This raises an interesting question within my Articles of Faith […]

There are several things that I’m simply not good at. Saying No, being right up there near the top.  But, I also have other, more lasting, character flaws, that I’m afraid err on the side of my being “too good at.”

It’s true. But, no worries, I’m not perfect. For instance, I have a cowlick.

100% Natural Cow Lick

No, what I’m referring to is my “curse.” I have one. (I probably have more than one, but I have one that is simply prevalent, at all costs, regardless of any personal demographic).

I never forget an injustice.

Ever. As a matter of awkward fact, I could go for years without seeing you, or thinking about you, and not even a second after a re-introduction, or a chance meeting, I immediately am reminded of That Thing You Did.

I can’t help it.

Once, I was at The Pig to buy some veggie dogs, and, because as always happens in the grocery store I simply cannot leave with only what I went there to buy, I’d decided to get some Fig Newtons, and as I turned the corner, there stood a person I’d not seen (hadn’t really wanted to run into, either, to be honest) in over a year, holding a bag of potato chips, the real good kind.

“Well, Kris, I’ll be…how on earth are you?”

I was so hoping I’d not been spotted. I was shoulder-level to a row of canned squash (perish the thought) and of course, I pretended to need four cans of it, announcing that I was in quite a hurry, and how good it was to see them (it wasn’t good to see them – we’d never been that close), and how was the family, and blah, blah, blah.

Ahem. You’ve been there, before, I know…you’ve filled your buggy with cans of squash a time or two, I’m sure.

I should have been nicer, more southern, I knew better, I did, but I couldn’t look at them without recalling that time (and this was back in high school!) that they’d stolen two candy bars from the Store (we sold candy in between classes to raise money for the annual) and then blamed me for it.

No one believe it, not for one hot second, of course, but still…I had not forgotten. I hadn’t remembered that I’d not forgotten until right then, but you see my dilemma.

This raises an interesting question within my Articles of Faith, you understand.

If I can’t truly forget what you’ve done to me, for whatever reason (and I’m sure a few were warranted), then can I truly forgive? 

I hate to sound petty and trite about this, but I am a little worried. Why does my subconscious care so much?  Have I somehow given such absolute weight to every grievance done to me? (And is this a reciprocal action?)

Godspell.

I mean, Lord knows, I’ve not gotten hung up on your wrongdoing in my daily life, or routine, but why should your “mistake” (let’s call it) be the first thing to crop back into my mind, the moment we run into each other again?  I accept the fact that I’m human, and thus, flawed. Fine.

But, what else lies down there in my psyche? 

I had no idea you could carry a grudge and not feel it, not know it…

What’s the point of anger, in that case?

It’s even a little embarrassing. I try to make light of it, to joke about it, but it still sits there, right under my eyebrow, there I am sitting at the bar with you watching you sip, sip, sip your G-a-T; or, there I am, elbow-to-elbow with you in the audience enjoying a play, a musical, a concert; or, there I am passing by you in Wal-Mart, pretending I’m not recalling that time you stood me up, didn’t pay me back, spread a lie about me, left me off the invite list, whatever – it never has to be a big thing, you know, doesn’t have to be a major event.

Probably, I could argue, that it’s the smaller ones that hurt the most, that my psyche clings to.

But, get this, it’s not even that I care that much about it, or that I’m usually that offended by the oversight…the kicker is that my mind thinks it is. Heck, if I kept a list off all the things that overlooked me, the times that stood me up, the unpaid debts, and so forth, I’d go missing.

What I hate is that the moment we reconnect, this is the first thing I think of. I go straight to it. And so, I have to re-evaluate my dialogue, in that conversation, because you’re probably not thinking of that stray moment, either…and I don’t want to bring it up, necessarily, myself.

I’m just not sure how to work through it. I swear, I don’t really keep a tally. (Maybe I should, though, maybe that would alleviate this need I have mentally to “judge”).

It’s a horrible thing to discover that about yourself, that you judge others, when you really, truly, didn’t think you did. It’s like discovering those sebaceous pimples – the kind that hurt, that bump up, but they never break the surface, so no one else really believes you have a pimple.

Oh, but you do. You do. And you know you do.

