"Pay attention," she whispered.
But it was impossible not to pay attention. However, gently and delicately, her fingers had probed to the very quick of his consciousness. And how intensely alive, he now noticed, those fingers were! What a strange tingling warmth flowed out of them!
"It's like an electric current," he marveled.
"But luckily," she said, "the wires carry no messages. One touches and, in the act of touching, one's touched. Complete communication, but nothing communicated. Just an exchange of life, that's all."

[found at story time]

i love that. an exchange of life.

somehow i have found myself in conversations regarding cuddle parties[!], snuggling, touching, and hugging [or non-hugging] during the past week or so. if this sounds at all familiar, it is because i have blathered on about this before here and here. and if you note the dates, apparently i have the need to talk about this nearly annually? anyway. if you search oxytocin+hug you will find all sorts of fun stuff regarding the power of touch, which i find very interesting [i particularly enjoy this post, also at story time]. one of the artlcles starts off like this, though:

"Between loving partners, between parents and children, or even between close friends, physical affection can help the brain, the heart and other body systems you might never have imagined."

okay. so the word "even" there? before the bit about close friends? irritates me to no end. like, omg, wow, can you EVEN IMAGINE? friends? showing physical affection? THE WORLD HAS GONE TOPSY-TURVY. BRING ME A DRINK.

it seems there is a very large chasm between childhood and dating/marriage where affection is somehow out of bounds. as a single woman in her late twenties, you can imagine this may be a little frustrating. what, just because i'm not married or dating i should be denied physical affection? it's healthy, you know! frankly, i'm glad i am a woman and that i can feel a little more free in the touchy-feely-ness area without society totally weirding out on me. although nowadays there are raised eyebrows at two women showing affection, too... sigh.

anyway, i started this thinking that i had some sort of point but am pretty sure i lost it somewhere along the way. it's a shame, too, because i think it was going to be awesome. for now i'll just say that hugs are physically, scientifically, and emotionally awesome, and that if you know me well... you know where to find one.

[in other news, apparently i cannot justify alignment in my entries anymore? rawr.]

I want to be who I was born to be. I want to be a woman-- full of piss and vinegar and sweetness and light and tenderness and fury and joy and anger and sadness and exhilaration. I want to be a woman who is passionately in love with Jesus. I want to be a woman is self-sufficient and independent, but who can accept help from others instead of trying to do it all myself and becoming jaded by life. I want to be a woman who is strong but not hard, gentle but not subdued, loud but not strident. I want to fall in love and I want to argue and I want to snuggle and wrestle and hug. I want to give foot rubs and Dutch ovens. I want to memorize scripture and I want to talk dirty to my husband. I want to teach my kids how to love Jesus and how to fart with their armpits and why the sky is blue.

[found on the occasional truth via an anonymous poster. part of blog share 2008]

and, no. i didn't write it. might as well have, though.

Prayer, to me, is sort of like yoga, on several levels. It's good for me and helps me, and to be quite honest, I say I do it way more than I actually do. When someone asks, "Do you do yoga?" I answer, "Absolutely. I love it. It totally makes me feel better."

What I mean, in the strictest sense, is that every week I intend to go to yoga three times and I occasionally make it to one class, and I have several pairs of yoga pants, and some yoga DVDs and flashcards, and every once in a while, if I'm really feeling bad, I do a few sun salutations before bed. So really, I'm yoga-ish.

Prayer, in my life, is similar. If you ask me about prayer, I have the books, the journals, a few transcendent experiences to report from the last decade, lots of good reasons why every person should do it, and not a ton of extremely current experiences rushing to mind. I believe in it, conceptually. I feel better when I do it. I believe my life would be better if I did it a lot, like yoga, but when it comes right down to it, I'm prayer-ish.

[from cold tangerines by shauna niequist]