I can’t stop thinking about the genius of the hands. I am reflecting on fingers. I am reflecting on the fingers typing these words. The discrete amount of pressure required to make the keys yield in such a way that I get a satisfying slap off the keyboard, but don’t waste effort. I am thinking about how much more I like Apple keyboards than those made by other companies, because of the spring in the keys themselves. Their tactile quality.
I am meditating on the strike of keys on a piano. I have an ancient baby grand piano that is more like a person than an instrument, 89 years old, and even in my profoundly amateur caress of those keys, I am thinking about how much nuance conveys through how I strike the keys: the nature of the music called forth by these variations.
I am reflecting on flyfishing, on standing waistdeep in a river in Maine, having cast forty feet forward and back, the line hanging in a slow loop in the air, and then landing in the water, the stream taking it, and the way that feeding line out I am listening, eyes closed, through my fingers, to know what is happening fifty, then sixty, then seventy feet downstream where the fly I cannot see is getting pushed and pulled around by the current. I am listening in the silent spaces of fingerknowing for the instant when the trout strikes.
I meditate on weaving, on separating the fibers, the strands of yarn with your fingers, the bunching and play of them on the loom.
I think about striking the new chisel into the block of wood, and how the tap of the mallet is just so. The way that I have spent time feeling the wood before I strike it, know whether it is Black Walnut, or Big Leaf Maple, or Douglas fir, all of which I have carved recently, and this knowing about how hard the wood is informs the way I strike the chisel home.
I am considering the way I lift my daughter’s hair away from her face to look at the the insect bite just under her hairline.
I am considering how I twirl the tennis racquet on breakpoint, leaning forward as I prepare to return a second serve in my match, knowing I am going to strike the ball with my forehand as hard as I possibly can. How the strike begins in my feet, translates an explosive push forward through my whole body to a snap in the wrist that will vault that ball back at eighty miles per hour.
My friend Carol brings to my attention the way that one holds the reins that attach to a bit in a horse’s mouth, the language of the felt sense of this. Imagine, she says, holding a nestling in your hands with the reins, keeping the vulnerable new life safe and calm while using your fingers to move the bit to communicate.
I think about india ink on watercolor paper, the brush I use to make the finest lines, and the ease and concentration required to paint a fine straight line.
I think about rolling dough, shaping balls of masa, scooping cookie dough.
I think about suturing closed someone’s wound, or digging out a splinter.
I think about my acupuncturist, and the precision of his placement of needles.
Of manual therapists listening through their fingers.
Of the wisdom of Maria Montessori noticing that, “The hands are the instruments of man's intelligence.”
I think of the way we spin the drill between our flattened palms when making a friction fire.
All of this wisdom residing in fingers, residing in hands– all of this knowing situated at some distance from the brain.
Tell me this wisdom of relating resides in your skull alone, and I will tell you that you are a fool.
Montessori may well have said this "Of the wisdom of Maria Montessori noticing that, “The hands are the instruments of man's intelligence.” but i'd appreciate thy adding (and women's) into the sentence, or making some remark that includes us. the word 'man' does not include us, no matter how much it's asserted that it does.
I feel the same frustration when i read thy heading 'Man's best friend'... of course i know it's a common saying.. but just because something is a common way of saying things,, it's arisen from a paradigm where Man and men are the measure of things... and that does diddly squat for my nervous system's sense of safety.. indeed, quite the reverse.. it does a great deal to bring a sense of unsafety and uninclusion, it brings epigenetic and aeons of patriarchy right here into my 'home' ...and if i'm reading this book then i'm going to want to be opening and allowing some vulnerability... so these things matter. A lot.
Thank you. Following my hands 🙌🏽.