Hands

I wrote this back in June. I'd been having a massive creative block and couldn't figure out why. With everything that was going on in the world, I couldn't write or even scrap about it. I even tried doing a scrapbook page about having a creative block and all it did was make me realize my block was probably because I was just overwhelmed.

Back in 2001, I did a PowerPoint photo video after 911. I wasn't really involved in any sort of social media, in fact in 2001 AOL and email WAS social media. I emailed that video to everyone on my email list and encouraged them to share it if they felt moved to do so. I actually received a reply email from my friend who told me that he loved the video. He told me the creative people create in their own ways after major disasters to allow people who are not naturally creative to reconcile their feelings with works that express the words they need but can't find. That's not verbatim, but it's essentially what he told me.

It made me feel like I had an obligation to create, not just for my own outlet, but that it was necessary to share my work. But as the first half of this year was a couple months from ending, there had been so many awful things going on that I just short circuited.

I turned to my personal journal, my trusty journal that I've always been able to just write until my problems come out of me and are solved.

Honestly, I sat down to write about COVID-19 and it turned into stories from my past and of rant about the current protests. SO many things that are just wrong right now.

After the photo are the actual words to Hands. I was watching late night TV and a musical performance by a band with a very dark skinned singer and I noticed the inside of his hands as he held the microphone. I started thinking about all the people I know and realized how similar the color of the inside of all of our hands are. When I said to the TV, and it's a line that you'll read in Hands, that those similar hands that we all have are the same hands we put together to pray, I started weeping and I cried until the end of this song. I had to go back and download the song so I could hear it because at some point what I was seeing struck me so strongly that I was crying too hard to listen to the music. And that was the beginning of my creative block ending.

Hands

Who are you?

Who is your neighbor?

Who is your coworker?

Who is that stranger?

How do we define ourselves?

How do we define friends and family?

How do we define everyone?

How do we define anyone?

Look at the back of your hands

Are they light, bronzed, olive, dark?

Is that you, your color, your race?

What makes that shade you?

Now flip your hands over.

That color is incredibly close to the same color 

as the inside of every other hand

What do you do with that part of your hand?

You put together 

The insides of your hands

To pray or meditate,

When you think or plan

You hold the inside of your child’s hand

With the inside of your hand

You shake the inside of someone’s hand

With the inside of yours

A musician uses the inside of their hand

To strike keys on a piano, 

touch the frets on a guitar, bass, violin, banjo

To hold a drumstick or a microphone

The earliest painting we do is with the inside of the hand 

Talented older painters hold the brush inside their hands

Ceramics and pottery is shaped with the inside of hands

Crafters at home hold their supplies inside their hands

An athlete throws a ball, catches a ball, dribbles a ball

Holds a bat, a racket, a golf club, a hockey stick

Proudly clutches a trophy or medal 

with the inside of their hands

A cook, chef, baker, uses the inside of their hands

To hold the spoon that stirs food in a restaurant

To knead dough, and put cookies or a pizza in the oven

At work, or anyone at home

An architect draws with the inside of their hands

A builder plans and schedules with the inside of their hands

A carpenter, electrician, construction worker 

uses the inside of their hands to build

One last push and a doctor brings a baby into the world 

A mother holds the newborn against her for the first time

A father caresses them both

All with the inside of their hands

On the inside our blood is the same color

But on the outside what parts of our bodies define us?

Parts where we look more different

Or the parts where we are more the same?