Tag Archives: touch

Day Sixteen: Touching Need

Need by Maria L. Berg 2022

Need

When thinking about need, the easiest to define are physical needs: hunger, thirst, sleep, shelter, etc. American psychologist Abraham Maslow presented the theory that human actions are motivated by certain physiological needs in his paper “A Theory of Human Motivation.” Maslow presented a hierarchy of needs and postulated that when a lower level of need is filled, attention is focused on the next level.

Plateresca / Getty Images from ThoughtCo.com

Need and want are easily confused. Even with our most basic needs, we eat when not hungry because of a craving, or drink when not thirsty for energy or to stay alert. Need is an ache. Need tugs and gnaws. Need can cause people to act in unpredictable and irregular ways.

When I think of need visually, I think of a spiral, the way a person can spiral when needs aren’t met. I tried both a spiral-cut filter, and a wire spiral in a square filter, for the idea of three square meals, and getting square. Though I like the symbolism of the spiral in the square, I am in LOVE with my new spiral filter.

Stream of Consciousness Saturday (#SoCS)

Today’s prompt for Stream of Consciousness is “nose/noes/knows .”

Here’s an excerpt from my journal this morning:

“When I need to sneeze, when I feel that tickle coming, I touch the tip of my nose with the pad of my right index finger and it usually stops. The sneeze just dissipates, disappears, goes back to wherever those violent, explosive, breath-stealers originate. How do I know to touch my nose just so? When did I learn to say no to my nose when it wants to explode? I don’t know. Perhaps it was ancient knowledge asleep in my cells that awoke one day when I wanted to stay quiet at a lecture or in a concert hall, and felt threatened by an approaching sneeze, or perhaps I was holding someone’s hand and liked the texture and pressure of touch and didn’t want to jerk my hand away to cover flying spit, didn’t want to wipe snot on my sleeve, so I tried to wiggle my nose like in Bewitched but didn’t have control over the small muscles in my face so I used the index finger of my free hand to manually move my nose to make magic with but a touch.”

— Maria L. Berg

Needs Triumvirate by Maria L. Berg 2022

The Poetry Prompts

NaPoWriMo

Today’s prompt is to write a curtal sonnet.

Poem A Day

Today’s prompt is to write a touch poem.

Spiraling by Maria L. Berg 2022

The Poem

Needs for Sale

A vacancy needs filling, this ache
tugs with gravitation, black-hole torn
the roof away gives to stinging hail
a brittle grasp on reason’s crumbs to break
the barren seed now sprouts with thorns
and vines woven into storm-drawn sail
the spiral swirls when need’s a deep bruise pressed
hunger turns to feed on its own tail
but finds a nub, the point through worry worn
on a bed of nails, sheets held with claws caress
when need’s for sale

Exploring the Senses – Touch

Touching Ostrich Feathers in a Brown Paper Bag

Touching Ostrich Feathers in a Brown Paper Bag (make sure you can’t see what you’re touching to do the exercise we did)

Touch is a sense most of us take for granted – until we’re lying on satin sheets, or picking glass and gravel out of a knee – but  touch is sensed through the skin which is the largest organ of our human bodies. The sense of touch is based on detection of mechanical energy, or pressure against the skin. Touch, like taste, can include sensing temperature and pain; these receptors also exist in the skin and can be perceived simultaneously. In our writing, texture can bring dimension to an object and a scene. I hope through this exercise you will find that touch, like the other senses, can also bring up memories and vivid images. Let your characters touch the textures that fascinate you. How do they feel? How do they react?

Exercise – Each member of writing group brought a mystery object in a paper bag. We each reached into each bag, exploring with only our fingers and wrote down everything that came to mind.

My responses:

  1. Wet. A large alien eyeball. Birds dropping pits on the deck. A warm summer day enjoying the ability to pick my lunch from the garden. Sticky hands and face from popsicles. Running after the ice cream man. Red white and blue rocket pops. Item: peeled plum.
  2. I was never good at ice skating. My weak ankles would wobble from side to side. I enjoyed floor hockey. The side texture (of the object) made me think of tines. I remember playing air hockey at the skating rink. I really liked the feel of the cool air coming up from the table. Item: a hockey puck.
  3. Soft edges on a crusty spine. I remember going to the peacock farm with my mom when I was little, so she could pick up some long colorful plumes for her huge ceramic vase in the living room. It reminds me of the hundreds of metal loops I clamped feathers into after carefully bending each feather with pliers for the huge shoulder harnesses to be worn at the Mardi Gras balls. Item: ostrich feather.

Unlike taste, touch was again quick to conjure vivid images and memories. I found it easy to identify what was in the bags without looking and had stories to tell triggered by the objects. My response to the peeled plum could read as a little poem to summer present and past (Maybe minus the alien eyeball. Guess it depends if I meet any aliens and get to touch their eyeballs this summer).

I look forward to reading your experiences with this exercise. Remember, your skin is your largest sensory organ with areas of different levels of sensitivity. Our hands and fingers may be the most sensitive and dexterous, but rolling around in the grass, or going for a swim could be a great place to start exploring your sense of touch.