Laying on of hands...and feet

I have long felt that personal contact is essential to effectiveness in life. I don't like long conversations on the telephone. I do my business and say goodbye. If I have something really important to say to someone I want to eyeball him. Yet, I am not one of those people who needs to physically touch every person to who I am speaking. I find that sexy in a woman but I am uncomfortable when men do more than a handshake with me. A high five once in a while is acceptable.

Moving into our new home required that I take physical ownership. I need to nail something together, assemble some furniture, screw the pictures to the wall...whatever, so long as it has my personal touch. True, I pay for the mowing and fertilization, but I trim the shrubs myuself and plant trees wherever I find some space outside. Its been six months and only now does the house begin to feel my own. Similarly with the neighrbood. Joyce and I walk two to three miles a day down country roads. I take possession of the geography,learning each tree, memorizing every landscape. Driving by doesn't work. When we visit new places I need to explore the side streets, find the off-beat shops and restaurants, talk to the natives...in their language if I can manage it. We've walked Paris, London, Bathe, Rome, Florence, Pisa and several of the quaint medieveal towns of Tuscany. I saw parts of Jerusalem most tourists avoid. With an unbelievably poor sense of direction, maps are my friends, but still I get lost. Maps of Rome are impossible to follow. The streets make no sense and change names every few blocks. We tried to find our way from St. Peter's Square in Rome to the Hilton by dead reckoning and after an hour wound up back where we had started. But getting lost is OK. You see things you never anticipated. There's always a cab if things become desperate.
Touch establishes contact and contact establishes possession. We buy souvenirs to bring home from a trip and cherish photogrpahs and possessions of parents and relatives long gone. Primitive peole believed in such magic. They burned an enemy in efigy. Fingernail parings in the wrong hands could bring harm to the owner.
We vneed toshake hands with the superstar as if the touch would rub off on ourselves. If someone areouses our emotions we say that we've been "touched."