The Discipline of Awe
...curating unseen intimacy...
The sweet + sticky from this week’s Nectar:
The Discipline of Awe: Curating Unseen Intimacy
Ask Annex: Easy-access self-care; Shift overthinking into flow-state
Rae’s 3 Things: Unexpected birthday ah-ha; Easy-to-miss mist; My coffee-companion
The Discipline of Awe: Curating Unseen Intimacy
I've been told I'm a master of restraint. Not in the way you might think—but in the slow, deliberate tease of what I don't immediately reveal. The art of leaving things unsaid, to let tension simmer in the space between what is known, what you think you know, what you sense, and what you're dying to discover.
Intimacy isn't something we rush into. It's something we let unfold. Something we may not even recognize upon arrival, a pulse, an edge, a disciplined devotion to the curating attentiveness to the unseen.
In choosing not to see it all at once, to suspend my mind, to not to know everything right away, I learn volumes.
I've never seen his face, but I know his embrace of change, the cadence of his breath when he's on the edge of revelation, the subtle hush of his hands when he thankfully fails at guarding his tears.
I know her swallow, the sound of sipping her tea, but we've never toasted.
I sense the tension in the air as the scribbling cadence of the pen portends imminent breakthrough.
I was the first person to receive reports of their recent rapture, their first scene, their first solo spill-over, even though we wouldn't recognize each other while passing on the street.
For years, I've been guiding people through their deepest, most vulnerable moments – all without laying eyes on them. You might think this level of intimacy requires touch, requires sight. But what if I told you that the most profound connections I've ever experienced have been forged in the realm of the aural?
There's a delicious tension in allowing the inner-tuition to inform, the imagination to fill in the gaps, a symphony of whispers and sighs. And it all began in a room so dim that even candlelight felt like an intrusion...
Gasps of ah-ha's, sobs of release, or laughter of pure joy while receiving confessions so raw and desires so honest that they could only be witnessed in optical silence. In doing so, I've discovered a hum that sits awkward in our visually-obsessed culture: to wholly see someone, try cloaking your eyes.
This practice isn't just about intimacy in the conventional sense. It's about rediscovering the lost art of mystery in a world that pushes everything to the surface. It's about the slow burn, the tease, the gradual unfolding of connection that's so often lost in our swipe-swipe, instant-access world with little left to the imagination. I'm committed to a discipline—not the kind that boosts efficiency or gets you ahead, but the kind that slows you down. That which makes you wait—patient, wanton, earnest, lust-filled, and hungry. That which opens the