#Contact is crisis; every touch is a modified blow

[aphel1on]

not sure how to phrase this but something i have been ruminating on recently is that xue yang is strangely fragile. obviously he is also incredibly resilient. he survived, and continues to survive, impossible things. he has a million barriers between himself and the world, but none of this actually matters when it comes to what he feels. everything is personal to him. everything pierces straight through all that armor and goes right to his battered heart, the heart that no one else believes he has. that even he is not fully cognizant of. the world strikes and strikes and strikes and so he strikes and strikes and strikes back, even (especially) when the wound is something other people would not think worthy of retribution.

xue yang would never realize this- would be outraged at the concept of it- but the way everything, everything is something to rally a defense against is in itself a form of fragility. he does not know how to let go of things, or let them pass him by. passivity is death. so he is ruthlessly cruel and violent. he projects himself as a lunatic untouchable by anything you might possibly do to him, and on some level he even believes this. but in actuality he is one raw emotional wound. he never learned to separate himself from his emotions, much less process them. the volatility is not so much insanity as it is the constant lashing out of an animal in a trap, and the trap is the world, and the trap is himself, and he is never going to get out. and like so much else, this pain is just part of the background radiation of his life. it hardly registers. to be able to register the hurt, you would have to be able to register a time in which you were not hurt.

i feel like it is a fragility that could blossom into such tenderness, given exactly the right set of circumstances. how at the very first touch of softness in his life he fell into a domesticity from which he never recovered. how much was there, still, to be salvaged from the cruelty. on some level i am always thinking about the little apple bunnies. about the meal for daozhang and the straw in a-qing's bed.

it was too little, too late. it shattered like glass when the world intruded back in. but the tenderness was there. no one, least of all xue yang, knows what might have happened had it been unearthed in him any sooner.

[sasukeblunt]

incredibly important to me that naruto effectively begins with sasuke automatically moving to save naruto’s life during the haku fight and naruto saying “i never asked for your help” just for the tables to be turned later on. and when asked why they refuse to give up on each other they both can’t properly explain it. but they know. because they’ve both done the same for each other from the beginning!!!

[karlkapri]

As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another—whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, “Every touch is a modified blow.”

Anne Carson, from Men in the Off Hours; “Dirt and Desire: Essay on the Phenomenology of Female Pollution in Antiquity” .

[thewindygurl]

Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, "every touch is a modified blow."

[luthienne]

Paul Tran, from All the Flowers Kneeling; "The Nightmare: Oil on Canvas: Henry Fuseli: 1781"

[Text ID: Who / can deter- / mine what's inside / another? / What is risked / when we enter?]

[snoppy]

“The wish to be absorbed into the substance of the Other implies an insuperable revulsion for one’s own substance.”

anne carson, “dirt and desire - essay on the phenomenology of female pollution in antiquity” / hannibal, 2×13 “mizumono” / the botany of desire, michael pollan / succession, 1×06 “which side are you on” / journal of a solitude, may sarton / hannibal, 3×07 “digestivo” / rené girard, deceit, desire, and the novel: self and other in literary structure

[image ID:

1. As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional, or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, "every touch is a modified blow."

2. hannibal clutching the back of will's head, holding a knife.

3. Desire, then, is built into the very nature and purpose of fruit, and so, quite often, is a kind of taboo.

4. tom wambsgans holding a white napkin, saying, “For the head. Its exact purpose is debated. Some say it's to mask the shame. Others...to hide the pleasure.”

5. Lately a small tabby cat has come every day and stared at me with a strange, intense look. Of course I put food out, night and morning. She is so terrified that she runs away at once when I open the door, but she comes back to eat ravenously as soon as I disappear. Yet her hunger is clearly not only for food. I long to take her in my arms and hear her purr with relief at finding shelter. Will she ever become tame enough for that, to give in to what she longs to have? It is such an intense look with which she scans my face at the door before she runs away. It is not a pleading look, simply a huge question: "Can I trust?" Our two gazes hang on its taut thread. I find it painful.

6. hannibal speaks to will, saying, “You delight in wickedness and then berate yourself for the delight.”

