I’ve got a silver dollar. Stranding Liberty. 2013. One ounce
of fine silver. One dollar (huh!)
It’s a trinket. It’s heavy. More than, say, a clad 50 cent
piece or (shudder) a Big Y coin. You could see yourself working all day for one
of these. This one is just a memory. A pocket of history.
But not quite so. I keep it around me for a purpose. Other
than aesthetics and value, numismatic as well as mineral, of course. It’s a Physical
Therapy device! Like that plastic lung machine I had while recovering a few
years ago? I used it to make my pulverized lungs push against my broken ribs so
they would stretch out and heal instead of collapsing and suffocating me? Or
those huge plastic noodles you lie on while convincing your back to stop being
such a dick? In the case of my coin it’s for fine muscle control. Fine silver
for fine muscles. I like the symmetry.
While binge watching Stranger Things or old Jack Benny skits
on YouTube, I will play with my ingot. Er. My coin, that is. I take it in my
left hand and just tumble it back and forth between my fingers, rolling it back
and forth between my digits or catching it betwixt fingers while appearing to
hold my hand open and empty. Coin tricks. I am right handed so my sinister hand
is less dexterous than my dominant. Neither one is quite that ‘fine.’
Why do this? Why do any repetitive, empty, meaningless task?
I had this conversation once with some friends at work, decades ago. We were on
our lunchtime walk around campus and the topic of rote memorization came up. We
were talking about education methods or something. I mentioned my mother, who
could remember poems she memorized over half a century earlier. Or exercises in
third grade where we were shown a story using a projector that only let us see
the sentences for a few seconds at a time, and then flashed to the next. We had
to concentrate and then answer questions about the story afterwards. Or, God no.
Doing long division to calculate square roots! I remember my first slide rule.
Heaven!
“What the fuck do we need that shit for today?” one said. “It’s
pointless. We’ve got calculators, now computers, which can do arithmetic for us.
Encyclopedias full of knowledge we can access any day. And when’s the last time
somebody asked you to recite ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus?’”
I had to admit, reciting ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ had not
come up recently. However, in one of those incredible ironies of time and
space, mind and matter, I had a ready-made analogy right at my feet.
“Well,” I said, slyly. “Here we are walking a couple of
miles around campus each day, even in foul weather.” “Ya,” “What’s up with
that? Why do we do it?” “Well, for exercise. Sunshine. Air.” “Even when there
are none of those? Well, air. But we have that just standing outside, as long
as we are up wind of the smokers.” “Who wants to just stand around outside?
Except for the smokers.” “Yes. But we could clearly get around campus by Segway
or pogo stick or slick haired coolie.” “That last one’s not PC.” “Your point?” “Just
sayin,”
“We do this for exercise. A purposeless, meaningless,
repetition of muscle and brain tissue operating in an age old dichotomy of mind
and matter. And mind made from matter. And matter driven by mind. And back
again.”
Why do I practice non-aerial juggling of a nineteenth century
monetary relic with my second hand hand? Three reasons.
One. I have a condition that is common to eastern European peoples
called Dupuytren's Contracture. My mother had it. Her father had it. Several of
my cousins and siblings have it. It causes a buildup of tissue in the fascia
under the palms of the hand. In time it develops nodules that solidify and
grow, causing a gradual dragging of the fingers inward toward the palms. One of
my cousins has a pinky on his right hand that is permanently tucked into his
palm.
My mother had operations for hers. Today there are less
evasive treatments, like using what looks like a meat tenderizer to punch
microscopic holes into the nodules, causing them to relax and let your tendons,
muscles, and the bones of your fingers resume their normal operations.
So in comes Standing Liberty.
I noticed something a few years ago. Something interesting.
I had the Dupuytren’s on my right hand. Whenever I was just sitting still, not
doing anything that required dexterous acuity, I would massage the bumps in my
right palm. Oh. I should tell you. One of the folklore names for this condition
is Bible Bangers. According to folklore, if someone suffered from this
condition, the best thing to do was to break up the nodules, which is exactly
what they do today. At one point in the days of home remedy, they would take
the sufferers hand and open it up as far as they could. Then take the heaviest
book in the house, invariably a bible, and slam it onto the palm to bang, and
break up, the nodules.
A little harsh, don’t you think?
I did a similar thing eons ago. Kristin was still living
upstairs and I had just come home from the theatre. It was late and it was
snowing. I came into the house and heard Kristin in her room upstairs, so I
went up to say, Hi. My feet were wet. On my way down stairs, I slipped and fell
down the stairs, banging my right hand into the newel post at the bottom of the
stairwell. I broke my little finger.
As part of the therapy, I had to keep massaging my little
finger. Moving it. Out. In. Out. In. Straight out open as far as possible. In
clenched to the pads of my palm. I did that while I was standing, sitting,
driving, or doing whatever I may with a few free moments to devote to the
rehabilitation of my body. You see, the third bone in was fractured. Not a big
deal, but as it healed the finger might make more bone tissue grow around the healing
bone which could fuse the tendon that runs alongside the finger to it. That
tendon makes the finger move. Even though it was not damaged, it still had an
important part to play in the healing of the bone. Even though the finger and
bone were healing marvelously, I could still have consequences if I did not
make sure those bones and tendons knew what they were supposed to be doing. By
working them, I taught them how to work.
