Until a moment ago, I had trouble articulating something or rather putting my finger on something. It’s something that I love tremendously about some of my favorite people.

I was watching a TED Talk by Oliver Sacks when he said something that caught my ear. He’s describing these visual hallucinations that some blind patients experience, and the person to first describe these symptoms was Charles Bonnett. Bonnett didn’t himself experience them himself but his grandfather did. In describing the circumstance under which Bonnett’s grandfather conveyed the experience to him, he said that he’d come up and say that he saw this or that.

I think more often than not, when someone comes up to me and tells me that he or she saw something, it’s to tell me what’s going on in the world - in the community, in school, at work. It’s rarely meant to describe the experience itself and even when it does, it’s usually meant to include a certain amount of focus on the event. But were a blind person experiencing what have been described as more movie-like than dream-like hallucinations… were he or she to tell me about the visions, the news or informative element is gone. It’s not something seen on the street or at home, but something experienced.

Among my friends, I feel very comfortable posing hypotheticals or talking about feelings or sensations I encounter. And getting to the point of what I find so enchanting about some of my favorite people is that it’s perfectly acceptable to experiment with different storytelling formats, mediums and so forth. If I went up to my friends and proposed an experiential experiment or experimental format, it would be more or less accepted, I think. Without (if at all possible) sounding self-aggrandizing, we’re willing to share more openly our feelings about the world - from a tangent I followed when I heard a word the other day to how the light on a particular tree made me feel. That’s of course not to say that we live in this world all the time.

As children, we make mistakes about how things work (mechanically and socially) and have misconceptions. After a certain point we feel a need to display a proper front or avoid mistakes and while largely this is pragmatic, it has a regrettable consequence: we cease to experiment.

I’ve been trying to take to heart a feeling that by and large, nothing is sacred. The house I will live in for the next year, my time, my situation, and the situation of others. Perhaps the world is more flexible than we realize, and we might try something new or embrace habits that might be considered weird. A concrete example or two is in order.

My friends and I are not affectionate people. Rather, by some peoples’ reckoning, we are not affectionate people. I’ve hugged my best male friends - men I’ve known for nearly a decade - probably half a dozen times. The tactile atmosphere here is vastly different - people I’ve just met will take my arm or take my hand or drape an arm around the shoulder. And why shouldn’t they? It serves to instill a sense of belonging and acceptance, perhaps better than words might. Sure some people have deep-seated personal space issues or simply prefer not to be touched, but I was surprised to find that despite physically being mostly an island back home I did find it endearing to embrace and be embraced.