Touch Response

GIVER, TOUCH

The sections I chose for this project from the book, A Natural History of the Senses, by Diane Ackerman, from the chapter,  Touch,  were,  "Speaking of Touch" and "The Skin Has Eyes". The "something" I created in response to those two sections was this pen and ink drawing,  I am naming,  "Giver, Touch"

I chose these two sections because right away in "Speaking of Touch" Ackerman starts off saying, "Language is steeped in metaphors of touch."
I love metaphors. I am a poet and an ekphrastic poet,  at that. (A poet who draws her words from text to create images.) Here, I am doing the opposite of what I normally do, and its too fun!

Ackerman says, "...our hands remain faithful to the world", being the last sense to go, and I pictured our world, and the "touchstones" she mentions in a riverbed, with a pregnant woman touching her infant through her belly. She lies in tune with the flowing water outside her body and within her womb.
The stones have hands too,  as they touch their own worlds surround her.

"We are forever taking the measure of ourselves in unconscious ways. . . " Ackerman said.  So why can't we project that to all the earth's entities measuring for them too?
And, she says, "...and life has depth and contour, it makes sense of the world and our-self in three-dimensional. Without the intricate feel for life there would be no artists, and no surgeons, who dive through the body with their fingers"

 And, fingers,  I drew, and hands and the feet of our heart. I drew eyes that can sense in just being, opened or closed. I drew my man, with his touch of security and pleasure. I included the all our senses of touch and how those other senses metaphorically knit with each other to create our world. We are leading ourselves to follow the pathways of feeling. Pointing out ways to cross over the waters, when lying in them no longer soothes or suffices.
 I think I'm working a poem out of this project!

 Diane Ackerman's book is amazing!
 I could draw every section!


Thank you SO much for all your inspiring projects, Laura! You ROCK! :)