The moving thumb and four fingers won’t write
& neither my piety nor dimwit can lure them
back to work this early morn…
In despair I scurried below to our Sunlighten sauna. There I held my right hand against a heated panel. Eventually, I could hold a sleek, black, narrow LE PEN between my index and third finger, with my inert right thumb held upward, as if thumbing a ride.
I sat there on the sauna’s cedar bench, thinking about the 75 years of 81 that I’ve held a pencil or pen, gripped unwisely, as if someone were about to steal one or the other from me. And for 71 years I’ve gripped a tennis racquet to keep it firmly in my hand .A flying serve, a wild backhand, and the result from a weak grip could be a cracked or shattered head. The racquet’s, that is!
All habits accumulate as something bound to identity, for better and worse. Did Omar K. mention this in the Rubaiyat?
I prefer his verses about a jug of wine and thou beside me.. whatever place Omar wrote about long ago. His verses gone from memory and I no longer have the book.
What I have retained is a stanza from William Butler Yeats as my mantra for writing.
Hand do what you are bid/ Bring the balloon of the mind/ That bellies and drags in the wind/ Into its narrow shed.
A complex word, shed, as the OED shows. One definition in a full page on shed is ‘the narrow parting in hair.’ Yes, on our heads!
Serendipity for today. What’s in the December 2, 2024 New Yorker? “Getting a Grip”(Robots learn how to use their hands). I intend to carefully read this seven page article by Friday, then give it to the PA who will look at my hand. Only appointment I could get, and no possibility until mid-January with the orthopedic I’ve seen twice before. I hope for a shot from the PA as a temporary measure. Hand, do what you’re bid. Give up your pain.
Small stuff in a world of large troubles. I wrote this sentence and laughed. Beside my two-volume OED is Shakespeare’s Words. And yes, stuff is a word the Bard invented, along with almost two-thousand others? From the Duke in Cymbeline: “Oh, heavens, what stuff is here!”
Until next week…
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