Touch.
"Our skin is what stands between us and the world. If you think about it, no other part of us makes contact with something not us but the skin. It imprisons us... most amazing, perhaps, is that it can mend itself when necessary..." (Ackerman 68).
This quote really caught me off guard for various reasons other than the fact that the beginning quote of the chapter is in fact about skin. Out of all the organs that the human body encompasses, skin by far is the most intriguing. The lungs can convert oxygen into carbon dioxide, and that is incredibly useful. Just like how the kidneys help with secretion disposal and normal body function. And the eyes can take in objects that would appear upside down if it weren't for the infraction of images creating a right side up portrayal of the world. All parts of the human body are incredible, bones, organs, ligaments, muscles, brain waves, but the skin... that's another story.
Ackerman begins by talking about how skin is the one thing that stands between us and the world. Dissolving that statement, first literally, would be that if not for skin, our bones and organs and blood would be subject to all the harm that the world can inflict upon us if it weren't for skin. The skin stands between us and the world in a good way in this case.
The next line really made me think, she writes, "If you think about it, no other part of us makes contact with something not us but the skin...". That was a really mind boggling statement to me. No other part of us makes contact with something not us but the skin. Wow. The skin is the only way we humans have to make touches at all. If it weren't for this massive layer that we possess, there would be no petting a dog, or feeling the paper when you turn the page of a book, and that would make life so much less interesting.
The final part of this quote was the most interesting to me because the statement, "It imprisons us, most amazing, perhaps, is how it can mend itself when necessary". Those statements appear to be contradictory; imprisonment is a solid thing, it can create isolation, and be very demanding, while something being mended is being brought together again, made new, reborn. But they are alike in that sense. When imprisoned, there is that isolation, however once that isolation is broken there is mending to be done. I also enjoy the analogy between this final statement about skin being an imprisonment to the human body, and how it stands between us and the world. It's almost as if the thing that is keeping us safe, is also the thing that keeps us from becoming more.
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