"My hands have been kind to me. I hope I learn not to take them for granted."
If I contemplate these broken and beat up meat hooks I have, I'd say they done an enormous amount of work over this lifetime (they have certainly been cut and scraped and bruised enough) so yes, I'd like to keep them. Along with the other assorted body parts. (I took on-board the hand hypothesis somewhere back there and I assumed it was presumptively true, and so far the evidence has born that out.)
"This seems like a good time to admit that I have never before liked gardening."
I like it, although not so much on this property. Very handy to have fresh herbs for everything and roses to go along with it.) What tends to suck is 'ranching' at least in the south western sun. Man, repairing barbed wire in the summer sucks.
"Northern Plains people, though, it’s all out in front for us. No secrets where I’m from. Fistfights and open hatred and telling someone straight out you want to fuck."
I expect the 'Five Civilised Tribes' are much the same way.
Oct 3, 2022·edited Oct 3, 2022Liked by Antonia Malchik
Maybe the best metaphors are ones that come to *you* spontaneously, emerging as an immediate response to some embodied experience in the moment, not "How do I force this situation to fit the metaphor that seems to fit this situation the most perfectly," or overapplying a trite recycled metaphor that has grown detached from the original circumstances that first inspired it. Something you never thought of in that way before, but now suddenly makes perfect sense, which in turn allows something even bigger to suddenly make sense. "A metaphor is two disparate experiences of very different quality and scale that magically collide in the universe, not because they have to but because they can." "A metaphor is just a definition on acid." Which is the real metaphor here?
"It's a whole-body thing: my feet in their wandering practice a love for the world; most of what my hands do is about a love for human beings, for all our flaws and failings." What a neat way to put it. I've always felt like the feet, hands and head are the three key antennae of our body (perhaps for people without hands or feet this shifts elsewhere).
I wasn't familiar with Frank Wilson's book, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the one by Raymond Tallis, a philosopher who never fails to say interesting things:
Ah, that's because I hadn't heard of Tallis! Which, now that I've looked at it, is an "oh no, I am going to order that and have another book to read because it looks right up my alley."
"If I get to heaven I'll look for Grandma's hands," that is fantastic. My grandmother wasn't very maternal (she didn't like children much), but this brings up a lot of thoughts.
I absolutely love this perspective, that the metaphors that work are the ones that come to us through our embodied experience. I wonder what we could notice about ourselves and how we spend our time and attention simply by noticing what metaphors we use most? Might be a curious thing to follow. In fact, my younger sister just came up with a metaphor for a difficult family situation that was absolutely perfect and described something we'd been grappling with for decades. And it wasn't actually our embodied experience that lent the metaphor, but it was something we'd talked about a lot for various reasons.
I'm going to be thinking about this a lot now -- as always with your comments!
I love this. I want to work with my hands more...without sitting so much. I am seriously pondering how this can work. I year ago I started journaling by hand and I love it, but it also became just another sitting activity. And standing is also not moving! I took a doll making course and loved it. But again, sitting. I have decided my meditations need to be moving, mostly anyway. But I would like to get back to drawing and writing and move more.
One thing I try to do every day is put lotion on my hands and feet and do it in a way that is expressing my gratitude to my hands and feet. Like really caring for them. It’s such a small thing.
You’ve reminded me that one of the things that got me interested in walking early on was the fact that both my work (writing AND copy editing) and almost every hobby I love involves sitting. So when I started to think about meditating, I really struggled with the whole “ugh, more sitting” thing. And thought about people who commute in cars to offices every day — is it really the best thing for them to devote 20 minutes or an hour to sitting, or would a mindful walk be more beneficial?
It’s not easy! If you don’t have an active job, being sedentary is so simple, at least for me!
I like the lotion practice. On both hands and feet, paying attention to how much they do for us every day … after a GirlTrek group took me on one of their walks in Denver, I sent each of them a little mint lotion and foot care kit from a local shop here. Gratitude for our feet and hands feels good :)
Thank you as always, Nia, and for the reading suggestions. First up for obvious reasons for me to peruse is the one on forensic science. Such scientists who work with organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights are heroic.
You came to mind immediately when I started reading that one, Greg! And in fact the whole topic of care work with hands — there’s a whole wealth of essays out of your field on topics related to that.
"They write, too, and occasionally play music. I forget that sometimes."
Last night, I stumbled across some files on my computer that I had managed to recover from a dead hard drive years ago and never reviewed or organized. Found some audio doodles and composition sketch recordings I had made with much fear and self-loathing. Thought to myself, "Wow, I used to do that. And, it actually sounds pretty good."