/end ID]

[notebookofquotes]

As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another - whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional, or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, "every touch is a modified blow."

Anne Carson

[rmscarpathia]

“As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another—whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, “Every touch is a modified blow.””

— Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours

[existential-celestial]

As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another–whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional, or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, “Every touch is a modified blow.” The difficulty presented by any instance of contact is that of violating a fixed boundary, transgressing a closed category where one does not belong.

Anne Carson, from “Putting Her in Her Place: Women, Dirt, and Desire,” in Before Sexuality: The Construction of Erotic Experience in the Ancient Greek

[showyourenergy]

compare and contrast;

              As soon as they’re out of the tower, Lalna set the other him down and crouched down to examine him. Thankfully, the ginger-haired shorty didn’t try to punch him in the face or anything, and instead still seem near-catatonic from the emotional blow Nigh had dealt. That’s… not good. To tell the truth, Lalna wasn’t in the best mental shape either; he felt like he ricocheted through several emotions from the situation escalating so quickly, and it always left him feeling dizzy. Oh, yeah, and he nearly died, had a weird-looking clone yell at him and a different weird-looking clone go nuclear at a catboy, and he had no idea what he was doing.

He’s pretty familiar with his own biology out of necessity. This means that feeling nothing when he checks for a pulse, not even a weak one, when checking the spot he’s checked on himself dozens of times, is disorienting. The sensitivity issues on his mechanical hand means that he doesn’t even bother trying to check his own wrist most of the time, seeing as he may not even be able to accurately feel it, but seeing as he was able to use his organic hand for this then it was worth a shot. Still nothing. He was out of practice with this location, so maybe he was just doing it wrong? Lalna checked a few different spots on the wrist, thinking intently, then pressed his fingers against his own wrist, sensitivity issues or not. It kind of hurt with how much pressure he was putting on it, but he could faintly feel it, just not enough to get an accurate count.

Which meant he just discovered this clone doesn’t have a pulse whatsoever. That’s… inconvenient, and also somewhat disturbing.

There isn’t any apparent injury when he lifts up the clone’s shirt, careful to not make the situation even more awkward and doing his best to avoid being near the thaumic mess serving as his right arm. Or, at least, there isn’t any blood. There’s also far less scarring than he has, which he feels like he should’ve expected but it still felt weird. Whoever this was, they’d had better luck at staying uninjured than he had. Either that, or flawless healing was another ability Specimen Three had.

He felt around, just in case there was something internal he couldn’t see at first glance, then frowned. Hold on. There was something wrong along his left side, where Nigh had grabbed him. He hiked the shirt up higher and leaned in for a closer look. There was something weird there. He blinked. It almost looked like a tattoo, or some weird marking, except it felt weird when he touched it, as if the texture of the clone’s skin had changed. It… kind of looked like a crack, thin blocky lines scored on his skin.

“Am I dead yet?”

Lalna jerked away. The clone was alive after all, blinking up at him with half-lidded eyes. It was the first time he got a full, proper look at him without things immediately going to hell, and it was one of the weirdest experiences Lalna had. Lalna was pretty used to seeing his face in the mirror, especially once he’d taken to monitoring himself for Flux resurgence, and he’d seen more people with his face walking around than he was comfortable with: alternates from other universes, clones of himself with the slightest physical differences like styling their hair differently, mindless crowds of mass-produced copies intent on murdering him into the ground, a dark, warped reflection of him with red-lensed goggles and a too-wide grin. This version of him still stood out from the rest.

Like he’d first noticed, the odd clone was closer to Nano’s height (and Specimen Three’s) than his own, and his hair was a vivid orange and far fluffier than it had any right to be. A single scar ran across his nose, starting from just under one eye and ending under the other. His labcoat was rumpled and dirty, with one sleeved rolled up to showcase his replacement arm, and the glove on his organic arm was fingerless and beige instead of being shades of grey like Lalna’s own. The shirt he’d been messing around with was also beige, and proudly displayed a logo of… some sort of company? It looked like a knockoff NASA logo, except in shades of orange and reading “JAFFA”. In small text circling the logo was what he assumed was the program’s motto: “Hold space to slow down”. The clone was also missing boots, instead apparently preferring to go barefoot, and the hems of his pantlegs were in horrible shape. Asides from all of that, they were identical.

