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Avery DuBois
Gardener
Hon English 0 Period
January 26 2015
Thinking Out Loud
I dont think that there may have been a single person in history other than myself to tie
so many of their own human emotions with their hands. Excluding The Greats, such as Picasso,
Da Vinci, Michelangelo, and perhaps my eight month old brother, Rowan, I honestly dont
believe there could be anyone else who outweighs me. Fear, love, hatred, creativity, disgust,
happiness, befuddlement -- if I can feel it, I can probably express it using only one common
medium: my hands. From the heel of my palm to my fingertips, every centimeter is flowing with
the aura of memory, of feeling, of energy and, most importantly, my humanity.
As a small child, I was seldom exposed to touch or feeling. My parents were young, in
their early-mid twenties, awkward, already divorced after a mere eight or so months of
marriage. Dad was never home much, he was always out working on the road, and mom was
never particularly touchy-feely, either. She wasnt raised that way, so why should she put that
effort into me? By now, theyve done studies on such things as human interaction with babies,
and theyve come to realize that small kids not exposed to as much affection have a much higher
risk of serious things like depression, or not really associating or bonding, especially with the
mother. I basically turned into a reverse Amlie Poulain: instead of being excited by interaction
and touch, I drew away from it on instinct, stiff and awkward and uncertain. Yeah. Thanks,
mom.
As I grew and began to learn more and more about the world, I gradually became more
and more obsessed with my hands. I learned that with them, I could pluck flowers and grass in
the springtime and smell the churning earth on my fingertips. I could bake with my
grandmother every Christmas and lick the sweet batter off of my sticky palms. I could go to the

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ocean and let the water chill my veins as I kneeled down to see the horizon at eye level, barely
able to dream of what gargantuan creatures may be lurking just at its edge. I could smear thick,
wet paint all over my arms and call the dripping mess of colors art. I could create actual music
that people wanted to hear just by moving my fingers the right way with the right strings or on
the right keys.
Music.
Music is possibly the best thing Ive ever made with my hands. The sheer thrill of playing
a simple chord progression on a piano, of feeling the vibration of guitar strings under your
palm...its unimaginable. With my father working within the music business as an audio
engineer, I also grew to appreciate all the other small factors that made artists and songs into
the masterpieces that they are; all the dials that had to be turned, all of the slides that had to be
pushed, all of the buttons that had to be lit so delicately, to make sure that everything remained
perfect.
Music became my stronghold by the time I turned ten. When I was in sixth grade, all that
I wanted for Christmas was an acoustic guitar. I wrote it down on sticky notes and posted them
on my fathers door, brought it up at every meal, and strived to get just one simple, cheap guitar
before 2011 could begin. When I finally got one, stuffed way back behind perfume-soaked
dresses in my mothers closet on Christmas Eve, I played religiously, even when I knew the
whole house could hear. When I got a keyboard at age 12, my obsession only grew, until with the
blink of an eye I was playing piano that I could barely piece together in a five-by-five room at
summer camp late in the evening for friends, our clothes still smoked from campfires and our
skin still orange with lake slime, or my heart was in my ears as my fingers fumbled with the keys
I played for a girl I thought I loved on one of the only days it ever rained in California in 2012, or
my cheeks hurt from smiling as, for the first time in two years, I played guitar and sang for a boy
over a video call on Skype, and my fingers played the right chords without any apparent will.
Late at night, I still find myself plugging in an oversized pair of headphones to calm my mind

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with old Beatles albums to which dad and I would dance on the bed when I was small, singing
far too off-key about how I wanna hold your hand, and fall asleep to love songs, Ed Sheeran
crooning that people fall in love in mysterious ways, maybe just the touch of a hand.
On the other hand, over time, my fingers also tended to begin to fluctuate back and forth
in meaning, between being so full of light and music and creativity and being the weapons I used
in order to carry out an ever slowly growing black feeling.
At age thirteen, I began to scratch.
And scratching could come from anything -- if I got a question wrong in school, if I said
hello to someone and they said nothing in return, if mom asked me about why I was so quiet
recently, if I couldnt build up the courage to speak up, if dad questioned me about my isolation
habits. Everything was a trigger, 24/7, no matter where I was. So I would take my nails to the
back of my hand, to the pale blue lines of veins across my wrists, and I would drag them hard
enough that not but two minutes later, the skin would be red and raw. There are about 34
muscles in one hand alone, and Ive scraped away at all of them.
In Irish mythology, there is a well-known adventurer by the name of Fionn mac
Cumhaill, and somewhere along his escapades, he falls in love with a princess, Grinne, who has
already married a man by the name of Diarmuid Ua Duibhne. Later in life, much after this
marriage, Diarmuid and Fionn go out on a hunt, in which Diarmuid is fatally wounded. Fionn,
having acquired magical healing hands along his journeys, has two choices: to gather water from
a stream in his hands and let Diarmuid drink it and live, or to let him die. Fionn goes to the
stream contemplatively as Diarmuid lays dying and lets the water run through his fingers several
times before finally cupping his hands and bringing the water back to where Diarmuid lay
gasping for breath, but it is too late. Diarmuid is gone.
Id like to believe that my hands are a good parallel for this fable: they have the potential
to do so many great things, to be such powerful healers, but with the habit that I picked up a
couple years ago, with my scratching, that power is either forgotten or left abandoned.

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Sometimes, the scratching gets incredibly bad.
I was at a choir concert, a couple minutes before we were supposed to go onstage, and
my mother had just called me to give me a lecture on how she thought that the concert was at a
different venue, and this was all my fault, and I had apologies to make, and god, why was I
getting upset, she doesnt deserve any of my attitude, shell be there as soon as she can but she is
going to be late and it is all going to be my fault.
I took a deep breath. I hung up. I sat down.
And I put my fingers on my right hand to the back of my left, already starting to pick at
the scar that had formed there from so many similar sessions beforehand.
And then my right wrist was grabbed, and my arm was being pulled away, and my
fingers were being intertwined with that of Jordan Ilogs, fellow baritone, completely oblivious
to the pain he had just saved me.
Its okay. Youre okay.
Throughout all time, Im sure that there have been many men and women who have
considered their hands to be sacred in all that they do, be it through art, through creation,
through music or pure expression or just for the sheer joy it gives them to touch another or to
hold someone in their arms. However, almost none have cared more for their hands than I. My
hands can create, my hands can destroy, my hands can lift my spirits and punch them into the
ground beneath me. My hands are purely an expression of who I am, of all my lights and darks,
and no one, in my opinion, will ever be able to overpower that.