hands Rainer Would you give up your hands to fly? That is what the birds have done. (The One Thousand Questions) 990409 ... ricmariem chief servant of the body 991031 ... FooLmOOn hands, that tell your life, that speak ur soul, the hands that have touched, rubbed, caressed, the hands that have hurt, bled, burnt ...the hands that no one seems to see, i see urs, they are perfect. 991102 ... trakie i draw them over and over in my sketchbook. i can't get enough of them. i will keep on until i get a really good one, even though that will take forever. hands are so expressive, it is almost impossible to capture the essense, except in a memory. 991206 ... valis always wide open for the catch, that's my philosophy 000108 ... Brad My livelihood. I treasure these above all material possessions and many of my other body parts. The link between my brain and those of other people. My link between the creative mind world and the physical world. Pretty spectacular things, when you think about it. 000327 ... MollyGoLightly Hands are hyperimporant to me. Other people's hands. I stare at other people's hands when I talk to them. I have never dated anyone who had ugly hands. 000328 ... Brad Molly... in all honesty... are the nails on my right hand all that bad? Your opinion as a hand-conscious friend is greatly appreciated. Not like i'll clip 'em... guitar is more important than groovy hands :) 000328 ... MollyGoLightly the nails aren't scary...they're kind of neat, actually...so no need to worry about aesthetic sacrifices you have to make for your gee-tar 000506 ... erin There was a two-year period when my grandmother lived with my family. She stayed in a room with my sister and me, and she slept in our room on a mattress. She pinned her brown dyed hair around pink curlers every night, and wore a dressing gown that hid whatever shape her body had. She would sing to us in Spanish every night, songs about hands. “What beautiful hands I have that God gave me. They are from my mother. They come from my father. What beautiful hands I have.” My grandmother would work lotion into her hands every night. Still when she rubs her lipstick off my forehead I smell Vaseline Intensive Care. Her hands are youthful and fleshy, with taut skin on the palms, and few wrinkles on the back. They move like music when she speaks Spanish, touching and playing with her thoughts in the air, sometimes cutting sharply to punctuate. Her hands are the same olive color as mine, but hers are so much more delicate and feminine. They are like lilies, if lilies could dance. The four kids in my family have always called our Cuban grandmother Baba. The name makes my friends who have no Hispanic background chuckle, but nicknames are second nature in my family, so Baba is Baba to me, and her real name, Elena, sounds impersonal. The sound “Baba” seems to fit perfectly who she is in my mind. She is small and succinct, compact and solid. Her frame is bent with osteoporosis, and I am a full head and shoulders taller than she is. She is stubborn. She once traveled across the country with my family in a motor home. Six people crammed into a shoebox on wheels, and rode all the way to Arizona. When we got there, Baba refused to even step out the door. After the four-day trek, she decided that the Grand Canyon was some sort of black hole, waiting to suck her in. “I can see it through the window,” she said. My parents vowed never to take her on a vacation again. Baba is my grandmother, though, and although she can be set in her ways of thinking, she is firmly dedicated to her grandchildren. Nothing pleases her more than to see us “healthy,” which is “fat” translated from Baba-speak. She always has a stock of chocolate ice cream, Coke, and Chessmen cookies in her fridge for us to munch on. Whenever I see her she pinches my side and chides me for being so “skeeny.” Things weren’t always this way. I wasn’t always so skinny. According to family lore, I was a robust, tan little baby who popped into the world at a whopping 10 pounds. Baba says that holding me was like carrying around a bowling ball. She loves to recall the time that she and I were at the pool, and she was teaching me how to swim. I suppose I was around two or three, and still fatter than a Butterball turkey. There was a Hispanic couple nearby who didn’t realize my grandmother could speak Spanish. While I lolled and rolled in the water, they gaped at me and broke into laughter. “Mira, mira….parece como albondigita!” Look, look...she’s like a little meatball. Baba still calls me albondiga when she’s especially happy with me. No one else in my family can call me that without seriously denting my pride. I don’t know how Baba gets away with it, but it’s probably because she’s so tiny. It’s easy to assume that Baba is as honest as I’d like her to be. Just the same, I know there are things she doesn’t tell us about our family’s history. She gets away with this because she is small, and she is Baba without fault. I was talking to my mom about my father’s side of the family a few days ago. The phone call topped two hours, simply because there was so much to say. My Baba has lived through a lot, but pain only shows in her face when she remembers Jose, or Abuelo. Jose, her son, was murdered when he was 21. Her ex-husband, my Abuelo, left her and their two sons just a year and a half before Jose died. It’s odd, but for a long time, I never thought Baba could be sad. She never seemed to feel pain. One day we were working at the local Catholic food pantry, like we did every Friday that summer. The afternoon was particularly hot, and only a few people walked up to our window every hour. I was thirteen, and by then my baby fat was gone. Baba and I sat that day by the food counter, and she filled the humid silence with the sadder stories of our family’s past. She told me about Jose, and the time of sadness and loss after he was gone. My mother has since told me that Baba barely lived for months after he died. Baba told me in Spanish