cardboard ghosts of future past

Back in the old days, before cardboard cutouts depicted demographically apportioned faces, before stone-still, silent, opaque audience members dressed for the occasion (sports, symphonies, operas, bullfights), actual people were in the seats, stands, arenas, galleries. Can you believe it? In those days, people gathered en masse, in the flesh, prey to each other's coughs and sneezes, victims of unwittingly and unwillingly shared particulate matter. Vulnerable to any stranger's invisible or visible imprint. In the olfactory wake of a curnucopia of scents: body odor, body scent, soap, sweat, perfume, eau de toilette, cologne, and a gazillion unnamed human animal exhalations and excretions. Are you taking all this down? Believe it or not, in those days people thronged and congregated: in bars, churches, pubs, classrooms, assemblies, rallies, union halls, corridors of government, conclaves of commerce. Now, as you know, in every instance, such breathing, pulsing crowds (and individuals) have now been displaced by cardboard simulacra, two-dimensional facsimiles of mute stillness. You don't remember this? Of course not. It was before your time. It was before grim and horrid circumstances forced a consensus of care and protection: social distancing, masks, sanitary measures, disinfection. When these efforts failed, people endured lockdowns, shutdowns, closeouts, wall-offs, barrier-bastions, sealant seizing, communal-closeting, superquarantining. New words were invented to describe new fortifications. But it was too late. The damage had been done. The viral wildfires had, well, gone viral. Those who had mocked the seriousness of it all, those who attributed it to a political hoax or a foreign scheme were in the front lines of failure. They were among the legions to succumb first. But not all of them, not all the disbelievers fell to cruel fate and cold reality. Some escaped. Some went into exile, their whereabouts still unknown. However, the masses had no such escape hatch. Instead, they made the best of a novel way of living, three-dimensional forms floating in and around their cardboard fellow citizens. They learned to befriend the cutouts. They even importuned upon the cutouts to imitate them, to serve as substitutes, ersatz personalities, avatars. In this way, large numbers of the Three Dimensionals found gainful employment -- such as it was -- as designers, painters, artists, portraitists, fabricators, shippers. And so the old days became the new days, and everyone forgot about the old days. That is why I wrote this letter to you, my grandchildren.

failure to thrive

When infants or children show signs of not growing according to standard projections, "failure to thrive" might be the diagnosis. The cause or causes might be a host of medical, nutritional, biological, genetic, psychosocial, or environmental factors. Sometimes the cause is undetermined. 

In some cases, failure to thrive, or FTT, is attributed to abuse or neglect. 

Some researchers have focused on maternal touch as a contributing factor to FTT. These studies examine mother-infant tactile interactions: their frequency and type (unintentional, intentional, during play, during feeding). In some cases, the mother or child may exhibit an aversion to physical contact.

Failure to thrive.

The term has poetic gravitas, a resonant summons for us to reflect.

In the Age of Coronavirus, will infants, children, adults, including the ill and the elderly, experience failure to thrive? Will our necessary, imposed self-isolations, self-quarantines, add the unintended affliction of FTT? At a minimum, will our severely restricted social interactions, our social distancing, cause human thriving deficit, or HTD?

We are social animals.

I know I am.

I already have a burgeoning case of HTD.

How about you?

And in the bigger picture, from a global standpoint, from a species perspective, how much FTT or HTD can the human race sustain? And for how long?

Oh, the longing for touch, our ardor for human texture, pining for skin and pulse, hungering for hugs and human scent, blood, sweat, and tears, tactile tension and tangible tenderness.

skinship

She is Japanese but was in Paris. She is Japanese and speaks some French and some English. In a note to me, she used the word "skinship." We were talking about loneliness. The need for human contact. The need for human touch. When children are undernourished and underweight, not growing according to accepted benchmarks, pediatricians talk of "failure to thrive." Many factors are typically at play. Might emotional starvation via lack of touch be a candidate for causality?

How about adults and their failure to thrive? Many factors are typically at play. The presence of absence. The absence of touch. Skin on skin. Skin to skin.

