"To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour."
- William Blake, Auguries of Innocence, 1863
- John Evelyn in a letter to Sir Thomas Browne, 1657
"The hand is the cutting edge of the mind."
- Jacob Bronowski
"The mind has exactly the same power as the hands: not merely to grasp the world, but to change it."
- Colin Wilson
"By rubbing up against the world, I define myself to myself."
- Deane Juhan
"The upper limb is the lightning rod to the soul."
- Robert Markison
“We leave traces of ourselves wherever we go, on whatever we touch.”
- Lewis Thomas
We hold these truths to be sacred ...
"Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on."
"A callused palm and dirty fingernails precede a Green Thumb.
When the hoe handle is loose, you will have misplaced the steel wedges.
Not to move either hand, nor clap, nor think too much are all good for zen gardening.
As you move your hands so you move your mind.
Why is it that you can find four gloves for the left hand, and none for the right?
As with most arts, gardening is an expression of our hands.
Your hand hoe will always find its way to the bottom of the weeding barrel.
Civilization is rooted in the hands of the gardeners.
You can sometimes get a handle on life, but it often breaks.
The eyes of a gardener are usually bigger than her hands.
Gardening helps us to carefully attend to the close at hand.
Chop the weeds and hose the water ... the sounds of two hands clapping - with delight.
Your rich, famous, and handsome; and, your garden doesn't care.
The difference between a pile of rocks and a rock garden - the eyes and hands of the gardener.
Getting your hands dirty," applies to more than gardening.
Better to lend a helping hand than just to point a finger.
Put your hands on the earth and feel the sorrows of the world.
Hold your hoe in your hand, sharpen it, and fully sense its meaning.
I see my hand more often than my face, and there is a lesson here to grasp somehow.
Unclench your fist to give a hand."
- Michael P. Garofalo, Pulling Onions
Touching Up An Altar
Things to touch, small art objects to hold,
Matches to light, incense to light
Bowls and bells to ring, pictures to clean
Wand sticks to point and orchestrate the scene.
Red chairs to move, floors to sweep,
Books to Read, to Study, for decades to keep.
Pictures as reminders of what insights we grasp
Pictures as reminders of what we think we know
about pagan ways past.
Tables to move and dust,
Symbols, Altars and Signs in the Shadows sans the Sun
A Book of Rituals to hold and read from,
Candles to light, daggers to handle,
Voyager Tarot cards to shuffle,
Feathers to finger, rocks to pick up
Thoughts ungraspable piling up
Tibetan Prayer beads thumbing one past and next up,
So I raise my hands and say
“Toys to play with,
Magikcal tools to play with;
With only memories to keep.”
Kind of like holding infinity
in the palm of your hand:
using a microscope or telescope,
reading a science book;
with two hands making an Apache Door string figure display,
the transfiguration of the commonplace loop of string
to help tell stories.
- Touching Up An Altar, by Michael P. Garofalo, 10/15/2020
Strings on Your Fingers, by Mike Garofalo, 1977-
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