I’m not even sure therapy would help. I tend to think of the subconscious as being this massive sieve, and all day long it sweeps through the murk, the mud, the mess and collects all those moments, issues, feelings, etc. that you couldn’t deal with and its first attempt comes that night, through your dreams. (This is why I’m a vegetarian).

But, if it doesn’t get a chance to release them then, it just throws them into a back room until later. Later, by the way, usually manifests as aggravation, anger, frustration, irritation, divorce, diarrhea, headache, bankruptcy, and suicide. Sometimes, the only symptom is mild discomfort, but you should still consult your phys — wait, wait, wait. I’ve gotten this confused with Levitra.

Doctor Feelgood isn't in. Ever.

What I mean to say is, probably that’s the basis of my Mistake Retention. I’m just projecting onto something within my control that stems from something that isn’t or wasn’t. Maybe that’s the whole reason we make the mistakes we make in the first place. We just haven’t cleaned up, on the inside. All that clutter gets in the way and the next thing you know, we’re operating under the Best Intentions Rule.

If best intentions were money, we’d have no poverty left in the world, would we? I haven’t met a soul yet who doesn’t have them.

The trouble is, we just don’t know how to spend them.

Because hands can do everything but lie.

I don’t always know what to do with my hands.

You might find that ironic for an actor, even more so for an educator. But, it’s still the truth.

Bang, bang, you shot me down.

It wasn’t anything I ever really noticed until a few years ago. I began to realize that my Nana was fascinated by the frequency with which I used my hands to animate my conversation. She would look less at me and more at my gesturing.

Over time, I became so concerned with how I might physcially be telling my story that I began to grow flustered at the dinner table. I didn’t know how not to use my hands.

As is my way and tendency, I began to obsess over excessive hand usage soon after.

It was a quiet thing, this staring that Nana did (does; I still struggle with it) to my hands, and, as you might have guessed, it has now become a habit of my own: to notice how often people use their hands to exemplify their points, even when it’s not necessary.

Like, the man at the four-way stop, yesterday, who flipped me off.  (Although I suppose one could argue that that is necessary. But, I would have to counter with, No, it isn’t. No one ever gets the Four-Way Stop Rule, right, anymore. And on top of that, it’s actually a five-way stop. That’s right, a five-way stop).

For Nana, gentlemen didn’t need to use their hands for support. Their word was strong enough. I think she sees it as a sign of weakness, perhaps, that succeeding generations need more and more stimuli to keep them engaged. That’s a point to consider, indeed, but for some of us, it’s just a natural extension of our physical selves to use our appendages for emphasis.

She’s a picture of Victorian essence, though, and that I respect.

Even if her essence has made me somewhat self-conscious, and thus, critical.

We often hold others accountable for what we fail at ourselves, don’t we? I can’t not think less of someone who does that very thing I do, that I don’t like in myself. At least, not initially.

All this and over hands. Silly, huh?

But, not a new idea.  I’m sure there are other Nanas the world over who carry such social concerns, tucked right beneath the handkerchief kept so tightly under their wristwatch bands or heirloom bracelets.

The problem for me, ultimately, is in finding something else for them to do, when I talk, if gesturing is a weakness in men. It’s like I’ve given my hands permission to think for themselves, and that, believe you me, gets me in more trouble than I can safely admit to here.

It doesn’t have to be a significant form of trouble either (or even have to involve anyone else). What it does, though, is divide my thinking, and sometimes with less than desirable results. Today, I went home, for example, to eat lunch. I stood in the kitchen scraping out the last of that delicious olive tapenade that Amanda made for the party last night, with a cut-up tomato, fresh from the garden, and I decided to do something I rarely do.

This is the lost shaker of salt.

I decided to add salt. (If you’re going to add salt, though, it is perfectly acceptable to do so with either a slice of tomato or a piece of watermelon).

I reached, without thinking, for the white salt shaker that was sitting on top of the microwave, with a fleeting realization that that, of all the available counter space in the kitchen, was an odd place to put the white salt shaker. All the same, I brought it over to the sink and raising it above my delectable slice of tomato, I shook some salt onto it.

No salt came out.

