You know the parentism ‘Don’t touch that, you’ll break it’? I don't think my parents even tried. I couldn’t be stopped; I touched everything. Plush towels. Water fountains. Piles of leaves. Granola. Glitter. Carpet stores, with their rolls of thick, short, stiff and soft, were my candy store. It was instinct, my way of connecting to my setting.
I discovered in college education classes that I learn visually and kinesthetically. Textures fascinate me, and touching them helps me find depth in things outside myself. Sea-glass, sweaters, rich earth, buckets of oats, bark. This world is so wonderfully tangible.
Today’s quest for photographic skills provided me with a short lens, little time, and diffused light. With frayed jeans and my Sperries, I set off for damper ground.
In a mystery still slightly raveled, the movement of words in our mouths mimics the shape of the object we denote. By which I mean this: words themselves have texture. In the way your hands would move over an object if you touched it, your tongue will dip and slide over its word if you say the word aloud. And you, my friend, can do all that from your desk. Give it a whirl:).
Say brittle seaweed,
hunks of crumbly sand,
parched wood,
frayed rope,
pools, and tarps, and moss.
In one of my classes a few years ago I was explaining metaphors, and a little girl who was known to zone out wrote that a dandelion was like a sun in the grass. How simple, how right. I love that this chaffy weed, made to disintegrate with touch, has its own little sun.
‘ello, poppy! Its petals, thin as butterfly wings, couldn’t hold its weight. But, baby, in all its daintiness, it could still get attention! Whoa!
And lastly, the colour of our leaves may be muted, but they still disintegrate into that deeply aromatic smell of fall; they are still crisp.
To crunchy leaves, and all the textures of autumn that are so abundant today, reach out!