Skinship.

At first, I thought she had coined this portmanteau word herself by a lovely accident owing to language hybrids and differences. I had thought she had stumbled upon it unconsciously. She said, no, it's a thing; it's a term in Japan; a mash-up of two languages that catches on. Nevertheless, I was arrested, taken by the word and what it evoked, in me. I was, and am, excited by the possibilities the word incites.

Skinship.

Is it the kinship of those who possess skin, or of those who indulge in skinness, in subtle skin-drenched tactility, ("I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch..." Leonard Cohen), or is it the kinship of those parched from touchlessness, arid and brittle, perhaps the kinship of those who ache for skin kinship but have lost the thread of emotional genealogy? Is it a skinny vessel sailing to unseen horizons, a ship with no cargo except the heavy burden of empty skinship?

We don't know.

Reports are sketchy.

Rumors abound.

The Premier President Prince of Skindinavia will be making an official statement on these matters presently.
 

still small voice

You heard a voice, you say? No, I'm not smirking. I just want to know. You heard a voice. Was it loud? Soft? English-speaking? Man, woman, or child? No, I already told you, I'm not mocking. I'm aware of those who hear voices. Schizophrenics, say. I am not saying that's your story, and if it were, it's nothing to make fun of. It would not be something to make light of. You heard a voice. Was it one time? Did it happen many times? Was it a dream? Could you decipher its message and was it personal, reserved for you? Did the still small voice frighten you?

(As an aside, have you wondered how a comma inserted after "still" might alter the meaning of the phrase? That's a meal to digest at another time, señor.)

Granted, it's only logical and common sense to discover that no voice, large or small, still or wavering, can be heard in the midst of tempest, fire, earthquake, flood, blizzard, tornado, whether you are Elijah or Eddie, Elisabeth or Edie.

So we agree on that.

Stop. I'm not being argumentative. If you don't stop saying that, I'm walking out of here. So stop.

I want to know.

Did you crave or trigger the voice? Did you lay the groundwork for it, somehow fertilize the soil of your listeningness?

Wordless, you say.

I can buy that. I really can. No exact words but a voice nonetheless. I get that. I've had similar episodes, experiences, whatever you want to call them.

It's more of a feeling but just as real.

Small? I like that notion too. Like if it was not small and it was staring us right in the face, right in the ear, so to speak, then we'd pay even less attention to it. The Billboard Effect. The Train Syndrome. You know, you live next to train tracks and after a while you don't notice the rolling thunder, the rattling plates in the china cabinet, the silverware chattering like your teeth in December.

Besides, wouldn't "earth-shattering large shout" sound less poetic, less biblical, less kingly and royal?

Where were we?

But would you listen? Would I listen? Would any message, neon-blazing or decibel tsunami-ing, divine or AI or secularly sober, coded or clear, fetch a response from you or me or any modern man, woman, or child?

Tell me.

In a voice of your choosing, in a dialect, volume, and tone of your choice.

Tell me.

the human brand

What are you wearing

It's waterproof, windproof, too

No, what are you wearing

Yeah, no, the jacket, my gloves, the scarf

No, really, tell me

Do you like it

Yes, sort of, yes

Ombre Spicebox Rouge Rogue

Really

Really

Is it showing

What do mean

Can you tell

I can tell

Can I try it

Sure, did you shower

Your deodorant

HideNSeek

Makes scents to me

What about body odor

Mine

What about it

Yours, your body double

My doubled body

Yes, that

Dusk grapefruit coffee ginger seasalt lemon rose vanilla smoke maple clementine

No, not quite

Oak bergamot verbena tobacco dawn nutmeg black pepper sandalwood cardamom ocean

Hardly

Rosewood agarwood orange blossom sage pimento musk orris cacao mancera twilight almond

Not at all

Pekoe cactus pine sugar fern noon mint fog anise river pistachio gardenia cherry

More like it

Maybe

Top notes

Subtle

Yet bold

A statement

More like a hymn

Pour homme

Or femme

Finis

Fine