Theme
3:39pm July 5, 2014
When the world is a jumble, my hands set me free.  I swim through colors and textures with no awareness of their meaning, but my hands flicker their way through the currents and pick out the map to take me home to my body again.  They translate an incomprehensible jumble of sensations into a powerful kinesthetic rhythm.  When I hear sounds, they dance in a precise accompaniment that lets me understand what those sounds mean.  They tap on surfaces to give me a sound-feel-picture of my environment.  They jump of their own volition into complicated dances that, even though I don’t plan them, other people with the eyes to see can read every nuance of my emotion through each tiny movement.  When I can’t find my hands, they flicker and flap around until I can feel them again.  My hands are involuntary dancers, and anyone with the eyes to see, can read everything about me through the motions of my hands alone. My hands are the one part of my body that I have a consistent connection to.  I can type at speeds faster than I’m capable of thinking up words.  I can crochet all day long if I want to, and my hands never tire.  As a child, I picked up the violin so fast that I was in the junior high orchestra by the age of six and first chair first violin by the age of seven.  My current violin playing doesn’t hold up to such illustrious beginnings, but what I lack in technique I make up in soul.  When I make paintings, I paint with my fingers in ways that show the pure rhythm and shape of things without the distractions of realism.  My paintings have been sold, and ended up in galleries, without my ever trying. My ability to type is one of the most important abilities.  For some reason, it is completely different from speaking.  I am able to control the words that come out, to a much greater degree.  This gives me the ability to communicate in your language, when my language isn’t enough for you (which it usually isn’t, nobody wants to learn a non-word-based language spoken only by a handful of people, few of whom are in a position to teach it). If I still had to use my mouth, I’m not sure I could bear it.  The last two times I spoke came suddenly, and left just as suddenly.  Each was brought on by a medical emergency.  My ability varied from almost-fluent, to obviously “broken” English.  But I remember the feeling of my brain splitting open, of everything inside me breaking, falling to pieces, destroying itself, setting me on fire, setting my whole soul on fire, immolating myself for the purpose of being able to speak for… what was it?  A couple days, once, and an hour, the other time.  And it hurt so badly, I’ve never felt pain like it.  Like the original Little Mermaid, who had to endure knife blades in her legs every time she took a step on land.  Knife blades in my head, in order to speak. But that was communicative speech, an extreme rarity for me.  If I had no typing right now, if I had to rely on speech, it would be a disaster.  I would have over 80% of the time that I had no speech at all.  During the 20% or less of the time that I had speech, it would be random words, random sounds, things I pick up here and there and repeat, nothing to do with my thoughts.  But since people so readily equate speech with communication, I am sure people would spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to work out what my random words meant.  And not spend enough time trying to give me a means of communication that would allow me to tell them what was inside my head. Meanwhile, I would of course be communicating the way I have communicated all along, which is also heavily involved with my hands.  I hand people objects.  I arrange objects around me.  All of these things have more meaning than any words ever could, and I do them all with my hands. My hands are everything to me.  Everything.  They allow me to communicate to you in your language.  But they also allow me to communicate to you in my language.  And my language will always be more important to me than your language.  It always has been.  Whether I’ve tried to choke down your language and spit it out as spoken words, whether I’ve tried to do the same more successfully with the written word.  It doesn’t matter, it’s not my language, it was never my language. My language is the language of objects, the language of paintings, the language of the violin.  When I type the words that you care so much about, my language is the rhythm and music of the movements of my fingers.  My language is the dance of my hands as they help me make sense of the world.  My language is the involuntary flickers of fingers in response to sound, emotion, and light.  My language is the objects my hands clack together, the objects my hands arrange around me in precisely measured intervals, all pointing back to one source. My language is the way my hands trace currents in the air that you can’t always perceive.  My language is the way I weave myself into my crochet projects, and the way my hands can meet anything mechanical and find a way around it. My hands are the one part of my body that I can rely on, despite a decline in motor planning everywhere else.  When an object talks to me and tells me what to do with it, it doesn’t talk to my brain, it talks to my hands, and then my hands know what to do, even if I don’t understand a thing.  My hands are what dance around to make me aware of myself and my surroundings.  My hands are what talk to my surroundings, and allow my surroundings to talk back through me.  My hands are everything. At my school, when our hands did things the teachers didn’t like, they’d say “sit on your hands”. I got to the point where I’d anticipate it.  I’d mutter “sit on your hands”, and then sit on my hands.  I felt proud. And now I feel so ashamed. Everything I told you just now about what my hands are for, what they do in my life, how they are the one part of my body that is a direct window to my soul. And they told us to sit on our hands. I will never sit on my hands again. My hands are my life.  My hands are my language.  My hands are my art.  My hands are a dance.  My hands are communication.  My hands are my soul.  If you have a problem with that… if you sat on your hand so hard it went up your ass, it would serve you right.  But the part that is the saddest to me, is that you don’t know what you’re destroying.  You don’t even think you’re destroying anything.  But my hands are everything.  They are beauty.  They are wisdom.  They are knowledge.  They are art.  They have a language of their own.  And anyone who knows how, can tell everything about me, by watching my hands.  And you will never be able to take that away from me.

