A furtive contact

Down with a sore throat, I am re-reading Roland Barthes' "A Lover's Discourse." It is structured as a glossary, so you can read entries in no particular order--wherever the book opens, perhaps, or when you come across an intriguing concept.

I like the way he deconstructs the language of love: intelligent, precise, sometimes ironic. He covers everything from jealousy to writing love letters, from waiting to scenes and to the inevitable i-love-yous. It's a good book to be reading if you are suffering from a heartbreak because it helps you look at it in a cool, surgical manner and you need a little bit of reason in the midst of that emotional turmoil. That was the case with me when I discovered Barthes seven years ago.

I would be quoting half the book here if I could because I like what he writes and how he does it. But here is a short paragraph taken from the entry called "Contacts: The figure refers to any interior discourse provoked by a furtive contact with the body (and more precisely the skin) of the desired being":

A squeeze of the hand--enormous documentation--a tiny gesture within the palm, a knee which doesn't move away, an arm extended, as if quite naturally, along the back of a sofa and against which the other's head gradually comes to rest--this is the paradisiac realm of subtle and clandestine signs: a kind of festival not of the senses but of meaning.

I love those secret signs loaded with meaning and promise--there's so much excitement and thrill in them, when you are still exploring an unknown territory and anything can be.