Void & Awe

I went to see a close friend last Thursday.  Close Friend has two daughters.  The older one, Sav, is two.  While Close Friend was in the kitchen, I picked up a fussy Sav, draped her across my arms into my lap, calmed her, and then made the very sudden but conscious decision to stare into her eyes, drawing her to stare back at mine.  It felt oddly great. I wasn't trying to be weird.  I just had been feeling so horribly all week, and intuitively I knew that if I could create (force?) some sort of quiet but intense human connection, I would feel better.  I did feel better.  It felt amazing, and all week I've wanted to go back just to hold and look at her again that same way.  I'm almost uncomfortable with how much I feel the need to re-experience this moment.

So, awe.  Yes, I think this was an awe moment.  I believe so because I crave it the same way that I craved to re-feel what I felt after I read "In A Station of the Metro" and "We Are Seven" (awe-inspiring poems I blogged about).  But I'm more interested the mere fact that I am responding to awe with a yearning for more.   I think I've been deprived of deep human connection for a while, and that that explains why this particular moment of awe is so captivating to me.

I know deprivation is mostly a sad issue, but awe's capacity to fill a void or emotional need is something I'm thinking about exploring as I study the awe vested in language, and so I wanted to just throw it out there in case it could be of any use to you on your projects.