(no subject)
Apr. 29th, 2005 08:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
taerowynHaving a missing my CO crew day. Listening to CDs that Eli made where he picked a song for each person probably isn't helping. It's triggered something that's been percolating in my brain for years, though I still haven't sat my ass down and done any real research into it...If I really wanted to do this right, I'd do some research on the surrogate-mother monkey experiment. You know, the one where they gave some baby monkeys a wire frame surrogate mom and others one that was all plush and soft and everything else was the same: food, toys, daily routine etc. and the baby monkeys with the touchable "mom" were lots healthier... do some research into "laying of the hands" and all of that, but instead I'm just going to ramble.
I, like most people, have different levels of friends: the classmate, the acquaintance, the drinking buddy, the online friend, the best friend etc. Although I am always me at my foundations, the surface interface alters depending on which level of friend you are. I have more shared history with my best friend since the first grade than I do with a classmate I met two years ago. The level of understanding is so fundamentally different that the conversation between the best friend and I sometimes would make as much sense as a foreign language to the classmate. It's not that strange a concept...most people have inside jokes. It's the same thing. The closer a friend you are, the less surface there is to that surface interface and the more you get of the me foundation. Pretty basic trust issues...I only show my hand when we've built up enough trust.
Now the thought exercise starts moving into![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
taerowyn-style weirdness, and it kind of comes back to surfaces again, but this time actually connecting surfaces...body contact...touch. It's the closest friends that I actually physically touch the most often (when not separated by thousands of miles, of course). Not anything sexual and a simple hug isn't quite it. I mean the hug is kind of the friends' version of a handshake. I'm talking about...just walking up to a person and putting an arm around their shoulders...leaning into somebody, head on their shoulder...on the floor, watching a movie and using their stomach as a pillow.... Touch.
Transplanting my life several times now, touch is one way I've come to measure how I've settled in. In a few places (CT and Canada...only there for a few months each), I never got to the point that I had friends that I felt comfortable just touching like that. And in not having touch I always feel a little out of the loop and off-kilter with my surroundings. I have a distinct memory of the first of my Boston friends that came up behind me and gave me a quick shoulder rub... the first of the Boston friends to purposefully touch. I swear, my eyes teared up. It was such a relief for things to snap into place and show that the friendships were finally deepening to that point.
Now that we're all no longer in one large herd at all times, things have started stretching thin. I don't see everybody as often as I'd like and touch is getting rare again. I noticed it at work the other day when a coworker was trying to slip past me and put her hands on my waist to balance herself. It was one of those times when you realize your skin is your largest organ because I swear I felt that two second contact from head to toes. And it hit me...other than a few brief hugs here and there, I don't think I'd been touched in weeks.
So, to get back to the beginning, I think that's a large part of why I'm missing the CO crew right now. I've known them the longest and I really can't imagine hanging out with them without touch. I really just want to pop into Kim's basement and end up in a big pile, watching a movie. Of course many pieces of said pile aren't in CO and Kim's basement (as well as the rest of the house) has been sold and hey, I'm in Boston. But a girl can dream.
I, like most people, have different levels of friends: the classmate, the acquaintance, the drinking buddy, the online friend, the best friend etc. Although I am always me at my foundations, the surface interface alters depending on which level of friend you are. I have more shared history with my best friend since the first grade than I do with a classmate I met two years ago. The level of understanding is so fundamentally different that the conversation between the best friend and I sometimes would make as much sense as a foreign language to the classmate. It's not that strange a concept...most people have inside jokes. It's the same thing. The closer a friend you are, the less surface there is to that surface interface and the more you get of the me foundation. Pretty basic trust issues...I only show my hand when we've built up enough trust.
Now the thought exercise starts moving into
taerowyn-style weirdness, and it kind of comes back to surfaces again, but this time actually connecting surfaces...body contact...touch. It's the closest friends that I actually physically touch the most often (when not separated by thousands of miles, of course). Not anything sexual and a simple hug isn't quite it. I mean the hug is kind of the friends' version of a handshake. I'm talking about...just walking up to a person and putting an arm around their shoulders...leaning into somebody, head on their shoulder...on the floor, watching a movie and using their stomach as a pillow.... Touch. Transplanting my life several times now, touch is one way I've come to measure how I've settled in. In a few places (CT and Canada...only there for a few months each), I never got to the point that I had friends that I felt comfortable just touching like that. And in not having touch I always feel a little out of the loop and off-kilter with my surroundings. I have a distinct memory of the first of my Boston friends that came up behind me and gave me a quick shoulder rub... the first of the Boston friends to purposefully touch. I swear, my eyes teared up. It was such a relief for things to snap into place and show that the friendships were finally deepening to that point.
Now that we're all no longer in one large herd at all times, things have started stretching thin. I don't see everybody as often as I'd like and touch is getting rare again. I noticed it at work the other day when a coworker was trying to slip past me and put her hands on my waist to balance herself. It was one of those times when you realize your skin is your largest organ because I swear I felt that two second contact from head to toes. And it hit me...other than a few brief hugs here and there, I don't think I'd been touched in weeks.
So, to get back to the beginning, I think that's a large part of why I'm missing the CO crew right now. I've known them the longest and I really can't imagine hanging out with them without touch. I really just want to pop into Kim's basement and end up in a big pile, watching a movie. Of course many pieces of said pile aren't in CO and Kim's basement (as well as the rest of the house) has been sold and hey, I'm in Boston. But a girl can dream.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 05:02 am (UTC)I don't have much to contribute to this post besides that. It's floating around on my hard drive for ... some reason.
I remember endless physical contact with my high school friends, and early college, too. Piles and things like you describe. But it is very hard to make those same associations among autonomous adults. The only people you spend enough time with are your co-workers and even if it were acceptable to be that physical with them, would you want to?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-04-30 07:22 am (UTC)But it is very hard to make those same associations among autonomous adults. The only people you spend enough time with are your co-workers and even if it were acceptable to be that physical with them, would you want to?
See, I think that may be where the problem. My core group of friends right now are all from my grad school program. We're very close-knit and and it's ever so much like the high school/college groups of yore except for the whole we're adults thing.
As for physicality with coworkers...er...no...good point