Self Portrait Tuesday: All Of Me # 1
Posted on | February 8, 2006 | 14 Comments
My nails are almost always dirty
and I have square hands.
Usually my cuticles are stained with paint,
my nails trimmed irreverently
so that they’re short, not shaped.
My knuckles boney,
veins bulge.
I used to be embarrassed by my hands,
boyish and un-ladylike.
But gradually
I’ve grown to love all that they are.
My father’s hands—a size smaller.
Able hands, strong hands.
I climb crags, wield a hammer, kneed bread, and paint
all with my hands.
I make love, bathe my son, pet the cat, and pull weeds
all with my hands.
They don’t dress up well.
They are not made
for “hey Vito is my car red-y?” red.
But they are capable of a thousand finely tuned maneuvers.
In the kinesthetic memory of my fingers
the expanse of my keyboard is stored.
I can type almost as fast as I think.
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14 Responses to “Self Portrait Tuesday: All Of Me # 1”
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I am Christina Rosalie
Hello. I'm so happy you've stopped by!
I am a multimedia storyteller, digital strategist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, MFA graduate student, and mama of boys. My first book,
will be published by SKIRT! Books in September, 2012.
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February 8th, 2006 @ 2:21 am
You scare me, just a little. I just posted my SPT and it’s about my freaking hands. Of course, your photo is way better. Probably bc you weren’t trying to take it in low light at night with a baby sleeping right over there, but that’s beside the point. I love what you wrote and feel so much of it in my heart. Thank you so much for sharing this bit about you. Go read me so we can be all stupid and silly about our twin posts!
February 8th, 2006 @ 7:15 am
i love this…
i especially love the last part
about the “thousand finely tuned maneuvers”
words of poetry…
February 8th, 2006 @ 9:35 am
I just wrote about my hands this week, too.
February 8th, 2006 @ 10:31 am
Love the OPI names for nail polish but I can’t grow mine long enough to use it. I have sharecropper hands just like the women in my family who came before me. High five!
February 8th, 2006 @ 12:33 pm
It is true that hands speak for the person…and I would take strong, capable hands any time! After all, they’re tools! Excellent photo, Christina. BTW – congrats for booking some showings for your art, and especially for acknowledging yourself as an artist:>
February 8th, 2006 @ 2:10 pm
I have a photo of my hands for SPT but chose to save it for next week. I like your photo a lot.
February 8th, 2006 @ 3:04 pm
My hands are rough, cut and scratched all over. Different parts ache from different injuries; hammer pounds and plier pinches, rock scrapes and briar stings, so that when I pick up a pen to write these morning pages or hold a cellular phone for any time, my fingers tingle with the crawling sleep of some neuralgia and things I touch scratch audibly as they pass over my brittle surface. The finest dirt has settled into the deepening lines in my fingers, filling the now visible prints with iron dark dust. I never realized my fingerprints extended so far, almost to my palms.
It is late afternoon as I write this and the air smells different now, warm and lush, different from this cold fern-green morning at 5:00AM and different again from last night when I returned from Manhattan, when it teased of a thunder crack – ionized and clear, as if blown through eons of angel hair, filtering out all but the hint of pure creation.
February 8th, 2006 @ 8:32 pm
the hands of an artist, a woman, a wife, a mother, a warrior…beautiful!
February 9th, 2006 @ 2:15 am
this photo is beautiful. and our words paint such strong images. love this.
February 9th, 2006 @ 7:15 am
You also scare me!
My SPT it’s about my freaking hands!
February 9th, 2006 @ 7:17 pm
An artists hands, like thier palette, and thier studio, are never clean.
February 10th, 2006 @ 10:22 am
Your hands look much like my sweetie’s hands, and I think her hands are one of the sexiest parts of her. She mostly doesn’t agree, because she says they are too manly. But to me they are strong, capable, show her trade, but are also gentle and sentitive and protecting. It is very cool to read how you have grown to love these things about your own hands.
I’m new to your blog, having recently followed a like from Ali Edward’s blog. I love the way you write.
February 11th, 2006 @ 1:46 am
gorgeous, christina. we just might be hand twins…
February 13th, 2006 @ 9:48 am
Beautiful picture, beautiful hands!