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Monica Nicolau's avatar

I recognize this feeling. Many years ago, while in a crowded subway in NY, I overheard a woman ask for directions with an accent I recognized to be from the country of my childhood. We started chatting, two complete strangers, about the situation "back home", in a police state behind (at the time) the Iron Curtain. The touching part of this memory is that after the woman went away, my American boyfriend, who had been by my side all along, watching me chatter away in a foreign language with a complete stranger, smiled and told me that my body language, while talking with this member of my old tribe, had changed completely. We were touching arms, staring directly into each other's eyes, our faces just inches away from each other. It was not so much that we connected because we had grown up in the same place, it was that the foreign language we had used was infinitely more complex than merely the spoken language. It incorporated all the ways our bodies danced in our interaction.

In an interview you once gave, you pointed out something that always stayed with me: when people speak face to face, they interact on countless levels, even smelling one another. So too with our different languages. We each have connections to a myriad different tribes, and when we interact with members of those same tribes, we change a lot more than our spoken language, our bodies speak differently too. Those handshakes you describe... what a wonderful way to connect and speak a range of emotions with our bodies.

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Alison Acheson's avatar

This makes me stop. As a young woman, I consciously developed a strong handshake. I worked not to crush or sprain, but I've been told it's a firm shake. Especially when I was young, short and rather tiny, I wanted not to be taken for granted.

Thank you for this. Once again, your words are making me think. To reconsider. I'm old now! I'm hoary of head. Should I still have to feel this way... ?!

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