Frisson

This morning I had a sensation I haven’t felt since (I think) childhood.

Playing hooky from division meetings at work and recovering from something I shouldn’t have eaten yesterday afternoon, I was reading chapters out of several books, when I attempted and immediately succeeded in replicating the sense of a vibration under the skin—all around the body—almost like the feeling of the sun lightly and pleasantly on the skin, only in this case felt on the hidden side of the skin.

Physical (or almost physical), not imaginary (or, at least, not entirely imaginary), not exactly sexual, but exciting—like the feeling of excitement, a bright, clean feeling.

Hard to explain.

When I was in elementary school, I had this feeling when people borrowed something belonging to me—a pen or a pencil, say—and as they handled it or used it I would feel a bubbling sensation, as if (I imagined) they were somehow touching me—but it wasn’t that exactly, the sensation was all inside. Later, as an adult, I remembered the feeling, but thought it might have been a symptom of pre-adolescent pansexuality.

This morning, I was able to maintain the feeling while continuing to read and do various tasks around the apartment. I sense it even now as I write, to varying degrees.

It’s somewhere between a sense of temperature (hot/cold) and a different consciousness, perhaps a deeper than usual awareness of being—mindfulness or heightened presence in the senses.

I wonder how long I can keep this up.
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