thoughts on congregation, on touch

Some days I walk the 2.4 miles across the bridge, along the freeway, past the man in a Mad Hatter outfit spinning a sign selling BBQ Ribs, past 3 bus stops where a woman is stuffing her purse with blank slips of paper, just to buy a large coffee from the 7-11. 2.4 miles for 30 seconds of small talk with the beautiful Ethiopian girl who works there 6 days a week. Or her brother. Or her daughter. They want to know how I am today. I tell them.
Sometimes we make eye contact when I hand them my $1.75. Sometimes when they ask "is that all?" I say, "No, I also need a pack of..." and they say, "Marlboro 54?" and we laugh, and they say "You don't have to tell me, I know" and I think, "They know me. Somebody knows me."
Sometimes our hands touch when they take my change and my skin's shocked at the recognition of touch. By the feeling of skin that's not my own. Our peripheries melding for just a moment. Almost intimate.

Some days I get so lonely I forget my own name.

What would you pay for 30 seconds of Not (so) Alone?

We weren't meant to be isolation. Our skin's evolved for touch. Our eyes, for peripheral vision, for people beside us.
For congregation.

some things that are true, or profound (and that somebody smarter thought of first)

Touch is a primal need, as necessary for growth as food, clothing or shelter. Michelangelo knew this: When he painted God extending a hand toward Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he chose touch to represent the beginning of life.

"The magnitude of risk associated with social isolation is comparable with that of cigarette smoking and other major biomedical and psychosocial risk factors. However, our understanding of how and why social isolation is risky for health—or conversely—how and why social ties and relationships are protective of health, still remains quite limited."

“No monkey has died during isolation. When initially removed from total social isolation, however, they usually go into a state of emotional shock, characterized by ... autistic self-clutching and rocking. One of six monkeys isolated for 3 months refused to eat after release and died 5 days later. The autopsy report attributed death to emotional anorexia. ... The effects of 6 months of total social isolation were so devastating and debilitating that we had assumed initially that 12 months of isolation would not produce any additional decrement. This assumption proved to be false; 12 months of isolation almost obliterated the animals socially ...” -Harlow HF, Dodsworth RO, Harlow MK. "Total social isolation in monkeys," Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 1965.

Some of the monkeys remained in solitary confinement for 15 years.
Various abnormalities. blank staring. repetitive circling in their cages. self-mutilation.
severely. psychologically. disturbed.

Hippocrates, father of modern medicine wrote: "The physician must be experienced in many things, but most assuredly in rubbing."

...more to come. poemz, perhaps