I shook it again. Still, nothing.

I was getting more and more irritated when I realized two very important things: 1) We don’t have a white salt shaker, and 2) it was, instead, the plastic insert that goes in the bottom of the food processor, which had been washed and was sitting in the drain beside the sink, drying.

Stupid hands. Just making assumptions, and in my own kitchen. (Of course, why the insert was sitting on top of the microwave – oh, never mind). 

The fools. My hands.

Maybe I’m just too dramatic. The length of a finger, the crack of a knuckle, the ability to point, to wave, to applaud. I guess I can’t just look at a hand as a hand, I mean, not to see it as a hand…I look at it and I see the ability to know God a little closer (not just through prayer, but through creation).

I can build worlds with these hands using nothing but twenty-six letters. And judging by the sore spot on my thumb, I can also attempt to construct a 8×8 foot flat, down at the theater.

Aren’t hands often the first to show signs of age? If so, then, well, why not? Building worlds take a lot out of a person. Mine, for instance, are growing chafed and calloused. I look at them, right this second, for instance, as they skate over the keyboard, and I’m a little sad but mostly impressed. What these hands have done. The good and the bad…it’s still impressive. (Take a look at your own, and you’ll see your own history…read it and memorize it).

Because hands can do everything but lie.

After my first class, this morning, I sat in the lounge and flipped through the rest of the textbook. We’re about to begin our abbreviated, quick-speed run-through of fiction this week. I wasn’t sure, still not, of which stories I want to focus on.  Welty, O’Connor, Faulkner, Wright, those are the usuals, but maybe I could find something new?

I merely turned one page, at that point, and there, on that page, lay a story I’d not only never read, but never heard of: “Hands” by Sherwood Anderson. Can you beat that?

So, I thought, well, hands aren’t perhaps a normal topic of conversation or blogging, unless you eat dinner at Nana’s on Sundays – let’s see what it’s about. Let’s read this story.

I was immediately struck by this unique and at first glance, blandly written piece of short fiction. Not the least of which was it’s not-so-subtle homosexual overtones, especially for something written in the 1910s. Admittedly, I’m not that familiar with Anderson’s thematic oeuvre but I was compelled by his fictional design in this particular story.

How sad the life of Wing Biddlebaum was. How misunderstood; note: due to an unfortunate incident, allegedly, with younger boys at the school where he used to teach, he was forced out of town and had to change his name.

Here, read this:

Wing Biddlebaum talked much with his hands. The slender expressive fingers, forever active, forever striving to conceal themselves in his pockets or behind his back, came forth and became the piston rods of his machinery of expression.
     The story of Wing Biddlebaum is a story of hands. Their restless activity, like unto the beating of the wings of an imprisoned bird, had given him his name. Some obscure poet of the town had thought of it. The hands alarmed their owner. He wanted to keep them hidden away and looked with amazement at the quiet inexpressive hands of other men who worked beside him in the fields, or passed, driving sleepy teams on country roads.

His hands “alarmed their owner.” That’s bizarre and captivating to me. After you read the story, you’ll see why for yourself. He hides behind his hands and tries to manipulate them into the working class definition of “manual” labor of the other men in this town. He succeeds too well, you might say.

This will make sense after you read the story.

Another captivation: several times throughout the story, Anderson keeps stalling, suggesting that the “truth” of this story can’t be told except by a poet. A poet that Anderson refers to several times throughout the piece. And not just any poet, an obscure one.

To me, this is the beauty of the contrast.

Obscurity has no use for hands. A poet doesn’t either. All he needs is “an eye.” The difference is that truth exists in two forms: exposed for the eye to see, or through sleight of hand. The deceit of Wing’s lavish use of his hands is nothing short of a subconscious effort to trick the eye. Watch his hands and you never see the desperation that is in his face. The worry that drains him of “place” and “home.”

I mean for godsakes, re-read the first paragraph, again. He lives in a dilapadating house on the edge of a ravine.  He’s headed for a meltdown, and one that’s been boiling for the last twenty years.

Talk about a slow burn.

Sigh.

I just hope that’s not what Nana sees when she looks at me.

Guess I better scratch gloves off my Christmas list.