Kiss, extracted

As a rule, when you see the kiss, you do not feel it; if you feel it, you do not see it. [...] clearly two-parted, even two-leaved, but irregular, somehow alienating, bay-like, hunched shape in front of eyes, very precisely provided with funniest pores, folds, Palate fluting, toothprints, lip wrinkles. The head and body of the kisser are absent; physically present is the negative of both mouths. Never was a kiss closer and more distant at the same time. Invalid, alien, inexpressive, cold, even repugnant and yet in a curious way, exciting, mesmerizing: one weighs the inside of the mouth of two people in the hand, turns it back and forth, looks through the cavity of the tongue, through the hole into another tongue into it - and remembers the "adversary" that Lessing talks about when mouths open. Here we are in the mouth. Hartmut Böhme in Erkundungen der Mundhöhle – Zur Kunst von Anselmo Fox, S. 20, Neue Ästhetik. München 2002

Hartmut Böhme in Erkundungen der Mundhöhle – Zur Kunst von Anselmo Fox, S. 20, Neue Ästhetik. München 2002, Link