First, I love the aspen grove photograph. It reminds me of the grove behind the Métis cemetery we visited in Teton Canyon up above Choteau.
In that Movement Matters book I mentioned a few weeks ago, that I know you have now too, she talks specifically about this kind of thing, and even uses berry picking as an example. All these movements – the picking, the harvesting, the shucking and shelling, the cleaning, the preparing – comprise various series of movements that used to be part of our non-sedentary lives that we have drifted away from, and to our detriment. Movement of any meaningful, purposeful nature stimulates the brain, doesn't it? Then there are the people who describe their desire to "do something with their hands" for work as opposed to just mouse clicks and finger taps. I know I feel that! I think it's a lack many of us feel maybe without even being able to articulate it.
Additionally, this book that I indulged myself in ordering a couple weeks ago arrived in the mail earlier this week. It's gorgeous.
That book looks amazing. The kind of thing that might just make me quit this life forever. Did you ever read Shop Class as Soulcraft? I don’t know if it holds up now but at the time I read it it really became a touchstone for me. I think it’s why I got into rustic woodworking when I was going a little crazy at home.
Movement Matters is up next! I’m looking forward to it — the quotes you posted were what made me buy it. I guess it feels like it might be similar to Shop Class as Soulcraft, and all of it why I get so stuck on the question of embodiment and how we can most be alive in a world that demands so much of our attention and physical presence to be sedentary and dragged into existing online. Just want to walk out in the world and do other things …
That aspen grove is from a forest in the same region as Teton Canyon, north of it but along the Front, same transition zone from prairie to aspen forest I think. So, so beautiful. I did not want to leave.
I’ve now followed the Katy Bowman rabbit trail to her nutritious movement site and YouTube channel, so thank you! I need to finish that “Walking Well” class I started before the sciatica.
I should reread it and see if it holds up. But everything he said about working with your hands, that kind of knowledge and relationship with the world in opposition to head-world academia, rang true for me with a lot of force at the time.
“Beyond was all around me.” You guys are killing me. I’m going to shut all this down and just take myself off into the mountains.
My stepdad and his second wife built their cabin in the Pintlers in the mid-70s. They used trees from the land right there, too, except lodgepole instead of spruce. It’s still solid and comfortable, except the foundation keeps trying to slide off into the creek downhill. This brings home how much work it all was!
You two can't see me RUBBING MY HANDS IN GLEE over here. Books about handwork are my absolute jam, and if I can ever get past the narrative of my brother's death at the start of this memoir there's a lot I have to write about making, and especially making by hand. A couple of quick recs: No Idle Hands: The History of American Knitting, and HandyWoman by Kate Davies. The Davies chronicles her recovery from a stroke in her 30s, having to leave academia, and her journey to physical health and building a knitting design business. Why We Make Things and Why It Matters by Pete Korn is also great. I won't go on ... but if you want more, just hit me up.
This sounds like a project that definitely needs pursuing! When it’s time <3
There’s always such a craving for this kind of thing — it’s a wonder we put up with a life that demands we reject it. Especially if you read “The Hand,” it’s hard to see how to be a human species without being able to do these kinds of things.
Right?! Not that I don't love an Ent :) But yes, when I first started learning about aspens I went in deep. Especially since they're a major part of the vast Russian landscape. And at the time I learned about them I was doing a lot of woodworking and working at a sawmill. Aspens were known as trash trees because they're fibrous inside, like fiber optic cable wires, and you can't use them for much (in Russia they're used for roofing and making matches) but then I learned about their interconnectedness and longevity and it was all just ... whew.
[very late, not at all on time]
"My hands have been kind to me. I hope I learn not to take them for granted."
If I contemplate these broken and beat up meat hooks I have, I'd say they done an enormous amount of work over this lifetime (they have certainly been cut and scraped and bruised enough) so yes, I'd like to keep them. Along with the other assorted body parts. (I took on-board the hand hypothesis somewhere back there and I assumed it was presumptively true, and so far the evidence has born that out.)
"This seems like a good time to admit that I have never before liked gardening."
I like it, although not so much on this property. Very handy to have fresh herbs for everything and roses to go along with it.) What tends to suck is 'ranching' at least in the south western sun. Man, repairing barbed wire in the summer sucks.
Also, because I forgot at the time - you linked this story back there: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/04/05/featherweight ... and this sentence landed:
"Northern Plains people, though, it’s all out in front for us. No secrets where I’m from. Fistfights and open hatred and telling someone straight out you want to fuck."
