Perhaps Freud was not completely wrong. Consider the dearth in our language when trying to speak of a moment that stands out from other moments, an instant of time that will reappear as memory when you are trying to remind yourself that you are capable of feeling (for me, this happens when I am trying to fall asleep in the face of incorrigible anxieties: I think of a cherry tree I used to climb, and the grass beneath it, hoping to stave off obsessive concern about work, mortgage, or marriage). With conversation, we call it "scintillating;" with drink, "intoxicating;" with prose or beauty, "luminous;" with music or movies,"transporting," "magical," or "moving." Advertising has dessicated these adjectives, but even in their full-throated nineteenth-century glory, each carried a register that overlapped with "erotic."

What, then, do I make of Daughter? Here is a person whose simplest gesture easily will freeze time as if in amber. What words do I have for this? Today we were in the park. She was watching the sun on the surface of a pond. She fell asleep in that same position. I watched her as if I were watching television. Even now she is sleeping: luminous, magical, and moving, yet not at all erotic. I will think of this later, when I am trying to sleep, and trying to escape new fears.

Life is filled with such moments; we just have to slow down and watch for them.

Jack

is probably about 100% of what keeps our species around. Is there anything better than her? I think not.

I'm happy for you, august. Few things in life compare to the bond you two are forming.

That was so moving and beautiful. The fray needs you,august.And all wonderful souls like you.

It's been too long since you've been here.

~LAM

to capture these feelings/moments. I feel a special fullness when I see my son, a sense that here is something bigger than me, a perfect willingness to give up my very life for him.

mind for me as well after reading August's mellifluous post.

Well, Freud was invoked, so maybe I can use Jung to suggest another applicable concept---archetypal.

Just beautiful. I think Freud was headed in the right direction, he just stopped to soon with the idea that sex was the end-all-be-all of those erotic feelings. They are rooted in something bigger and deeper, and that is (for me anyway) the essence of loving my own daughters.

I will never, ever, forget the experience of really seeing each one of them... in her own time... usually asleep...and the subtlest movements....and the amazing, physical, lurching love.

Makes everything else worth whatever it takes to get through the day. I'm really happy for you both - to have each other.

nonetheless. in any event, it is nice to know you are lurking through.

Yes. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think it applies.

Let me tell you about my cat....

nu⋅mi⋅nous   /ˈnumənəs, ˈnyu-/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [noo-muh-nuhs, nyoo-] Show IPA –adjective 1. of, pertaining to, or like a numen; spiritual or supernatural. 2. surpassing comprehension or understanding; mysterious: that element in artistic expression that remains numinous. 3. arousing one's elevated feelings of duty, honor, loyalty, etc.: a benevolent and numinous paternity.

just cuz I like the feeling

An eidetic memory (for those who can't bear the neologism "photographic") is an appropriate phrase for that hyper-vivid sense of recall that you describe. Not only that, it captures that magical, intuitive sensation you're going after, that simultaneous feeling of timelessness and ephemerality. An eidolon, after all, is a spirit.

K

Smitten.