Jul 6, 2007

In Honor of National Kissing Day

by MaryW

Today, July 6, is National Kissing Day (at least here up over). To commerate this tingling bliss that "calls the nymphs and satyrs back to life," let's turn to page 99 in Wild Ducks Flying Backward. As you read, dear afTRlifers, let the words form in a soft, North Carolina drawl and kissing becomes a hot honeyed bourbon...kisssin'. Ready? Here we go:
Kissing is our greatest invention. On the list of great inventions, it ranks higher than the Termos bottle and the Airstream trailer. Higher, even, than room service, possibly because the msain reason room service was created was so that people could stay in bed and kiss without going hungry.
...Kissing molded the face into a brand new shape, the pucker shape, and then, like some renegade scientist grafting plops of sea urchin onto halves of ripe pink plumns, it found a way to fuse the puckers, to meld them and animate them, so that one pucker rubbing against another generates heat, moisture, and a luminous neuro-mmuscular friction...
...The best kisses...are those between lovers, because those are the consequential ones, the risky ones, the transformative ones, the ones that call the nymphs and satyrs back to life, the many-layered kisses that we dive into as into a fairy-tale frog pond or the murky gene pool of our origins...
No other flesh like lip flesh! No meat like mouth meat! The musical clink of tooth against tooth! The wonderful curiosity of tongues!
A toe-tingling, lip-smacking happy kisssin' day to you all!
MaryW