Sensousness in Every Moment

I'm sitting in the library, enjoying a cold Tuesday in California, and this is what's on my mind - Sensuousness.

Here's the definition I use for sensuousness (taken from The Free Dictionary

"Highly appreciative of the pleasures of sensation."

This library has a soft yellow tone across the walls, floors, and the faces of the people around me. The yellow comes from the buzzing florescent bulbs overhead, evenly spaced across the ceiling. The columns of the library's structure are painted purple, which gives a bright contrast to the yellow - though even these walls are subject to the cast of florescent light.

What does it mean to see? What is it to see color?

In contemplating the idea of beauty, I'm tempted to ask why certain wavelengths of visible light would be considered more "beautiful" in certain arrangements than other wavelengths. How radical that there is even a wavelength at all. A vibration hits my retina creating the visual sense. The amount of wiggle in this vibration is defined in terms of wavelength, frequency, etc. Light is wiggling my retina. This is sensuousness - the joy of being wiggled.

Every moment, my senses are attentive. Input is being received and processed. The sound of my fingers clicking keys on my keyboard ride over the soft sounds of librarians voices, swiping bar-codes on the library checkout machines, a photocopy machine making rhythmic sweeps behind me.

I open my senses - panoramic. Dropping the specifics, I tune into the pleasure of sensing in and of itself. This sensing is every moment. This sensing is a dazzling symphony of sensory changes.

As humans, most of us are aware that each moment of our life is never to be repeated. Each moment is "the moment of a lifetime." Each is unique, fleeting, and never to come again. And yet, with each passing moment, we are still "here," it is still "now." How do we spend these moments?

What are you doing right now? I'm typing on my keyboard, listening softly to the sounds around me. Whatever it is that we may be doing... right now sensuousness is available. The pleasure of sensing itself, which is the pleasure of actuality. The pleasure of being a sensate being in intimacy with our physical surroundings.

Sensuousness is intimacy, and sensuousness is the window into the perfection of this universe. Sensuousness is what makes the actuality of this physical universe so ultimately satisfying. Sensuousness can't be imagined, and can't be found in any fantasy. It is only available here and now... but in this very moment it is available in abundance.

Enjoy your holidays.

- Daniel