Friends to this Ground

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Death came walking up to me, unsteady on his feet.

"Spare any change?" he muttered.

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I had someone wriggling on my table the other day. Kept apologizing for it. She was happy and getting a lot of benefit from the massage. Where did the convention come from, that it's indecorous and counterproductive to move on the table?

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Certain topics come up, and they make me restless. I want to speak. I know the answer to this one. I know what needs to be said.

These are almost always topics that are not within my expertise; and it would do no harm if I identified this anxiety to speak as "the sensation of being wrong about something."

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Some people find it almost impossible not to participate, when you move them. You lift their arm and they lift it too. They usually apologize for this. They often report that some friend or lover has told them it betokens a lack of trust, or an inability to let go. When I offer an alternative explanation -- that their motor reflexes are set at a higher sensitivity -- they're usually surprised. I wish the amateur psychologists would back off a little.

It's true that most people can learn to disable this semi-automatic participation in moving their bodies. It's a motor skill, like wiggling your ears, that most people can learn but many have never had occasion to. But I've never observed any correlation between this involuntary movement and a tendency to distrust, or a tendency generally to hold bodily tension.

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