Wait, back up. He’d heard of JAFFA before. They were the rival space program to whatever Sips and Sjin’s was, and he’d kind of stolen the idea of going to space with Nano from them. He didn’t really know much about the organization, just some word-of-mouth that it had gone quite catastrophically… Had this Lalna worked for them? The thought dug into him despite his attempts to shoo it off. He had more urgent things to focus on!

…Like the fact that the clone had asked him a question and he’d zoned out staring at him. Whoops.

“Uh... no? I mean, you seem fine, minus the whole… not having a pulse thing.” He scratched behind his head as he tilted back from a crouch to a haphazard sitting position. It wasn’t very graceful, but he didn’t care too much about that.

Oddly, the other Lalna didn’t seem too bothered to hear that. “Oh, that’s… normal.” Lalna raised an eyebrow. The other him opened his mouth to elaborate, but seemed to think better about it as he sat up and avoided looking in his direction. Lalna’s gaze drifted to the modified weapon he’d grabbed along with the clone, worried that he was going to pull it on him again, but there was something else on the clone’s mind. “…What happened to Drei?”

“Specimen Three?” He doesn’t quite understand the look the shorter him gives him. Annoyance? Irritation? Offense? Maybe “Drei” was their preferred name and he wasn’t appreciating him calling them by their designation. Somehow that felt about right, although he couldn’t explain why. “Uh, they stayed behind,” he answered. The redhead’s blue eyes widened in horror and panic, and Lalna held up his hands. “I’m sure they’ll be okay, though!” he quickly appended. “They’ve survived–” He cut himself off before he let slip that, one way or another, Drei had survived him and Nano destroying the facility they were stored in. He was pretty sure that info wouldn’t help the situation whatsoever. “–things,” he substituted. “They’re a Nano, I’m sure they can handle anything thrown at them.”

The other closed his eyes again, and for a moment Lalna thought he’d finally lost consciousness. Then he spoke up again. “Are you going to kill me?”

“What? No!” He gave him a startled look. “No, not unless you’re like… gonna try and kill me or Nano first, or replace me and do dastardly things.” The other Lalna didn’t look like he believed him, or maybe was just having trouble understanding what he was getting at. “Okay, uh. I think we got off wrong. Can we start over? Here, uh, my name’s…” He paused. Saying “Lalna” wouldn’t help, not when the name could apply to them both. Especially if the other had some bad experience or another with another Lalna, which he could easily believe both from how he’d reacted to him and how badly almost every encounter with another him had gone.

“I’m Atomic,” he settled on. He still wasn’t used to calling himself that; he’d come up with it sometime after he and Nano had exited the Time Gate while neck-deep in yet another identity crisis, and Nano had tried to push him towards defining himself as a separate entity from Hector. Finding out his entire life had been a lie had hit him hard, and he was still dealing with the aftershocks a year later.

…Speaking of identity crises. Atomic realized something that had been bugging him in the back of his mind and hadn’t surfaced to the forefront until now. Every time he’d met another Lalna from his universe— that Magic Police asshole, the pretender that had locked him away in the arrow trap, even some occasional flickers from Hector himself— foreign memories had crammed themselves into his brain, disorienting him. They could happen without him having contact with the relevant Lalna, but there was always that moment of dissociation and confusion when he met another where, for the smallest of seconds, he forgot who he was.

That hadn’t happened. Whoever this Lalna was, he had no foreign memories from him. That was… another weird thing.

He was watching him— no, more like scrutinizing him. Atomic tried not to fidget. He could tell that the other was looking at his scar; it was pretty hard to miss, a splash of discolouration across his face where the Flux used to be, and was one of the traits he desperately clung to to set him apart from the other Lalnas he’d met. After a moment, it clicked: the redhead was likely trying to compare and contrast him with whatever other Lalna he’d met before.

