No touching is, generally, an unspoken requirement.
I think it’s because it’s easier to mask your thoughts when you wear enough cloth. Maybe there’s something lost in transmission when you no longer exchange a hug once in a while.
But I think this custom is a good. A way to build some character. Some distance. When you physically no longer know warmth from others, so you learn to make do with your own.
Touching is invasive after all.
Out of nausea I’d dodge hugs amongst friends when I had to enter/leave gatherings.
Only on reflection do I realize how strange that is.
But I also think we’re in a strange time too, with social customs long since dissolved. Androgynous rising! There’s a lot of Chesterton fences since demolished: maybe this is a defensive plea to suggest that hugs are weird amongst friends.
If I imagine being smothered, it’d be by a blanket of snow. Embraced by frostbite, so the body gives some final swells of internal heat before fading out of consciousness. There’s nothing more comforting than the numbness you could reach there.
What better drug than the turning off the lights before a long slumber? At least until the storm ends. Our tundra as an invitation to fashion with whatever chandeliers. Stepping past the reality-bordering – a party across the ages, guests all over your imaginary world.
I would figure angels to be cold, whether because of their lucidity of the human condition or because warmth is unnecessary to enjoy their bliss. How they would enjoy being covered in the all white blanket: with a flick they’d upgrade the event by a packed blizzard for the ages. Snowflakes descending in a deafened land til dissolution. Laying beside them, heads turned and comfortably distant, lashes full and speckled, so you’d see a smile.
Don’t you think that’s a lot prettier? A still-frame of freedom.