So I decided; if a big bang could break up a big bump, maybe
a lot of little bangs could do the same? So I just message and squeeze the
nodules whenever I have nothing better to do. And, after all, what exactly am I
doing right now, anyway? Well, talking to you which, so far, does not require
my fingers.
It worked. Well. It made things better, which is the better
part of working, after all. They pretty much went away on my right hand. My
left hand was so-so. But then they started forming again. Growing. Right now
the right hand has just a few and the left hand is a battle. I can feel the
tension in my fingers and tendons. I have nodules there that are maybe in
check, but they want to grow. They are familiar. I could give them names. It’s
like Stranger Things under my palm.
What’s this got to do with silver? Am I going to extol the
benefits of colloidal silver or something? I don’t know. What’s it worth to
you?
Juggling the coin helps exercise my left hand, that’s all.
First of all, it keeps my concentration on the Dupuytren’s Condition and keeps
bible banging the bumps. It also keeps my hand moving, stretching, extending,
finding the limit. Have you ever had a power tool or an old car that you hadn’t
used in a while? So you need it to drop that tree or run that generator or
bring that trash to the dump? And you find that it has started freezing up? The
cord doesn’t pull as easily as it should? The choke doesn’t want to turn on? It’s
full of bees or mice? The bearings on the wheels need grease? It would have
been much better for that machine to be used every day than to be tucked away
in a shed.
Your body’s the same way. Every piece, any corner, the
smallest slice will seize up and become invaded if not allowed to move every
day and every way.
Which brings me to my second point. My left hand. I’m right
handed and I am juggling with an ounce of metal in a way that I will never
practically do in my life. Well. Maybe I won’t, unless I aspire to be a
pickpocket, which I see is a lucrative occupation. But. I digress.
Like that two mile walk around campus, I am making my
fingers do something they don’t really want to do but which they are made to do.
Wiggle. And move. And pick things up. And drop things. And do it again in a
synchronized manner that produces results that are pleasing to the rest of the
body attached to them and, perhaps, to another one nearby as well, that might
like what my hands are doing. Keep that generator fierce. Keep that door hinge
oiled. Keep those fingers flexible. Keep those mice at bay.
And, thirdly. The other part of the equation. The speaker of
‘The Wreck of the Hesperus.’ I remember reading some place that brain
scientists had noticed something about how we learn. It seems, if true, that
one part of the brain is active when you are learning a new skill. Say,
learning to light a match backwards. Really? Think about it. When you light a
match from a matchbook, there are tasks you do with your right hand and there
are tasks you do with you left hand. You are equally comfortable with both of
them, regardless of what handedness you are. I pick up a book of matches in my
left hand. Open it. Tear one out with my right hand. Close the book with my
left. Strike the match with my right while balancing the book with my left.
Perfectly comfortable. Perfectly symmetric. Perfectly organized.
Perfectly
right. And I can also light a match from a book of matches one handed. Now that’s
a skill. Pick up a book of matches, open it, squeeze out a match without
detaching it, close the book, drag the head across the striker, light your
cigarette. Oddly, I can do this better with my left hand than with my right.
Now. Switch hands.
Do everything with the opposite hand. See? Both your left
and your right hands suddenly feel sinister. Backwards. Not right. Is it really
your hands? Of course not. Just like it’s not really walking around campus or
really starting a generator once in a while or really squeezing lumps in your
hands.
I remember in college, I was trying to teach myself to ride
a unicycle. Cool. Maybe I’ll pick up girls! Yes, I know how stupid that sounds.
I went into the basement of the dorm, near the washing machines and shelves for
student storage, and got up on my friend’s unicycle. I’d sit. I’d balance. I’d
let it roll a little. I’d hold onto the shelves. I’d let go. I’d fall.
We’ve all done it. Learning to ride a bike. Drive a car.
Dance. Kiss. It’s awkward. You try and fail. Try and fail. Try and humiliate
yourself terribly. And try again. Like the bike that feels like a monster under your feet. Like the car that has a will of its own. Like the girl who terrifies
you. And then. One day. You do it. You ride that bike. You drive that car. You
kiss… I rode my unicycle. Oh, I wasn’t perfect, of course. But it just stopped
being awkward. It felt right. I stopped learning it. It started learning me.
The brain that speaks and the body that listens.
So I take an ounce of silver and I twiddle it in my fingers.
My fingers respond by squeezing and stretching and moving tendons, nerves, and
bone. The silver pops up and down. Mostly down onto the couch next to me. Nerves
bring the amazement of non-indexible symbols to a huge, non-indexable lump of symbol
in my head. There it moves its own sequence of flesh, cells, and blood in this
dance called life and generates some equally non-indexible symbol coded into
calcium ions chattering on the edges of dendrites, axons, and nerves. And that
does something. And that moves. And that goes some place. And that tells the
hand full of Dupuytren’s to do something. And it does. And it is good. And
maybe. Just maybe, someone else thinks so, too. Maybe. It’s a dance.
Is that amazing or what?
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