Touches can be physical or psychological, but they are always emotional, and they affect the other person in infinitely different ways. They cut, lacerate or soften the pain of the other, when they don't heal it deeply; they make you shudder with “I want more” or provoke a repulsion, just as they can be incendiary, icy or inexplicably tepid.
There are universes of faces and identities in the touches, and none of them is followed by indifference. Therein lies the great magic of touches that we need to practice intensively, so that we can learn how they affect us and how they change something in people.
Touch of a mother's hand to a wounded knee: splendid, miraculous, he goes on through life healing wounds of the son who insists on running for life and getting hurt in the nooks of misfortunes and tripping over small and large stones. There is the healing touch, soft like the brush of the tips of angels' wings, warm as the warmth of the valley of the breasts that this blessed child had as a baby, caressing like clothes washed with extreme care to cover the body of the beloved child. Mothers have that touch. Ah… what a miss!
Away from those hands, over and over again and torturously, we feel moved by the rough fingers of hands that never had anything but roughness to glove on! And they stop being touches to transmute into cutting blades of censorship, criticism and gestures that brutalize feelings. Horrible! And the touches of people who pass through our lives and leave them with new flavors to be lived?
The straightening of the school uniform, made by the hands of that teacher who looks like an angel appointed by God to light up our first steps in life… how smooth! The first caress on the face, which comes from that boy or girl, which reddens us with passion and shame, even after weeks, months, ages of eternity, exchanging glances and torturing hearts still virgin of disillusionment... it's a touch for life!
Not even the great love of a lifetime is capable of being more striking than the preparatory touch for all the loves that would come and for the great love that remained lived or dreamed of. There is a fantastic touch: what delights in the first contact and leaves you homesick and the desire to want more. Some more daring people say it is “love at first sight”, which I happily agree with, because it is a touch without rehearsals, without premeditation, perhaps another previous fantasy, but that arrives softly and devastates people's defenses, opening them colossal holes, through which spurts of emotions and feelings will pass, prostrating them like helpless beings who need each other.
And there's the touch of the soul that comes with words that are said just as they should be., to echo over and over again within those who have heard them (and perhaps have waited to hear them almost all their lives…): it is damned good to say and hear “I love you a lot”, “I like you”, “I missed you”, "Why didn't I meet you before, where were you?" and it goes on and on, to the glory of “okay, I forgive you!”. They are symphonic touches, those with a chorus of all voices, angels mixed with people, that light up in less than a second, but last as long as the person wants to enjoy, I suspect even well beyond this side of Life.
And you, dear reader, of these 3.861 touches with spaces, all of them in pure elegy of the touches that we are all hungry to receive and all the conditions to give them, if I may, generous and patient already that came this far in the text, one more “touch”, with pardon for the innocent pun: like everything else in life, the more practiced, the better it gets! May your border be just a mark wherever you go to be absolutely you!
