DELICIOUS TO TOUCH

Smooth...

The obvious springs to mind. Unnecessarily catalogued here. Cluttering the more subtle, delicate connections to my personal archive of experiences, reactions and images.

Smooth...
The oddly smooth quality of fossilized wood.
The feeling of smooth, taught sun-warmed skin under hand.
The slippery contrast of exposed and submerged pool tiles (and the sand-paper like bottom!).
The suddenly-slick realization of algae upon river rock under foot.
The tuft of hair beneath a cat's ear.
The surface of a mirror as I reach out toward my reflection.
The lush under-side of my daughter's favorite blanket.

Smooth...
an appealing characteristic, delightful to touch, the opposite of rough.

Have you ever discovered the texture of something and been surprised? With my eyes I had clearly seen the object and in my mind I had created a feeling, an understanding of what it would be like to touch and to hold...

Once upon an island in Lake Maggiore I found something delightfully surprising and yet somehow ordinary.

Flower petals.

In my mind they felt cold, clammy, damp, like wet paper or perhaps even scaly like a lizard's skin.

Instead they were ever-so-soft! Like the feeling of running your fingers across butter - but without the sticky, greasy aftermath. I simply wanted to slide my fingertips across these thin slices of heaven!

I imagined being covered in a fabric that felt this delicious upon my skin!

This is a photograph I took at the time of my daughter's handful of heaven. Her smooth, childish fingers tenderly holding the treasure that is their unexpectedly precious smoothness.

I tucked several in my pocket. My own delicate secret. So light I was surprised to find them there throughout the day. My fingertips never seemed to lose their novel sense of wonder at these tiny, smooth gems in my pocket. My own variety of worry-stones.

The magic is perhaps pronounced because it is fleeting. By only the next day, my fingertips met with a tattered, brittle spectre. Left with only a memory of the previous day's delicious touch.

In college I once had an art project. It simply stated: Create something gratifying to hold.

When was the last time you felt this way about something when you held it?

What was it?!