the senses & love

"It is both our panic and our privilege to be mortal and sense-full." - Diane Ackerman

    Can you love without any senses? I suppose we'll never know, because we, as humans and animals, have never done so. For as long as I've been alive, love has always been at the forefront of my brain: the concept of it, the science behind it, its many forms, etc. This often results in a lot of effort put into my interpersonal relationships; in something like a ritual, I write down little notes about all my friends, my mother and father, about the things they like or don't like, their favorite foods or scents or things to be called. For this blog post, I'm going to endeavor to relate each of the five senses that we covered in Diane Ackerman's A Natural History of the Senses to love.

p.s. linked above is a beautiful video from 14 years ago featuring beautiful lesbians dancing :)

Smell:

    This one seems fairly obvious with all the Ackerman talk about pheromones (the entire chapter on it!) and the way that individual people have individual scents. Helen Keller could pick them out; so can you, though perhaps with less expertise. As JBK pointed out, you also smell when you breathe; it's inherent to our base need (unless you have anosmia, sorry. Even then, that need to smell, when lost, does extreme damage to relationships in a significant amount of cases). Some researchers have even said, according to Ackerman, that kissing started because we wanted to smell each other, and a lot of our smell 'glows' in our faces. This is extremely sweet, regardless of its evolutionary intent (mating). I think a very strong argument is made here for scent.

 Taste:

    This one is far less complicated, with taste being the 'social sense'. When you eat together, you spend time together. 'Acts of service' is a love language dedicated to, obviously, doing things for someone else. A big part of that can be cooking for the person you love. Food is also something you need to live, just like breathing. When you gift someone food, it's kind of like saying, "I really like that you're alive and I wanna keep you that way." So sweet (one of the main tastes)!

Touch:

 "Touching someone is like using their first name." - Diane Ackerman

     This one also seems pretty obvious. Cuddling with someone literally releases happy hormones. There's also the nerve capsules that are extremely sensitive to light touch. Huddling for warmth can save your life, the same way you could save a baby's life by caressing them. So much of the touching that we do is alone, but it's one of the main ways that we express feelings of closeness with someone else. Kissing, hugging, cuddling, etc. They are all one of the first things that come to mind when thinking about love, and ways to express it.

Hearing:

    Hearing is really interesting, because obviously you don't need to hear to be able to communicate, but it does foster communication and community very well. There's also recited poetry, which usually equates to love poetry (excepting slam/sound poetry).

Vision:

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

    What does that mean? Anything can be beautiful if you love it. I might find the grossest bug on the sidewalk, and you might feel a flicker of affection in your heart when its little wings beat. 

 

 Why is it our panic and privilege to sense and be mortal?

     To love. It's scary, but, as it proves time and time again, always worth it.