A Thigmophilic being

 I put small bookmarks in pages of books where I want to remember one line--one reference to another book, one word. Usually by the time I am finished reading and ready to return the book to the library, I do not have the patience to go back, take each slip of paper out, and reread the two pages it was marking--to try to elucidate what, exactly, I was trying to mark for myself.

This one I knew I would want to go back for: thigmotaxic--an animal who likes to walk along walls, touching something as it goes. Its cousin: thigmophilic--touch loving animal.

I pictured myself on my walk down the long corridor to my office in the hospital. If I arrive a few minutes early for work, per my preference, I go to kneel in the chapel for a few minutes. Then, I walk toward my office. I've noticed as I do so, I skirt the wall, almost keeping touch with it through my jacket. The corridor is dark--not yet fully illuminated for the day--and quiet: the hallways have yet to shepherd the bustling crowd. In this darker and quiet walk, on my way to start the day, I hug the wall. It is a perforated wall; I assume some kind of sound barrier. My jacket sleeve graces it.

I am someone who likes touching things. I do not always love to be touched. But I can remember myself younger, in a Dollar Tree, exploring things by picking up each, feeling their textures.

Thigmotaxic in Alexandra Horowitz's On Looking describes rat behavior. "They feel most comfortable keeping in contact with something as they travel." Mice, cockroaches, caterpillars share the quality. Perhaps I'm one more animal, drowsy and weary, starting my daily march, making my way along in the dark, desiring this posture of humility--kneeling--then quietly scraping along the wall, as some sort of electrical grounding before the bright lights and bustle of the workday begins.

Walking and Mindfulness and the Synesthesias of Childhood

I am thinking about the opportunity I have had to publish essays, the comment "where do you come up with your ideas?" Coming up with ideas seems a gifting of life itself, life as infinitely interesting to one who is interested, which is what I hope to always be. Moreover, the subject matter for an essay seems a simple exercise in mindfulness. Attentiveness paid to the present moment, aware of its sensory offerings: sight, touch, taste, smell, sound-- and its interior emotional landscape. At any moment, our motives and our movements are multifactorial. At any moment, they are interesting. The essay as an opportunity to dwell in the current moment, to mull in it, to move around in it, to loll about, to receive it as one's job to to do--as one's calling--listening as one's mission, paying attention as one's calling--seems a magnanimous opportunity. It has made me feel affirmed like Frederick the Mouse in Leo Leonni's tale, that listening and watching and gathering stories is its own type of usefulness, like gathering grain (details as pertaining to story might not be accurate). Mindfulness is perhaps a luxury--to have the quiet, the luxury, the attentiveness, the opportunities for solitude, the time after solitude to write about one's experience of solitude. 

I am reading two books about walking: On Looking, Eleven Walks with Expert Eyes by Alexandra Horowitz and The Old Ways by Robert MacFarlane. I hope I have the endurance to finish the walks with both. I love walking, and their books seem practices of mindful exploration. Alexandra Horowitz, who teaches in the areas of psychology, animal behavior and canine cognition, shares a reflection about how synesthesia is actually the default for children. William James called it " aboriginal sensible muchness." "There is good reason to believe that this kind of synesthesia is the normal experience of infants," says Horowitz. Synesthesia being the overlaying of one sensory experience with another (taste with sound, sound with color). Noting her son's seemingly nonsensical connection of triangle shapes with the characteristics of green and bubbly, Horowitz affirms him. She says, "Who am I to snip that synapse?"

Which makes me wonder, in their revolutionary synesthetic synapse collapsing associations, if poets are getting us back to childhood: our original state. When they layer this word and this color and this feeling, if that feeling of connectedness of our original state feels like home, because it's our first experience of the world.