Of this I am convinced, since evidence keeps arriving to corroborate rather than disprove this theory. Though to anyone else I imagine they still look like hands, those appendages, normally with five digits apiece, at the ends of your wrists, and in spite of all the weaving and bobbing. I have taken to thinking of them however as sparrows, wagtails or house martins as they move through the air in that manner, just like a speed boat tripping over the waves, with little undulations. Speed, bonnie boat, like a bird on the wing, Onward! The sailors cry...
Tiny birds in flight, and in particular wagtails, bob almost as much as they do on the ground, and when two fly together, well, it's a feat that somehow lightens your heart. Carry the lad that's born to be King, Over the sea to Skye.
I don't however feel that same way about my hands. No, instead I want to shoot them down. And if I cannot do that without bringing further attention to them and to myself further embarrassment, hope they come up against something similar to the Big Dead Tree in the Twits' garden whose branches were spread with Hug Tight Sticky Glue, to at least hold them captive until such a time I can trust them to once again behave. If they were actual birds (and not attached to me) obviously I would want to help them avoid that fate. I'm not in the habit of eating pies, savoury or sweet. Or being cruel purely for the pleasure of trapping, to, for example, have songs all day.
But then these hands imitating birds have a soundless, almost untranslatable language, which is neither dainty nor in harmony with the words spoken. In their flourishes they are quite wild, very like singers who ad-lib with extra warbles which does nothing to improve the live rendition and makes you prefer the radio version.
What they are trying to tell – my hands, I can't speak for artists - is confused and far from supportive to that being vocalised. And if there's an audience (and there usually is), and I do mean to imply one made up of strangers or people you don't yet know very well and possibly hope to, seeing their eyes shift up and to the right, then the left, watching these fluttery creatures in flight as if desperate for some way out is very disconcerting, especially as these 'creatures' are a part of you and you feel there's nothing you can do to stop them, short of slapping them down, which if you did would really give this audience something to tweet and twitter about, and almost certainly would not foster any friendships.
What's more mortifying is that your own eyes follow them too, as fascinated as a bird-watcher's peering through binoculars. In this case, spectacles. What will they do next? Where will they go? even though this sight to you personally is more common than rare. Sometimes it's as if they're attempting to loop an invisible ribbon into a bow to a romantic score, except it's not quite coming off. Instead, there are tangles and knots, which are only made worse and not better.
A narrator in a Turgenev tale makes reference to the uncomfortable sensation when you know you're being watched from behind. Eyes boring, not unkindly but interestedly, into the back of you. That sensation's been with me most of my life, even when it's apparent I'm not being watched, because I'm generally hesitant and self-conscious, so imagine what it's like to now be so plainly watched from the front too. It's more than uncomfortable, it's excruciating. Especially because, as I touched on in my own wording, but with which Turgenev's father agreed, 'to belong to oneself, that is the whole thing in life,' and surely my hands are forever making a mockery of that sentiment. These hands do not, very often, belong to me, except of course when they're typing, but even then occasionally...
They need a more eccentric and bird-loving owner (than me) to tame them or at least appreciate their ways; someone similar to the elderly Miss Flite from Dickens' Bleak House, who, like her, one day will release them when the years of judgement are over.
Picture credit: Lady with Hat and Veil, Viewed From Behind, c.1850-1855, Aldoph von Menzel
All posts published this year were penned during the last.