When the world is a jumble, my hands set me free.  I swim through colors and textures with no awareness of their meaning, but my hands flicker their way through the currents and pick out the map to take me home to my body again.  They translate an incomprehensible jumble of sensations into a powerful kinesthetic rhythm.  When I hear sounds, they dance in a precise accompaniment that lets me understand what those sounds mean.  They tap on surfaces to give me a sound-feel-picture of my environment.  They jump of their own volition into complicated dances that, even though I don’t plan them, other people with the eyes to see can read every nuance of my emotion through each tiny movement.  When I can’t find my hands, they flicker and flap around until I can feel them again.  My hands are involuntary dancers, and anyone with the eyes to see, can read everything about me through the motions of my hands alone.

My hands are the one part of my body that I have a consistent connection to.  I can type at speeds faster than I’m capable of thinking up words.  I can crochet all day long if I want to, and my hands never tire.  As a child, I picked up the violin so fast that I was in the junior high orchestra by the age of six and first chair first violin by the age of seven.  My current violin playing doesn’t hold up to such illustrious beginnings, but what I lack in technique I make up in soul.  When I make paintings, I paint with my fingers in ways that show the pure rhythm and shape of things without the distractions of realism.  My paintings have been sold, and ended up in galleries, without my ever trying.

My ability to type is one of the most important abilities.  For some reason, it is completely different from speaking.  I am able to control the words that come out, to a much greater degree.  This gives me the ability to communicate in your language, when my language isn’t enough for you (which it usually isn’t, nobody wants to learn a non-word-based language spoken only by a handful of people, few of whom are in a position to teach it).

If I still had to use my mouth, I’m not sure I could bear it.  The last two times I spoke came suddenly, and left just as suddenly.  Each was brought on by a medical emergency.  My ability varied from almost-fluent, to obviously “broken” English.  But I remember the feeling of my brain splitting open, of everything inside me breaking, falling to pieces, destroying itself, setting me on fire, setting my whole soul on fire, immolating myself for the purpose of being able to speak for… what was it?  A couple days, once, and an hour, the other time.  And it hurt so badly, I’ve never felt pain like it.  Like the original Little Mermaid, who had to endure knife blades in her legs every time she took a step on land.  Knife blades in my head, in order to speak.

But that was communicative speech, an extreme rarity for me.  If I had no typing right now, if I had to rely on speech, it would be a disaster.  I would have over 80% of the time that I had no speech at all.  During the 20% or less of the time that I had speech, it would be random words, random sounds, things I pick up here and there and repeat, nothing to do with my thoughts.  But since people so readily equate speech with communication, I am sure people would spend a ridiculous amount of time trying to work out what my random words meant.  And not spend enough time trying to give me a means of communication that would allow me to tell them what was inside my head.

Meanwhile, I would of course be communicating the way I have communicated all along, which is also heavily involved with my hands.  I hand people objects.  I arrange objects around me.  All of these things have more meaning than any words ever could, and I do them all with my hands.

My hands are everything to me.  Everything.  They allow me to communicate to you in your language.  But they also allow me to communicate to you in my language.  And my language will always be more important to me than your language.  It always has been.  Whether I’ve tried to choke down your language and spit it out as spoken words, whether I’ve tried to do the same more successfully with the written word.  It doesn’t matter, it’s not my language, it was never my language.

My language is the language of objects, the language of paintings, the language of the violin.  When I type the words that you care so much about, my language is the rhythm and music of the movements of my fingers.  My language is the dance of my hands as they help me make sense of the world.  My language is the involuntary flickers of fingers in response to sound, emotion, and light.  My language is the objects my hands clack together, the objects my hands arrange around me in precisely measured intervals, all pointing back to one source. My language is the way my hands trace currents in the air that you can’t always perceive.  My language is the way I weave myself into my crochet projects, and the way my hands can meet anything mechanical and find a way around it.

My hands are the one part of my body that I can rely on, despite a decline in motor planning everywhere else.  When an object talks to me and tells me what to do with it, it doesn’t talk to my brain, it talks to my hands, and then my hands know what to do, even if I don’t understand a thing.  My hands are what dance around to make me aware of myself and my surroundings.  My hands are what talk to my surroundings, and allow my surroundings to talk back through me.  My hands are everything.

At my school, when our hands did things the teachers didn’t like, they’d say “sit on your hands”.

I got to the point where I’d anticipate it.  I’d mutter “sit on your hands”, and then sit on my hands.  I felt proud.

And now I feel so ashamed.

Everything I told you just now about what my hands are for, what they do in my life, how they are the one part of my body that is a direct window to my soul.

And they told us to sit on our hands.

I will never sit on my hands again.

My hands are my life.  My hands are my language.  My hands are my art.  My hands are a dance.  My hands are communication.  My hands are my soul.  If you have a problem with that… if you sat on your hand so hard it went up your ass, it would serve you right.  But the part that is the saddest to me, is that you don’t know what you’re destroying.  You don’t even think you’re destroying anything. 

But my hands are everything.  They are beauty.  They are wisdom.  They are knowledge.  They are art.  They have a language of their own.  And anyone who knows how, can tell everything about me, by watching my hands.  And you will never be able to take that away from me.

Notes:
  1. andymagnuseth said: hands are so expressive and important. i feel the same way.
  2. needfulnonsense reblogged this from callmemonstrous
  3. bylerum reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  4. callmemonstrous reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  5. revcleo reblogged this from withasmoothroundstone
  6. kai-skai said: Now I am very curious about what that looks like.
  7. withasmoothroundstone posted this