Keeping in Touch

(image c/o countryliving.com)

Go on. Pat the bunny. Remember how engaging it was to be read to as a child, but to also have the opporunity to participate in the story by putting your grubby little fingers into its pages to feel its textures.

Many of us have grown up and out of the wonder of that initial connection to our sense of touch. As Jane Brockett says in The Gentle Arts of Domesticity: " It is so easy to lose touch. We live in a digital era, and increasingly, spend our days in a cocoon of space, dealing with the virtual, not the tangible: on telephones, in front of computers and televisions, in cars, trains and planes. It is quite possible to pass whole days without making contact with any natural surfaces and textures. We can exist in a bubble of emptiness and not even recognize that we are suffering from sensory deprivation."

I've recently put my finger on just how important it is for me to have my hands in the mess of the world of which I'm a part. Just the other day, I had the wonderful opportunity to print some letterpressed cards. The timeless process left me satisfied and tired, ink lodged up underneath of my fingernails and in smudges up my forearms. Directly after that, I went to work, where I baked batches of red velvet cupcakes, taking home the remnants of my work in the form of red food coloring all over my palms.

Sure, I appeared a dirty slob at the end of it all, but I got such extreme pleasure from knowing how participatory my work was and is. I love that I'm taking purposed steps away from the natural tendency from the digital era and towards things that are requiring nimble fingers and hand-to-hand contact with other people. I take great joy in the fact that my hands carry marks of each day's activities.

My hands are vehicles for creation, but they are also how I take my part in the means to each end.

They hold the pen that moves to the thoughts in my mind as my right hand pinky collects ink on it's edge during flurries of writing.

They emulsify diverse flavors when I opt to hand mix scone dough rather than making the investment in a pastry blender.

They move across metal cyldiners, lead type, fibrous paper as I maneuver the printing press, immerse myself in the proofing process and get the feel of making a good impression.

"I do enjoy and prize texture," Brocket says. "It keeps us in touch, literally, with life. If we stop feeling our way through life, we become passive and dependent on the ready-made and the textureless. In doing so, we give up an element of independence, control, skill and autonomy."