---
title: Hands
genre: prose

id: hands
toc: "Hands"

project:
    title: "Buildings out of air: Paul in the Woods"
    class: paul
    order: 10
    next:
    - title: Toilet
      link: toilet
    - title: Hardware
      link: hardware
    prev:
    - title: Shed
      link: shed
    - title: Fire
      link: fire
...

He looked down at his hands idly while he was typing.
They were [dry and cracked in places][].
He thought he might start bleeding so he went inside for some lotion.

"Do we have any lotion" he asked his mother.
"In the medicine cabinet" she said without looking up from the TV.
He walked into the [bathroom][] and looked at himself in the mirror.
"I look strange" he said to himself "I look like a teenager."
He stared into his [right eye, then his left][].
He saw nothing but [his own reflection fish-eyed][] in his pupils.
He opened the medicine cabinet.

Back in his Writing Shack, he started to type.

> What is it about hands that gives
> them such power?  It is that their
> power is hidden in the arm.  Push
> on the inside of the wrist--the
> hand closes.  Reach under the skin
> and pull on the outside tendons--
> the hand opens again.  Hands are
> only [machines][] for grasping,
> controlled by the arm, not the
> mind.

[dry and cracked in places]: weplayedthosegamestoo.html
[bathroom]: boar.html
[right eye, then his left]: man.html
[his own reflection fish-eyed]: deathstrumpet.html
[machines]: ex-machina.html