Of course it’s daft that I stroked my stubble and massaged my glabella in preparation for writing this sentence. Doubly daft probably, if we assume that I stroked my stubble in an attempt to feel sage and massaged my forehead because I hoped it would somehow stir forth thoughts. The stroking was performative, the massaging superstitious, and I suppose both gestures were things I picked up from witnessing other thinkers prodding away at their faces in order to allay mental constipation. Conceited, superfluous, fidgety, delusional, and daft, of course, but watch me do both rituals again before I start the next paragraph.

See? It can’t be helped. And if a behaviour is daft but can’t be helped, then I reckon it could be more helpful than we give it credit for. I’m convinced that my mannerisms of touch, when applied to myself, silently reconnect me with the myriad corners of my identity.

Finding focus through touch

When I touch my body, I’m able to be much more selective in my focus than when I observe it with my eyes alone. It is difficult to look upon my nipple without my focus wandering towards the stomach lying in my peripheral vision, but by putting my finger to it, I can promote my ‘nippleness’ to the forefront of my identity, momentarily excluding all else. Briefly, I become someone who is tender, elastic, pink, and, because I’m furnished with this defunct appendage, I remember too, that I am in some ways strange, absurd, and unknown to myself.

“Each part of the body is laden with symbolism and associations, and touching each part reminds me that I have its particular traits on my person.”

These are parts of myself that I am glad to have within reach, and whenever I feel out of touch with them I think I become more inclined to give my nipple a poke! Each part of the body is laden with symbolism and associations, and touching each part reminds me that I have its particular traits on my person. There isn’t a reachable bit of my body which fails to imbue me with its characteristics when it meets my touch.

And so I massage my glabella, my temples, and my scalp in order to re-assert my possession over my head and my sovereignty over its activities. I’d probably prod my brain too if it was lolling out. I know I’m not the only person to pat at my noggin as if it’ll make thoughts wriggle up to the surface like earthworms — I’m still unsure if it’s a learned behaviour or something which, unprompted, we would all decide to do anyway, but it does the trick. And the trick is this: though we might be convinced that patting our head encourages ideas, really it just gives us the confidence needed to think. In the whacking, I tell myself that my head, tamed or no, is mine to employ. There’s something potent in the image of an erratic person palming away at their skull as if trying to keep their mind within their grasp, or in that of The Thinker, propping his head upon his fist, embodying the weighty balancing-act of thought.

The many selves at my fingertips

Just as touching my head makes me more confident that I own and control it, when I touch any of my body’s components I provide for the subtle yearnings that wish to feel more in possession of these components and the characteristics they evoke.

When it suits me to feel gnomish I’m wont to thumb away at my big toe and lick the points of my teeth. When I want to feel like a thing of parts I shunt my knuckles to crack them or I bite a nail free. To feel durable I grope a muscle. To feel tender I whisp a touch to my ear lobe. By pressing myself, I yield impressions of what I am, and by mixing and matching these impressions I unthinkingly reassure myself about my potential to be a man, a boy, a human being or a feral thing — to be thoughtful, foolish, frightened, bombastic, desirable, disgusting, familiar, perplexing, and self-possessed.

But not all at once!

The hands know they aren’t getting the full picture, that’s why they’re so relentlessly fascinated. They rummage for what I need to feel in each moment, and soon rummage some more. By allowing our hands to glide over our body, or the body of another, we are reminded that calling ourselves any singular adjective is likely to neglect the full picture of what we truly are. No topography — haptic, visual, or written will ever map anyone in their totality. Through touch, we are able to focus on fragments of what and who we are, and mesmerise ourselves, for better or for worse; even to the extent that we can be convinced that the part is indicative of the whole.

“Bodily estrangement can be a marvel for some and a crisis for others. I’m lucky to feel more curious than uncomfortable.”

As much as I touch my body to reconnect with areas of my personality, much of the time I do so simply because I possess a mind tenanted in flesh and bone, trying to make sense of its lodgings. Bodily estrangement can be a marvel for some and a crisis for others. I’m lucky to feel more curious than uncomfortable, but I recognise that some people reading this will be less eager to interact with their body, or will wish theirs was not their own. I hope that everyone has at least one area of their body, perhaps an epicentre of pulse or a zone of warmth, which enables them to touch upon, for a moment, the depths of who they really are; to touch upon the masses of persons that live within them, and upon the underlying forces of life which precede our every role and performance.

If it’s daft but it helps, cop a feel.