No dressing injured hand + wire cube 3 December 2009

I admire the photographer’s portrait work. Although I knew his portraits were truthful and poetic, I did not like what I saw in the portrait he made last summer of the two of us, more specifically of me. But the truth was there in the face revealing all the marks of that hour, day, summer and year:  the ravages of summer flu, long hours, worry about frail parents and aging.  It was an honest, but not a pretty picture until I saw the hands. He had captured a surprising poetry in the hands: calm and graceful, beautiful and relaxed, hands with my father’s long fingers and my mother’s delicacy. They are hands that revealed none of what the face spoke.  They are hands that no longer exist.

3 December 2009

When at last the sutures and pins were out and the dressing came off I finally looked at the fingers and the damage that had been done.  Instead of seeing my hand and my fingers, the ones captured in the photographer’s portrait a season ago, I saw that the surgeon had attached another person’s fingers onto my hand now swollen, distorted, discoloured, rigid and ugly.

Post therapy session hand + wire cube 8 December 2009

I do not know the surgeon’s world of work. In hospital he shook his head and said he had done his best. I have not seen him since.  It was difficult to look at what he had done with my fingers.  It’s unclear whether anyone else could have done any better.    I have not worked out how to admire what he has done in light of what might have been possible. I only know my fingers are attached and crooked and not fully functioning. I know that in spite of what I was being told about the nature and seriousness of the injury, and my best efforts, I did not see a hand specialist until six months after the accident. Too late for what may have been important interventions, that may have prevented some of the problems I have using my fingers. But I can’t change that now.

8 December 2009

Many artists rely on their hands for their work. Again this summer, the artists on the cultural island in Northern Michigan are working to make beautiful sounds and create wonderful things. Surrounded by musicians, dancers and artists, it’s difficult not to notice how they move and use their hands. Fingers curve around the necks of violins, violas, cellos, basses, guitars, play winds and horns, continue the graceful arcs of dancers’ arms, help to pen the writer’s story, artists to make and model clay, hold fine tools to form and construct, carve and create. They are sensitive fingers that make music, create dance and make art.

I am mesmerised by the intricate movement of their fingers, it silences the music, stops the dance, stills the process of making. I compare their responsive, seeking fingers with my own rigid, static and broken digits, unable as yet to return to those familiar moves taken for granted before the accident.