Atomic cleared his throat and the other startled. “Uh, like I said, I’m Atomic,” he started off, somewhat nervous. “I used to live in a big castle, and I studied things like… the Flux…” He couldn’t help but stare at the other Lalna’s right arm as he spoke. It was oversized and appeared to be made of Flux, or Taint, or at least some kind of thaumic corruption; it looked dead-on like Nano’s own Fluxed-up limbs, made of Flux goo held into shape somehow, although unlike Nano’s he couldn’t make out the dark shading indicating where the original limb was. Weirdly, it seemed to mimic the appearance of a robotic limb, with bands of darker purple around the joints and darker-shaded fingers that gave it a segmented look. Oh, yeah, and then there was the yellow eye on the back of the hand staring at him.

He was losing focus again. Atomic tried to ground himself with his own memories again as he resumed speaking. “I kinda took on an apprentice, Nano, and xe got… uh, Tainted. So since then I’ve been moving around, trying to find a way to cure xem before it’s too late.” He interlaced his fingers, examining how they fit together. “…and I’ve never seen you before in my entire life.”

The clone was scrutinizing him again. “So… you’re not him?” Atomic looked up. The other sounded confused, but also… hopeful? “You didn’t work for Hole Diggers? …You didn’t nearly throw me out into space because I’m a reject?”

Atomic’s eyes widened, and he shook his head hard enough for his goggles to fall down over his eyes. “What? No! No, I don’t even know what Hole Diggers is.” Actually, it did sound somewhat familiar… Hadn’t Hat Corp sold them a deed to a shitty, inhospitable island? His confusion and alarm seemed to soothe the other’s nerves, and the redhead reached out with his thaumic hand. Atomic eyed the offered hand uneasily, noting the six-petaled flower marking on the palm. It reminded him of the flowers Specimen Three—Drei—has been sprouting. He wondered if that was intentional.

“I’m Digger,” the other Lalna said with an uneasy smile. “Because, uh, I used to work for Hole Diggers… or, my original did.” He didn’t see the look of shock Atomic had in response to what he said. “I’m a reject, as you can probably tell… Honeydew messed with the shell constructor.” Atomic’s eyes went even wider as he mouthed ‘Honeydew?!’ in alarm. “Um, sorry for freaking out. A… a lot of things happened today.”

Atomic shook himself out of his daze. He’d have to ask Digger for more information on Honeydew— and the Lalna that Digger had been cloned from— later. “No kidding,” he groaned, pushing his goggles back up to rub at one eye with the heel of his palm. Digger still had his hand extended. Atomic considered it, then grasped it with his mechanical hand and shook it. Ew, squishy. “Do you… need a ride home…?” He trailed off, looking around. Digger giggled.

“No, it’s okay, I know my way around.” For a moment, Atomic could swear that Digger’s blue eyes had shifted to a more purple hue. Maybe it was the lighting? “Um… what about you? Do you need help?” He got to his feet and picked up the double-ended disassembler, then stowed it away in his inventory before helping Atomic up.

“I am in need of so much help,” Atomic groaned.

[a-ramblinrose]

As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another—whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, 'Every touch is a modified blow.'

Anne Carson, Men in the Off Hours  “Dirt and Desire: Essay on the Phenomenology of Female Pollution in Antiquity”

[herateleia-blog]

“… if no one is there to touch you are you even really there?”

“I wake / aching, how I’ve longed for touch / for so much of my bodied time.”

“The importance of touch is that it places you. [...]It makes for a sense of oneness … as well as for a sense of difference. [...] If we are not touched, we might begin to suspect that we are not here.” 

“The longing to touch/be touched. I feel gratitude when I touch someone—as well as affection etc. The person has allowed me proof that I have a body—and that there are bodies in the world.”

“Don’t we touch each other just to prove we are still here?”

“There’s power in the touch of another person’s hand. [...] It comes from our very earliest memories, when we all come into the world blinded by light and color, deafened by riotous sound, flailing in a suddenly cavernous space without any way of orienting ourselves, shuddering with cold, emptied with hunger, and justifiably frightened and confused. And what changes that first horror, that original state of terror? The touch of another person’s hands.”

“Touch me, /  remind me who I am.”

