A very liberal dose

It's becoming an alarming trend that liberals are willing to shut down and police free speech making it not quite so free and much harder to obtain. Free speech is free as long as you agree with the liberals. First it was politically correct speech and then hate crimes, can thought crimes be far behind? Liberals, my Aunt Edith.

In your face politics with political aspirants for the country's highest positions telling followers to get in the opposition's face and argue with them, shout them down if necessary, now that is the way to sweet reason and changing minds. Add in ACORN's heinous voter registration tactics and you have more of this. Now that is change you can believe in whether you want to or not.

That is all. Disperse.

More lemonade, please

There are times when life sucks rotten lemons and times when it's more like lemonade. This is a lemonade day.

A few years ago a very close friend, my best male friend, threw me a big curve and everything fell apart. He surprised me a few months ago with an unsolicited and heartfelt apology. On Friday last, he gave up the goods and told me a tale of mistakes and heartaches that resulted in a roller coaster weekend followed by the best lemonade day of all today. I have my friend back.

The old saw about not knowing what you have until it's gone isn't always true. I knew what we had before he disappeared and I missed him terribly while he was gone. Mostly I missed the awful jokes and horrible puns and his quirky sense of humor.

There are times when you meet someone (in this case know someone for dog's years) that gets you as much as you get them. The conversation is effortless and flows from one subject to another, hop skipping from tangent to tangent without missing a beat. We have so many common interests and I've picked up a few along the way, but the best thing about all this is that it feels like we just talked yesterday instead of more than a year ago. That's the thing about really good friends. You might have a falling out or disagree about something and part, but eventually the wound in your life and theirs never heals and nothing really feels right.

We still have some fence mending to do, but if I died tonight, I would die happy because we're back together as friends. I can't wait to show him the cottage and share some time and maybe a movie or two together. For me, the holidays came early and they brought friends, the best part of life.

That is all. Disperse.

Hands

I watched The Bone Collector last night and one part of it struck a nerve. When Angelina Jolie touched Denzel Washington's hand while she thought he was asleep, it was the most erotic and intimate scene in the movie, which is pretty amazing when you consider the movie wasn't supposed to be erotic or intimate. It was brutal and bloody and difficult. But watching her touch his fingers fastened onto the wooden board that held his computer mouse gave me chills -- the really good kind -- and that deep down ache that pulls the focus inward.

As I thought about that scene later, it occurred to me that the most sensuous part of the body, aside from the mind, is the hand and fingers. We understand and process so much information from the sense of touch through every millimeter of our skin, but the hands can be brutal and uncaring and oh so sensuous and intimate, conveying so much in even the lightest of touches.

My favorite scene in Persuasion by Jane Austen with Amanda Root and Ciaran Hinds isn't when they kiss but when he first takes her hand. He holds out his white gloved hand and she puts her hand in his slowly and softly. Then his thumb holds her hand in place with a slight caress of the ball of his thumb on her hand and then they kiss, but the closeup of their hands touching for the first time is magic.

There is power in the touch of a hand and even Shakespeare got that one right when Romeo and Juliet first meet and touch hands in a "...holy Palmer's kiss." It is touch that first tells us that someone is interested: a brief caress of fingers to cheek, patting a shoulder or a knee, reaching for another's hand to comfort and console, brushing away a stray eyelash, making contact in some way that breaches our personal barriers. Even in pulling a girl's hair or slapping a boy on the arm for some slight brings two people closer and says so much about what we feel.

I remember once while having lunch with a friend, he told me that things were not going well at home. I instinctively reached out to touch his hand to console him and he responded by holding my hand, his thumb making little circles on the space between my thumb and forefinger. It was such an intimate moment it surprised us both because it happened instinctively.

A newborn baby waves its arms around but what it is really seeking is contact, to touch and be touched. If you think about it, it is our hands we have to watch when we're around people who evoke strong emotions, putting them in pockets or hiding them against the chest when we cross our arms. We show empty hands to prove we have no evil or violent intent. When we cry we hide our eyes in our hands and brush away the tears. We emphasize a point by beating a fist on something or someone. We gesticulate and emote with our hands, saying as much, and sometimes more, with our gestures as we do with words. Hands clasped in prayer or meditation, hands folded in laps, sitting on hands, running fingers through our hair or someone else's, stroking, caressing, feeling, holding, slapping, pulling, touching say more than words and say it clearer.

We hide behind language to mislead, lie, mask and entice, but hands never lie. Eyes are the windows to the soul, but hands are the doorway to the heart.