Consider the hand, its breadth, its history in mathematics and limitation. 27 bones, two strokes. Distal phalanges spanning gaps. You turn and wave at the winnowed tunnel and the drops feathering the glass. The sinister endures tasks of life; right blesses power and assuages guilt. Presuming inflection, I use both hands to tally the absent. Later as we drive through the checkpoint, our way greased by fluency in the language of coin, heaven’s oblique arch recedes and I praise the passage of hours.
I praise the passage of hours measured in terms unknown to some: beyond two, many. Returning, we see streets guided by lampposts, bent trees and the uneven drizzle of sidewalk mendicants blurring through their days. A hanged man’s dessicated hand (pickled in salt and the urine of man, woman, dog and mare) forms the Hand of Glory, unlocking any portal the bearer desires opened: a direct tool of consciousness. Lacking the fat of a gibbeted felon, I cannot properly light the way.
I cannot properly light the way, but we observe facets in differing terms: the hand, lips, and mouth claim more neural innervation than the rest of the body combined, perhaps a consequence of the primacy of making and sounding. Candles smolder and yield to shadow through dancing hand stories. The wave of acknowledgment, a finger across the lips, the open hand proclaiming innocence, expressing, grasping, creating, constraining, releasing. Extinguishing.
This first appeared in Hermeneutic Chaos, Issue 11.
Give the man a hand! Very nice.
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Thank you, Simon.
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Take my hand, and show me your wondrous sign language.
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Hands are so interesting – the beginnings of mathematics lie there.
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Fantastic prose Robert
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Thank you!
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🙂☺
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Thank you.
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A pensive perusal of the wide breadth of human experience as seen through the lens of a hand. I especially liked the historical usage of the “sinister” hand (from Latin), and the reference to the Hand of Glory from European folklore. Fantastic.
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Thanks, Mike. I enjoy these little excursions into symbols and language.
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Fascinating reflections. Now I know how many bones
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I learn by writing!
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Don’t we all 🙂
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