Touch Me Not

There’s a fascinating flowering plant known as ‘the touch me not’, whose leaves curl up for a few moments in self defence when you touch them. It is also known as ‘The Sensitive Plant’. The Romantic poet Shelley wrote a poem about it, likening its behaviour to that of the soul of the poet.

Two hundred years before Shelley, Shakespeare’s King Lear had also practised some marked social distancing: in his case, rejecting the kind comradeship of his dear and loyal friend, The Earl Of Gloucester. Gloucester, accused of treason for aiding and abetting Lear who had been banished from his own kingdom by his two elder daughters, was blind because he had had his eyes put out while refusing to confess under torture. He had been cast out of the castle and told ‘to smell his way to Dover’. Being blind, he had stumbled through the chaotic countryside at the mercy of every whim and weather.

Finally, hearing his old royal friend’s voice, he is overjoyed, and asks for proof of his identity, as he cannot see his face. He wants to show his continuing love, loyalty and respect by kissing his hand. King Lear’s response is right in tune with our times:

Gloucester says: ‘O let me kiss that hand’.

King Lear replies: ‘Let me wipe it, first. It smells of Mortality.’

Some context here: the body and the person of the King or Queen is traditionally regarded as sacred. A common person cannot touch a royal person - all the rules of feudal hierarchy decreed it. You could look, but could not touch.

Courtly love rules also required that a true and devoted lover would see his lady as unattainable: she was so high above him, he could never hope to do anything but love her spiritually. He projected his ideals and aspirations onto an image of her, and she guided him through this world like an embodied angel. Ethereal, illuminating and untouchable.

On social media this past week, people are suggesting that instead of hugs, handshakes or even fist bumps on greeting each other, people should bow, as they did in the Eighteenth Century, or put their hands together in the succinct and subtle Namaste.

Our hands are suddenly of great concern - we are being told to wash them several times a day, with conduct books on the correct way to wash our hands being circulated via Instagram and YouTube, in still and animated images. It is because of our hands with their elegant musculature and opposable thumbs that we developed into human beings, able to  make things, from Stone Age tools to planetariums and rocket ships.

With our hands, we touch everything in our world. It is how we instinctively connect with the things and people around us. So now, it’s gloves on, rather than off, but hands on (committed) rather than hands off (disinterested) in our attempt to combat the deadly virus disease, and the low standards of personal hygiene of our fellow citizens.

The corona virus COVID-19 has now been declared a pandemic, which means the focus is now on getting prepared and resourced to deal with it. Do we have enough equipment in the ICU units to protect the health care practitioners who will be treating hundreds of us? Do we have enough soap, hand sanitizer, face masks and cleaning products in our homes?

Pontius Pilate washed his hands of the responsibility of the judgment of Jesus of Nazareth as a criminal. Lady Macbeth, hundreds of years afterwards, thought ‘a little water will cure’ the deed of murdering the reigning King of Scotland. Then in a dramatically symmetrical karmic infliction, she develops compulsive obsessive disorder, washing her hands repeatedly, with no one but her husband understanding why she thinks they are unclean. Isn’t it ironic.

Her doctor says: ‘What is it she does now? Look, how she rubs her hands’.

The lady who looks after her says: ‘It is an accustomed action with her... I have known her continue in this a quarter of an hour.’

The lady herself, in despair, trying to ‘sweeten’ her hands with every scented soap available, asks: ‘What, will these hands ne’er be clean?’

There it is again, the smell of mortality.

Unfortunately for us, we sensitive plants, we are not abstract creatures, and it is through touch that we convey love and receive signs of affirmation, affection and acceptance. So now that personal contact is being said to be dangerous, we are comprehensively deprived of a source of happiness and our sense of tactile belonging is diminished.

We are being told not to travel, to work from home and conduct conferences, seminars and classes virtually by Skype and Zoom. Technology may enable us to communicate, verbally and visually, but on the personal level I think that the lessening of physical presence and proximity we will now inevitably experience as we self-isolate will create an outpouring of dreams, and romantic fantasies.

We will create avatars and iconic images of them in our imaginations. Those we love will be the very ones we do not want to touch, for fear of contaminating them with our viral mortality.