WITHOUT HESITATION
I confess. Today I sinned. Today I decided to dissent. With consent. Today I gave a hug to a friend. He hugged me back. He rang the bell. I opened the door. We hesitated. It might have been 30sec of waiting on the doorstep. Until we decided to hug each other. A fleeting moment. Do I keep it a secret? Today I sinned, and it felt like being a human again. I remembered what a sublime thing is to hug and be hugged. 23.04.2020, Lincoln.
The day after that event of a simple hug in the midst of the pandemic, I realised that my biggest fear is how is already changing the way that we physically (and therefore emotionally-mentally) encounter the other. How far the fear to contaminate and be contaminated will compromise human relationships? It feels that already touch is strongly associated with the idea of illness, and possibly death. As a way to channel my need and desire for a spontaneous hug, a touch that feels again a safe manifestation of shared intimacy, I started drawing once a day - usually before going to sleep - an imaginary encounter with the other(s) and the self, using a black pencil, blue and red water colour. Basic lines, basic colours, and a basic need and desire: to touch and be touched...without hesitation. I will keep drawing once a day, until that day.
A body touched, touching, fragile, vulnerable, always changing, fleeing, ungraspable, evanescent under a caress or a blow, a body without a husk, a poor skin stretched over the cave where our shadow floats ‌ [“Fifty-eight Indices on the Body (Corpus), Jean-Luc Nancy, 2008].