REAL. LIFE.

I unfolded my heart today and what I found there was my hands.

Art by me.

I unfolded my heart this morning and what I found there was my hands.

As I become more enraptured with AI and my mind has spent more time in the vast busy space imagined the other side of my smartphone screen, I found myself this morning with a fresh appreciation of my hands and their interaction with the actual world of objects.

How they draw me into the garden to place my hands in the soil. Carefully handling seedlings as I move them from the tray where they started life to the pots where they will continue to grow. The damp compost, the gentle levering out of roots, holding the stems between my finger and thumb and tucking them into their new homes. The lifting of the watering can, the cold water splashing onto my hands, the carrying of the can back down the garden to the greenhouse, my breath in the air.

REAL. LIFE.

Stepping up to the canvas, my hands reaching for the bottles of colour and tipping them onto the palette. Squeezing the tubes with just amount of pressure that the carpet doesn’t take a hit. Taking the brushes and feeling the bristles for the most raggedy one and making the first marks. Smearing the the glossy texture with my fingertips, pulling the paint across the white spaces.

REAL. LIFE.

Making the tea before sitting here to write. Screwing the lid off the teabag pot, lifting the kettle, stirring the third-of-a-teaspoon of sugar, opening the recycling bin, carrying the cup to the table.

REAL. LIFE.

Stroking the hair of my sick daughter after a week of stomach pains, sickness and distress. Transmitting my felt sense of “it will all be OK” to her without a word.

REAL. LIFE.

Women have always used their hands to weave, paint, create, cook, grow and care. Beauty can be made at keyboards too; after all, here I am, writing to you now, sharing my art and my words.

But right now, rather than sculpting clay or sowing seeds, or writing words in my notebook for my own comfort, my hands are interacting with a screen and a keyboard and it’s different somehow.

The creating is happening in the virtual, imagined world, in the formlessness of the internet, on some unreal thing called Substack, to be read by people I can’t even imagine and most of whom I will never know.

I spend 50 75 90 95% of my life with my face pointing at a screen and my hands unconnected to any physical reality other than the keyboard.

My palms have a craving right now head over to the tap and simply be washed with hot water and soap.

Where my hands are, real life is.