Hugs (from the Day Letters of Junko Spare.) The hugs in Umbagollah are warm and rare. They are also frequent and sharp and smell like cheese, milk, mud or herbs, sometimes they have the texture of old stuffing, sometimes the angularity of a sack of right angles but at any given time one Umbagollian will be hugging another; some hugs have knives in them some have bricks or rocks, some are small, some are insects hugging your leg to administer their proboscis to your vein, to drink blood to be full, this loving hunger, this lunch-hug, this clasp of true friendship because you are giving them sustanance and no less is it when one person hugs a hermit or someone who has not had a hug in a long time, the warm liquid will flow between them and there will be a Connection too rare for words to describe. The starfish and the rocks, the jellyfish and the bacteris of the sea, the leaves embrace the air, the bird embraces the bee, the beastie the flower, the hippopotomus the ferryman's raft. The arms, the bodies, the meeting, the cloth againt cloth the clothes meeting and loving one another, buttons sniffing at one another like dogs, with delight, pressed together they mate briefly then part forever, to pine forever, to be without their loves forever, to have met once and then to live sundered for the rest of time, unhappy buttons. Feet staring at one another, eyeing the other person off, not always touching, feet are like guard dogs, rarely touching, always wary. The arm on the back. Backs never meet arms unless under these circumstances. It is a rare thing and they give off glows of happiness, to be touched: backs are not often taken into consideration and they are accustomed to feel vulnerable, liable to be attacked from behind and having no eyes they will never see it coming, but to be comforted by the arm and hand, for the front of the body to condescend to embrace the back, this is something special: backs have inferiority complexes and it makes them feel good to be acknowleged in this way.