Touching things

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A pencil

Touching things

In other people`s apartments, I pick things up, weighing them in my hand and holding them, to better understand my hosts and their environments.

Things I like to hold and inspect are mainly small hard items made of metal (preferably heavier metals), wood and ceramics. They include: items such as rulers, tools, treen, shells, eggs, coins, compact hardback books, cutlery, little bottles, ceramics (both earthenware and porcelain such as eggcups, tea saucers, porcelain animals), smaller cameras and candlesticks. I like pieces of wood cut into blocks, seeds, marbles and polished stones. 

Weight and texture then are factors, as is the function of an object. There is something extremely pleasing about the potential in tools. When I pick up the green Faber Castell pencil, and hold it as if I were going to draw I can feel myself mentally preparing to draw: it is as if the pencil itself is compelling me. I 've seldom held firearms but when I have, I have also similarly, and alarmingly felt impelled.

Things I don't like to hold and inspect: items excessively imbued with the identity of another: documents, letters, cosmetic containers, medicines, things made of cloth, anything revelatory of their sexual inclinations (however banal), medicines, clothes of any sort. 

Regarding this last: second hand clothes appall me. This is entirely rational because second hand clothes carry the traces of others not just in their fibres but in how the clothes have reshaped to the bodily form of another. 

Modern detergents, such as Persil Automatic, are very efficient, and can probably remove most human residues: skin particles, hair and bodily fluids such as sweat, mucus, saliva and semen. 

However, the evil secretions that our bodies produce when we engage in wicked thoughts or actions are impossible to dislodge by even the most advanced soaps and remain deeply embedded in the molecular structures of textiles and leathers, however carefully we may clean them.

Felons have their clothing removed on entry into jails. Ignorantly, however, our authorities do not destroy these' clothes. They remain, festering, in storage for felons to collect on completion of their sentences. Hence, our high levels of recidivism.

By wearing second hand clothes you can readily get what in Scotland are called The Jandies-  a curse transferred from the body of another. 

Now, having read this, you will surely start to notice how those who wear thrift shop clothes or hand-me-downs often display pallid expressions, facial tics, skin blemishes, poor teeth, ungainly bodily  postures and even speech impediments. Things are never truly well for them and they are constantly grumbling about this or that or the next thing.

I used to know a large family in  Aberdeen, in North-East Scotland, whose youngest child, as an economy, was forced to wear hand me downs. I never saw the boy without a cold. Sniffle! sniffle! sniffle! and always a droplet of snot billowing, ballooning, ready to fall from his nostril. He came to our house and almost immediately broke a vase- he was, awfully, accident prone, forever with a sprained this or broken that. He had few friends. When he grew older he became addicted to drugs, and had endless difficulties with the law. He is currently on probation for a clumsy attempt to steal a car.

You might remark that these unfortunate phenomena correlate better with poverty than the wearing of used clothes. To counter this, let me draw your attention to the practices of aristocratic families. These do not lack money but, nonetheless,  customarily hand clothing as heirlooms to their offspring. Thus, their children become the bearers of diverse psychological weaknesses, most apparently tendencies to alcoholism, depression and distasteful sexual urges. It is thanks only to their privileged position in society that these ill-effects do not cause them more damage.

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 Read to the Detroit Writers' Group, 24 March, 2021, Pinellas Group July, 2023

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