Certain Human Connections

May 4th, 2012 § 7 comments

Certain human connections are flickering delicacies between the spirits and the senses. They are what keeps us warm when the rains are threatening to tear down the roofs, and electricity has chosen to give us some time together.

That connection between two candid souls standing somewhere waiting for the bus. To this connection, the bus comes too soon. The conversations never end. The hugs are never tight enough. There is a need for another hug. Our bosoms are insatiable. We can miss this bus. We can wait for the next one. Why do you have to go home? Why can’t we have another cup of coffee? So they go back to the coffee shop.  Never worrying about the end, or where it is going to be in five years. The beauty is in the feeling. Not figuring it out. None of the two wants to arrive where they are destined. They want to be there. In the right now. No one wants to go home. For fate might debar what love binds.

Not feeling like you own each other. Or desiring to conquer the other heart. And if there is conquering, it is the kind that sets you free.  Not a ritual that asks for reciprocity. The reciprocity happens, unintended, in its own time. And it doesn’t matter how much of it is served back.

That certain human connection between two strangers on the Internet. Exchanged emails and envisaged faces. How do you look like? Tell me about yourself. What do you think about God? Tell me everything.   You write well. The unexplainable security in sharing the deepest secrets to strangeness of the world. I hate sex. My husband beat me again last night. I lost my job, and things are tough, I don’t know how I will survive this month. That security in the arms of a stranger you have never met. Missing this stranger sometimes. You know him. You know her. It is a connection beyond the face. Coming home to heartwarming emails at the end of a bad day.

That connection between sisters. Shadows of each other. I see myself in you. I have been there before. Part you, part me. I will call you later tonight when your boyfriend is asleep, then you can tell me how much he hurt you and I will tell you how much you should tell him how he hurt you.

Or a stranger and another in the morning commute.  What book is that you are reading? Ben Okri, The Famished Road. On a scale of one to something, how do you rate it? Awkward smiles and book conversations. Numbers exchanged or not. But a connection nevertheless.

And a friend to another; I think I am coming down with a cold. Taken anything for it? Let me come over and make you some soup. Sweet pangs of friendship. Certain human connections are pleasuring.

A father and a daughter. The palms of a newborn baby curled around your finger. The clarity in the eyes of a child. The stranger, who bumps to your bosom on the street, in search of a stray hug maybe, says sorry and helps you pick up the scattered items on the street. The quiet conversations in smiles with strangers in the elevator.

Certain human connections are hard to explain. Adjectives and adverbs do them no justice. You can’t figure them out. And there is no need to figure them out. The beauty of human connections is the emotion that comes with them. Not to figure out. But to feel. Not to quantify. I love you this much? How can you measure emotion? By words? How can you explain something that has no unit of measurement?  My friend tells me that I shouldn’t measure what I feel towards people.  How can I measure it? He says it is subtractive.  A barter trade of thoughts and emotions- leather measured against 20 eggs.  Weight measured in Kilowatts. We can only gauge it by just feeling it.

Certain human connections warm the heart. It is like here, you are taken care of. Here is where you are safe. Enter these arms, and get home safe. Tell me when you get there.

 

 

 

§ 7 Responses to Certain Human Connections"

Switch to our mobile site