I expect the 'Five Civilised Tribes' are much the same way.
elm
home and other familiar things
That story is incredible, isn't it? I just reread it. What a writer. Looking forward to reading everything he gets out there.
Everything to do with barbed wire sucks in the summer sun :/
Maybe the best metaphors are ones that come to *you* spontaneously, emerging as an immediate response to some embodied experience in the moment, not "How do I force this situation to fit the metaphor that seems to fit this situation the most perfectly," or overapplying a trite recycled metaphor that has grown detached from the original circumstances that first inspired it. Something you never thought of in that way before, but now suddenly makes perfect sense, which in turn allows something even bigger to suddenly make sense. "A metaphor is two disparate experiences of very different quality and scale that magically collide in the universe, not because they have to but because they can." "A metaphor is just a definition on acid." Which is the real metaphor here?
"It's a whole-body thing: my feet in their wandering practice a love for the world; most of what my hands do is about a love for human beings, for all our flaws and failings." What a neat way to put it. I've always felt like the feet, hands and head are the three key antennae of our body (perhaps for people without hands or feet this shifts elsewhere).
I wasn't familiar with Frank Wilson's book, but I'm surprised you didn't mention the one by Raymond Tallis, a philosopher who never fails to say interesting things:
Raymond Tallis: https://edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-the-hand.html
For myself, reading your essay, it was hard not to think of pop culture's best homage to the hands:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TdrChyGb574
Ah, that's because I hadn't heard of Tallis! Which, now that I've looked at it, is an "oh no, I am going to order that and have another book to read because it looks right up my alley."
"If I get to heaven I'll look for Grandma's hands," that is fantastic. My grandmother wasn't very maternal (she didn't like children much), but this brings up a lot of thoughts.
I absolutely love this perspective, that the metaphors that work are the ones that come to us through our embodied experience. I wonder what we could notice about ourselves and how we spend our time and attention simply by noticing what metaphors we use most? Might be a curious thing to follow. In fact, my younger sister just came up with a metaphor for a difficult family situation that was absolutely perfect and described something we'd been grappling with for decades. And it wasn't actually our embodied experience that lent the metaphor, but it was something we'd talked about a lot for various reasons.
I'm going to be thinking about this a lot now -- as always with your comments!
Did you see this?
"My hands do the thinking,” he said. “It is not a conscious process.”
From early early interviews with Cormac McCarthy
I have not but yes, exactly! Thank you! (This is part of why I can’t give up drafting longhand …)
I love this. I want to work with my hands more...without sitting so much. I am seriously pondering how this can work. I year ago I started journaling by hand and I love it, but it also became just another sitting activity. And standing is also not moving! I took a doll making course and loved it. But again, sitting. I have decided my meditations need to be moving, mostly anyway. But I would like to get back to drawing and writing and move more.
One thing I try to do every day is put lotion on my hands and feet and do it in a way that is expressing my gratitude to my hands and feet. Like really caring for them. It’s such a small thing.
You’ve reminded me that one of the things that got me interested in walking early on was the fact that both my work (writing AND copy editing) and almost every hobby I love involves sitting. So when I started to think about meditating, I really struggled with the whole “ugh, more sitting” thing. And thought about people who commute in cars to offices every day — is it really the best thing for them to devote 20 minutes or an hour to sitting, or would a mindful walk be more beneficial?
It’s not easy! If you don’t have an active job, being sedentary is so simple, at least for me!
I like the lotion practice. On both hands and feet, paying attention to how much they do for us every day … after a GirlTrek group took me on one of their walks in Denver, I sent each of them a little mint lotion and foot care kit from a local shop here. Gratitude for our feet and hands feels good :)
And this arrived in my inbox today: https://www.feldenkraisaccess.com/hand-relief
Thank you as always, Nia, and for the reading suggestions. First up for obvious reasons for me to peruse is the one on forensic science. Such scientists who work with organizations such as Physicians for Human Rights are heroic.
You came to mind immediately when I started reading that one, Greg! And in fact the whole topic of care work with hands — there’s a whole wealth of essays out of your field on topics related to that.
"They write, too, and occasionally play music. I forget that sometimes."
Last night, I stumbled across some files on my computer that I had managed to recover from a dead hard drive years ago and never reviewed or organized. Found some audio doodles and composition sketch recordings I had made with much fear and self-loathing. Thought to myself, "Wow, I used to do that. And, it actually sounds pretty good."
A friend of mine recently did the same thing, found some songs she'd recorded half-her-life ago and uploaded them. They sound great.
