Hands
7.14.06
Shopping at a store today I notice the hands of the manager. They are large, with long fingers that stretch and curl and massage the air surrounding them. They reminded me of those owned by a med student I knew who later became a surgeon. Those two were very large, but soft, very pale and clean; they would know how to hold scalpels with a gentle tenacity. Now I note the same kind of hands on another man and think, an artist, perhaps. The server behind the deli counter must keep hers in little plastic baggie gloves and a woman deep in conversatino with a perturbed brow clutches a cigarette in one and a cell pressed to her ear in another. This deep brown one approaching holds a similarly hued deep mahogany cane handle. That walnut wrinkled one cups the control of an electric wheel chair. A slender white one craddles a flip phone looking into it like a palm reader as she speaks into the "hands free" option dangling from her ear. I met a hand model once who wore white gloves everywhere and I remember how smooth the unblemished skin was.
What powerful things these appendages are. They can make love and war, spanakopita, a sonata, a peace treaty, a Phd thesis. They are born plump into the world with tiny opalescent nails we trim with care and they transmute into Rube Goldberg contraptions of tendons, muscles, nerve fibers and small articulated bones. Some get manincured, others harbor secrets of horrific crimes under their nails.
How we hold the world in our hands, a loved one, a glass of wine, a pen, a magnifying glass. The jewels we adorn them with, the places we put them when we touch ourselves and others. How we gesture and gesticulate, illustrating our words or silent messages like painters before a huge canvas. Carving script into the air around us.
I have been touching people lately, strangers and friends alike. Using these hands to connect however briefly for a moment in time. I think of cultures who "lay on hands" to heal or wash their dead in a last gesture of care and preparation and wonder if their spirits are better tended as a result. Fortune tellers see things in our palms, the folds of flesh and I can predict the gender of an unborn baby by how the mother proffers her hand to me on request. We say "I wash my hands of you," in dismissal. In despair we might "lose our grip;" in assistance, we "lend a hand."
These five fingered flowers that reach out, take in, make and break. They are fascinating to watch.
Shopping at a store today I notice the hands of the manager. They are large, with long fingers that stretch and curl and massage the air surrounding them. They reminded me of those owned by a med student I knew who later became a surgeon. Those two were very large, but soft, very pale and clean; they would know how to hold scalpels with a gentle tenacity. Now I note the same kind of hands on another man and think, an artist, perhaps. The server behind the deli counter must keep hers in little plastic baggie gloves and a woman deep in conversatino with a perturbed brow clutches a cigarette in one and a cell pressed to her ear in another. This deep brown one approaching holds a similarly hued deep mahogany cane handle. That walnut wrinkled one cups the control of an electric wheel chair. A slender white one craddles a flip phone looking into it like a palm reader as she speaks into the "hands free" option dangling from her ear. I met a hand model once who wore white gloves everywhere and I remember how smooth the unblemished skin was.
What powerful things these appendages are. They can make love and war, spanakopita, a sonata, a peace treaty, a Phd thesis. They are born plump into the world with tiny opalescent nails we trim with care and they transmute into Rube Goldberg contraptions of tendons, muscles, nerve fibers and small articulated bones. Some get manincured, others harbor secrets of horrific crimes under their nails.
How we hold the world in our hands, a loved one, a glass of wine, a pen, a magnifying glass. The jewels we adorn them with, the places we put them when we touch ourselves and others. How we gesture and gesticulate, illustrating our words or silent messages like painters before a huge canvas. Carving script into the air around us.
I have been touching people lately, strangers and friends alike. Using these hands to connect however briefly for a moment in time. I think of cultures who "lay on hands" to heal or wash their dead in a last gesture of care and preparation and wonder if their spirits are better tended as a result. Fortune tellers see things in our palms, the folds of flesh and I can predict the gender of an unborn baby by how the mother proffers her hand to me on request. We say "I wash my hands of you," in dismissal. In despair we might "lose our grip;" in assistance, we "lend a hand."
These five fingered flowers that reach out, take in, make and break. They are fascinating to watch.
posted by Barbery at 4:10 PM
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