that she felt like nothing. I imagine Baba in a state where she was always ready for bed, in an old nightgown that hid her body, and her hair wrapped tightly around rollers. I imagine Baba never leaving a darkness of not caring, and not venturing past her backyard for days. While Baba told me Jose’s story, she held the cross she always wears. Her hands clutched it and were still. She looked through me with a blank face. She said that when Jose died, A rose bush he had planted earlier in the year bloomed during the middle of winter. When she saw the red roses they reminded her of Jose while he was bringing joy to people. Baba knows the blooming rose bush was a miracle. My mother and I were talking again today about my father’s family, because recently a blood test showed high protein levels in Baba’s blood. The condition is mild, but she has do undergo chemotherapy or it could worsen. My mom went to Baba’s preliminary appointment with her. She described the nurses turning my grandmother’s arms every which way to be able to find usable veins, because Baba’s tend to be weak from lack of exercise. My mother said that even while the nurses were just talking about the procedures, Baba’s hands clutched her cross to keep them from shaking. It’s odd, but I never thought Baba felt fear. Since her the veins in her arms won’t work, they’ll have to use veins in her hands. I imagine Baba speaking to me in Spanish with her hands still, because they are bruised purple and painful. I am afraid for Baba, even though I know that the chemotherapy isn’t severe. I feel like she can’t leave while there are silences left for her to break, but I also understand that Baba isn’t immortal at age 72. Since birth Baba has been my sense of culture and history, especially when she and I talk in Spanish and she tells me stories. I know she might not be here by then, but I want her to sing Spanish songs to her great grandchildren, and tell them they are too skinny. If she is already with Jose when my children are born, I’ll try my best to be what Baba was to me. I’ll cook her style of flan and picadillo. If they’re a little pudgy, I’ll call them albondiga. I’ll sing Spanish songs to them as they fall asleep, and maybe I’ll add a verse about Baba and how her hands could talk. --i'm sorry about the length...feedback and criticism is completely welcome if you have it. 000720 ... albondigita ick....a lot of the paragraphs got lost in the pasting...sorry if it's harder to read in one big block.... 000720 ... wolfman hands are the most important part of the body.. there Gods gifts.. used to express yourself when youve run out of words. imagine your only love and your hands... and how you can make her feel with them... now imagine being denied that gift of god. 000912 ... d .... of glory 000912 ... nachtvogel die hand die heilt die hand die verletzt 000912 ... marissssssaaaaa something i remember from the beginning... we would sit at lunch, still afraid to touch eachother, our hands so close, but not touching, just so close that i could feel the heat of them mixing together. it is an amazing feeling. 001113 ... rache Hands. Always my friend Sarah. I miss her now. But reflected in my two best friends are Her mannierisms, Her movements, Her Hands. It's odd. She was the best friend I ever had, or so I thought. Then she left, and we drifted far far apart. I had no friends for a long time. I was too shy to make new ones, too fucked up inside to stride out alone. Then I met Sally. We clicked. It was great. We were immediatly best mates, unsperable. As we spent more time together, I realised she was very like Sarah in many ways. She often spoke with the same tone of voice, the same mannerisms. Especially with her hands. Sometimes when she talked, or when we simply sat in comftable silence(i love comftable silences!!Hands up those who agree!) she would sit with her hands in her lap, twisting them in interesting patterns and as they moved, there would be a momment of recognision. A little like Deja Vu. That was in year nine. In year ten, I met Caroline. Another click. Again, we became fast friends. We spent a lot of time together, sharing secrets, talking for hours on the phone, arguing over Truth, Love and the usual teenage angst. I was still great friends with Sally to, and the best times for me would be when we were a three together. A lot of the time, caroline was more friendly with Charlotte, an old friend of mine. But suprisingly for this green-eyed monster, I was never jealous. I had Sally. But now Caroline and I, and Sally and I too, are very close, and every now and again, I look at their hands, and I see, within in them and their movements, a part of Sarah. 001204 ... Barrett Idle hands... end up masturbating. 001204 ... stupidpunkgirl your hands are so perfect i want to memorize every detail line, and shape i want to run my fingers over the palm of your hand i can't though, since you are gone 001219 ... velvetsea i miss his hands the most. and I doubt he misses mine. 010126 ... vampers i shall never forget the comfort i have felt today from you as your hands brush over my hair, my face, myself i need it now more than ever 010402 ... alegra my hands,inside your hands,inside your pockets. 010411 ... velvet spasm no words over this part 010419 ... Prinz_Zoisit I've a fetish for hands, especially their fingers and nails. And I've got a friend, who has so beautiful fingers. I always look at them at school. I don't know if he knows, that I've got a fetish for his fingers, but sometimes when I talk to him, I look at his fingers... He says nothing, maybe, he knows, maybe not. But sometimes, I think that I would do everything for him, sexually, SM, etc... he's like a God for me, but I don't show him... I'm so happy that "nobody" on this world has a fetish like me on his fingers. I would be sooooooo jealous, if somebody knows his hidden beauty... I think, I'll tell him in the future. I would pay everything for making a photo of his fingers, so I could look at