Isn’t it amazing how much we can judge our work at the time but realize it’s not so bad when we come back to it later?
First, I love the aspen grove photograph. It reminds me of the grove behind the Métis cemetery we visited in Teton Canyon up above Choteau.
In that Movement Matters book I mentioned a few weeks ago, that I know you have now too, she talks specifically about this kind of thing, and even uses berry picking as an example. All these movements – the picking, the harvesting, the shucking and shelling, the cleaning, the preparing – comprise various series of movements that used to be part of our non-sedentary lives that we have drifted away from, and to our detriment. Movement of any meaningful, purposeful nature stimulates the brain, doesn't it? Then there are the people who describe their desire to "do something with their hands" for work as opposed to just mouse clicks and finger taps. I know I feel that! I think it's a lack many of us feel maybe without even being able to articulate it.
Additionally, this book that I indulged myself in ordering a couple weeks ago arrived in the mail earlier this week. It's gorgeous.
https://lostartpress.com/collections/books/products/the-handcrafted-life-of-dick-proenneke
That book looks amazing. The kind of thing that might just make me quit this life forever. Did you ever read Shop Class as Soulcraft? I don’t know if it holds up now but at the time I read it it really became a touchstone for me. I think it’s why I got into rustic woodworking when I was going a little crazy at home.
Movement Matters is up next! I’m looking forward to it — the quotes you posted were what made me buy it. I guess it feels like it might be similar to Shop Class as Soulcraft, and all of it why I get so stuck on the question of embodiment and how we can most be alive in a world that demands so much of our attention and physical presence to be sedentary and dragged into existing online. Just want to walk out in the world and do other things …
That aspen grove is from a forest in the same region as Teton Canyon, north of it but along the Front, same transition zone from prairie to aspen forest I think. So, so beautiful. I did not want to leave.
I’ve now followed the Katy Bowman rabbit trail to her nutritious movement site and YouTube channel, so thank you! I need to finish that “Walking Well” class I started before the sciatica.
Sounds like I’m in for a treat once I start her book! And a “Walking Well” class … I’m intrigued.
https://www.nutritiousmovement.com/product/walking-well-with-katy-bowman-and-jill-miller-video-course/
I did read Shop Class and nearly referenced it in my comment!
I should reread it and see if it holds up. But everything he said about working with your hands, that kind of knowledge and relationship with the world in opposition to head-world academia, rang true for me with a lot of force at the time.
Decades before the TV show "Alone", Dick Proenneke was the OG.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYJKd0rkKss
“Beyond was all around me.” You guys are killing me. I’m going to shut all this down and just take myself off into the mountains.
My stepdad and his second wife built their cabin in the Pintlers in the mid-70s. They used trees from the land right there, too, except lodgepole instead of spruce. It’s still solid and comfortable, except the foundation keeps trying to slide off into the creek downhill. This brings home how much work it all was!
You two can't see me RUBBING MY HANDS IN GLEE over here. Books about handwork are my absolute jam, and if I can ever get past the narrative of my brother's death at the start of this memoir there's a lot I have to write about making, and especially making by hand. A couple of quick recs: No Idle Hands: The History of American Knitting, and HandyWoman by Kate Davies. The Davies chronicles her recovery from a stroke in her 30s, having to leave academia, and her journey to physical health and building a knitting design business. Why We Make Things and Why It Matters by Pete Korn is also great. I won't go on ... but if you want more, just hit me up.
This sounds like a project that definitely needs pursuing! When it’s time <3
There’s always such a craving for this kind of thing — it’s a wonder we put up with a life that demands we reject it. Especially if you read “The Hand,” it’s hard to see how to be a human species without being able to do these kinds of things.
They do! And oh no, you're going to get me started on what might possibly be my favorite tree ...
Did you know that the visible tree part isn't the main organism? That aspens are clones popping up from a vast underground root network? One of the oldest organisms in the world is a super-aspen grove known as Pando. It's in Utah: https://www.treehugger.com/nature-blows-my-mind-year-old-aspen-grove-clones-itself-4859208
The way the leaves quiver and quake in the slightest movement of air is a never-ending delight.
Right?! Not that I don't love an Ent :) But yes, when I first started learning about aspens I went in deep. Especially since they're a major part of the vast Russian landscape. And at the time I learned about them I was doing a lot of woodworking and working at a sawmill. Aspens were known as trash trees because they're fibrous inside, like fiber optic cable wires, and you can't use them for much (in Russia they're used for roofing and making matches) but then I learned about their interconnectedness and longevity and it was all just ... whew.