensual about winter. But none of that is what I want to feel today--velvet and cashmere and wool; hot soup and tea and drinking chocolate. The sensations of winter are found in what covers us and fills our stomachs. Where is the sticky mango juice dripping down a chin, falling onto bare toes? I want to write something--something that has skin and sweat and hands that know too much. I have a desire for desire. But what's that if you can't muster desire itself?

Winter is getting to me. Already. Outside, everyone is covered. Today, there is no mystery even in the long darkness; there is only flannel pajamas. I want flesh in front of me. I want to see skin. Muscle. A sheen of sweat. I'm not dancing nearly enough.


"Mangoes and fingers, huh?"

"Yes."

Souvenir

“Remember,” my mother says. “Don’t touch what’s not yours.” Everywhere we go. Home stores with rows upon rows of sparkling glasses. Other people’s homes with shelves of knick-knacks and whatnots. Department stores dripping exquisite ornaments from the branches of artificial Christmas trees. “Look, but don’t touch.”

I am a well-behaved child.
I don’t touch what’s not mine.

Eventually, “I don’t have to say it. She knows.”
But she says it anyway. “Don’t touch.”

Smooth fabrics, textured papers, juicy fruit-flesh.
I want to touch. At the MoMA, it’s a conscious struggle to keep my fingers off the Van Gogh’s. Gobs of thick pigment prickle out of the sky of “The Starry Night”.
I stand before it. I look. I buy a postcard and go home.

Can you regret it, not touching what’s not yours? Can you regret it so much, it hurts all the way down to your fingertips?