Nine things

Ethel the glitter Stegosaur, by @Pictmatrix

I keep rubbing my hands together, because they seem sticky from wondering if I know what I am saying. I wash them with the tiny fragrant puck of soap I brought home from the hotel in Melbourne, and dry them and pound out more words, and look at them, and my hands feel sticky again.  

So, a letter to my hands. Dear hands. Here are some things I am trying to say. 

(1) Carving out the place that feels like home to us is hard. It is a series of traps and pipe dreams and false dawns and botched escapes and we amass the most extraordinary arsenal of tools and weapons to build it and sometimes we cut ourselves with them and lock ourselves behind the wrong doors.

(2) It is very, very important to look at other things that are alive. For a long time. Quietly. To see what they do. To see that they are there. 

(3) This is harder than it sounds. 

(4) It is very, very important to know their names.

(5) Sometimes people say this is not important, but they are wrong.

(6) Books sometimes say what is real. Sometimes they make what is real. Sometimes what is in a book isn't real at all. 

(7) This is less obvious than it looks.

(8) We are always asked where we are from as if there is only one answer. That isn't true.

(9) Sometimes all that connects you with the world are some hooded crows and a wooden spoon and those times are actually no different from the other times. It just seems as if they are.