Monday, February 14, 2011

A Kiss is just a kiss

Ever wondered what this kissing thing is all about?  Why is it so compelling and ineffable?  Ever read a truly moving, original description of a kiss which was neither banal nor pornographic? Most passages seem to revolve around the thoughts and emotions of the kissee, manufactured in retrospect rather than recalled, as opposed to the physical dimensions of the kiss. 

O cyber-swimmer, I would like to hear your favourite kiss description.

Have you tried to remember a momentous kiss?  Do you recall much beyond the approach? You know there was a kiss, but rather like a leap, time seems to be displaced taking memory and rational thought with it, until you land.  Perhaps this amnesia, this kiss-madness, is induced by some hormone cocktail, like the one that seems to mimic a cocaine rush when you first fall in lust.  Perhaps, paradoxically, a kiss suspends self-awareness?

Greek vase in the Louvre Museum, photographed July 2009


Da mi basia mille, as Catullus said.  If indescribable they are irresistible and too many is also not enough.     Even when a kiss is just a kiss, sometimes followed by a whisper in the ear:



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