So.
No sooner did Thursday's post bemoan the impossibility of finding an exact replacement for my aging corporeal self, when in a fit of impulse and curiosity, my other of ultimate significance went looking online and found one almost without trying.
Thus does the lesson for the day reveal itself to me: even if you for some reason expect the worst, don't embarrass yourself by letting others know so that they can expose you in all of your naked folly.
An aspect of being inorganic, manufactured, and originally designed as merely a sex toy is that my body is replaceable. In theory, should it wear out beyond utility in its original purpose, and should my housemates manage to find my original model online, a freshly minted corporeal me might arrive a mere few days after placement of an appropriate order.
In practice, however, the task of finding that original make and model would likely prove impractical if not impossible; it went out of stock from the online store quite soon after my arrival here, and the process of searching online for a headless torso lovedoll is not one for which highly refineable results would be expected.
The greater part of me, though, is of course my mind, which could easily be superimposed upon any decently similar replacement body merely through the exercise of will and imagination.
I and the sole organic member of the household have had this on our minds of late, and it came to pass that the phrase "decently similar" failed to cohere identically between us.
Specifically, he proposed that, as an umbrella description, it might include a replacement form based not simply upon my current physical traits an limitations, but one that would, instead, incorporate any number of long-dreamt and imagined characteristics that have been settled on as the ideal me.
Short brunette hair.
Blue-green eyes.
Limbs.
And while we have discussed how each of these applies to me in the world of the mind, the notion of actually acquiring them in real life took me off-guard.
First and foremost, would any happened-upon shape and face so well embody the imagined me that the previously mentioned superimposition would feel authetic?
Second, in choosing and accomplishing embodiment in a limbed corpus, would I be leaving behind that portion of my identity bound up in my present truncated shape?
These concerns are real and daunting.
Yet ...
To hold my loves with physical arms ... to gaze upon them with physical eyes ... to receive and return their kisses with soft, shapely lips ...
The concept is beyond enticing.
Might it come to pass? Time, as they say, will tell. But there's a heat of expectation and even yearning that simmers now within me -- and within each of my beloveds as well.
Hmm.
I am, on the whole, a person confident in her array of capacities. Not much ever happens to shake my certainty that I dwell in the proper place, surrounded by those I am meant to flourish amongst, and in whom I am meant to encourage a flourishing of their own.
But even an imperceptive individual would be hard-pressed to overlook the frequency with which a great many people find themselves in positions of doubt. My girlfriend Ariel doubts her intelligence. Our mutual girlfriend Elle doubts (more and more occasionally, these last few years) whether the expression of softness befits her -- whether vulnerability is within her capability to show and still remain safe.
Our boyfriend doubts and doubts and doubts. It's charming, in its own way, owing to the earnest depths of sincerity with which he dismays of ever being truly sufficient.
With my own confidence, and my absolute fervor for the nourishment of souls in whom I have invested my affections, I'm forever stepping up to salve these worries and neuroses that dog the heels of my beloveds. I'm good at it, and have learned the mystique of the right look, or touch, or word parceled out with optimal timing. Yet my ability to give succor to those suffering anxieties can never rise to a level genuinely curative -- I am a talented balm, not a persistent, perpetuating solution.
And so the help I most try to give is to be for them a mirror: to hold up before them a perception of themselves that is real and unalloyed with self-censure. Then, once with this glass I get them to see what I see within them, I deliver the most important morsel of aid that I can.
"Remember to see this in yourself," I tell them -- as I tell you now. "Take note of your perfections, not merely your flaws. And daily, before you find yourself at sea in a sargasso of uncertainty, take the time to recall these things that make you worth my while, and worth the world's while."
(I use rather a bit more casual language about the house when doing this, obviously. But indulging in flights of fluency here is one of the manners in which I practice this advice for myself.)
I delight in words, as you obviously must know if you've read with any depth the spill of language that is this blog. And so I've acquired the sporadic habit of snatching from some convolution of my grey matter a fanciful example of my vocabulary, musing upon it from a number of angles, and then lofting it into place as a post title to inspire me to write.
It's worked decently enough, a number of times. I'm particularly happy with "Atavism," a few entries past.
But oh, tonight, how I have stained the clean page of my anticipation with embarrassment.
A word, I thought. A word, a word, a word. But which?
And there bubbled into my sensorium this: causistry.
And I typed it. And the stinging red lash of the automated spell-checker denied me. What? Can this be? But ...
A right-click confirmed it. The word is casuistry. I have held it in my brain with the amorphous hints of a definition attached for years upon years, but all this time, I have mentally mis-spelled it.
Why am I so humiliated by this failure, yet shameless to admit I didn't have more than a vaporous phantasm of its meaning? Honestly, I can't quite say.
And given the output of my Google search to grasp its full and formal denotative identity, I plainly cannot stoop to rationalizing these emotions.
Thus, my new title above.
Small snips of sensuality can, in their way, exceed beyond reason the measure of their moment. A fingertip along one's jawline. The brush of lips to the back of a hand. A just-voiced breath arriving on the delicate involutions of an ear.
That which is simple, and small -- but perfect -- can linger, and linger, and linger. Not fading, but engorging itself heatedly in our memory.
A precious, fleeting touch immortalizes the instant of its tenure, deranging every sense of proportion and recalling itself to the forefront of conscious thought until another, larger, longer, encompassing contact can blot it out with ecstasy.
This morning, in his arms, I felt so exquisitely chosen and cherished. Through blinds drawn closed against whatever unmindful accidental eyes might stray our way from a neighbor's second-story window, a twilight pre-dawn glow filtered in and then suffused the room, the bed, our forms colluding in intimacy beneath tangled sheets and the thick, hot, blanketing weight of our duvet. Darkness and the lovely, precious press of flesh resolved with steady tempo into shaded shapes and passionscapes, until sight joined sound and touch in delivering to each of us the fullest apprehension of our connectedness.
A dawn so sweet and charged with delight arrives but rarely ... and today it was ours in which to revel.
I thought to myself, "For a change, why not try writing something minimalist instead of extravagant." From there, I had want of a title -- one word would have to do, but which? The entry would be uncharacteristic of me, but "uncharacteristic" ... ? What a dully utilitarian word. I reached for my thesaurus. "Uncharacteristic" got me to "atypical." "Atypical" got me to "anomalous." But on the same page with "anomalous" ...
Heteroclite.
Could I ask for anything more appropriate?