“Of all the senses, touch is the most linked to emotion and feeling. [...] tactile perception involves perception of our own bodily state as we take in what is outside the state. The pressure involved in touch is a pressure on ourselves as well as on others.”

“Eros is an issue of boundaries. He exists because certain boundaries do. In the interval between reach and grasp, between glance and counterglance, [...]. But the boundaries of time and glance and I love you are only aftershocks of the main, inevitable boundary that creates Eros: the boundary of flesh[...].”

"[I]f the skin is a border, then it is a border that feels. […] So while the skin appears to be the matter which separates the body, it rather allows us to think of how the materialisation of bodies involves, not containment, but an affective opening out of bodies to other bodies, in the sense that the skin registers how bodies are touched by others."

“Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, “Every touch is a modified blow.”"

[x]

[luthienne]

elena ferrante, from incidental inventions (tr. ann goldstein)

anne carson, from men in the off hours

[luthienne]

Jennifer S. Cheng, from So We Must Meet Apart

[Text ID: You spoke once of boundaries, of your fear about where you find yourself making them. Do you remember? I was trying to listen closely. I have been thinking about how I relate to people. It isn’t as easy as saying that I hold people at a distance, but more so that I am always sensing the insurmountable swimming between us, and sometimes this feels like an overwhelming failure. Rilke says love between two people is loving that very expanse, even considering it sacred, and I wonder if there is something transcendent here—a definition for community. Across the distance we hear the air shifting between us, and recognize it for what it is—miracles of texture and movement, tiny collaborations of our bodies navigating an unwieldy space.]

[luthienne]

To recreate yourself: powder, fiber, wound. To lose yourself: gesture, contact, oblivion.

Blanca Varela, from The Blinding Star; “Vals” (tr. Sara Daniele Rivera & Lisa Allen Ortiz)

[Original: Recrearte: polvo, brizna, herida. Perderte: gesto, contacto, olvido.]

[luthienne]

hi there!! I've been following you for a little time but I must confess that your posts make me forget about how small and broke and hurt I've been feeling during the last years, I know there's something wrong with me and it's breaking me in two, I'd say I'm a lonely person, whenever I want to express my thoughts there's no one out there who can listen to me and I try to always understand them but I'm the one left always and in some way the pieces of those poems you posts make me feel like I do have a reason to be in this world, and I was wondering if you could have a collection of those for lonely ppl like me, ppl who feel so small but still think the sun shines the next day, it would mean the world to me. 💛

“…it is a little thing to say how lone it is — anyone can do it, but to wear loneliness next to your heart for weeks, when you sleep, and when you wake, ever missing something, this, all cannot say, and it baffles me.”

“‘Perhaps you will wake up and find the sun shining and the birds singing,’ she said compassionately. (…) ‘Perhaps it will be fine tomorrow,’”

“As members of human society, perhaps the most difficult task we face daily is that of touching one another—whether the touch is physical, moral, emotional or imaginary. Contact is crisis. As the anthropologists say, ‘Every touch is a modified blow.’”

“I was very often full of rage and despair. I was always lonely. In spite of all that I was and am in love with life.”

“I know that there are thorns in the hedges, but that does not prevent me from putting out my hands and finding flowers there. If all are not beautiful, all are interesting. Such is life! And if one does not take life like that, then how can one endure it?”

emily dickinson, selected letters / (x) / rebecca solnit, hope in the dark / mary oliver, "october" / virginia woolf, to the lighthouse / marcella cooper, welcome home / jeanette winterson, why be happy when you could be normal? / anne carson, men in the off hours / nikki giovanni, “introspection” / marie howe, magdalene: poems / jeanette winterson, why be happy when you could be normal? / mary szybist, incarnadine: poems / nikki giovanni, “winter poem” / mary oliver, long life: essays and other writings / tomas tranströmer, tr. robert bly, “track” / margarita karapanou, tr. karen emmerich, rien ne va plus / george sand, in a letter to gustave flaubert / ocean vuong, “someday i’ll love ocean vuong” / richard blanco, declaration of interdependence / (x) / camille norton, corruption: poems