sprain raze before i knew francois-marie banier was convicted of abus de faiblesse after bleeding liliane bettencourt for hundreds of millions of euros and getting her to give him her picasso, matisse, and delaunay paintings as "gifts", i knew his books were bastards. one of them sprained my left index finger when i made the mistake of lifting it from the bottom of a bookshelf with one hand, and for a week i wondered if the finger was broken. every fist i made was a fight i didn't sign up for. i had to do crunches with my fingers splayed. i looked like a strange bird who'd forgotten how to fly. you ball up your fists when you're doing a thing like that. it gives you something to hold onto. you harness what's already yours and breathe it in deeper than you thought your lungs could take it, and you push past whatever's in your way. when you can't do that, you're left with the cold mechanics of the act of strengthening muscles you'll never see. you don't realize how many times you need to bend one finger in the course of a day until every movement makes you want to swear at your own body. holding a bottle of water or a plate becomes something you have to think about. six days of that and i was ready to risk the index finger that still worked the way it was supposed to by punching a french photographer i didn't know a thing about right in his stupid mouth. but then i bent that finger on the seventh day and it was fine. and the pictures in his book were nice enough to look at once i could turn the pages without wincing. he writes on top of some of his photographs. it's an interesting way of talking to yourself. expect he does a lot of that now. 211111 what's it to you? who go blather from