Things to do with your hands when not writing #1

While sit­ting in the dark, move your fin­gers in front of the glar­ing light being pumped out from your laptop screen. If you con­cen­trate hard enough, you’ll soon be able to con­jure up some short dra­matic scenes per­formed in sil­hou­ette, with your digits por­tray­ing each of the char­ac­ters. As long as there are not more than eight char­ac­ters, of course. And if you’re con­cerned about your thumbs miss­ing out, maybe they can take on the roles of dwarves. Bald, mus­cu­lar dwarves.

For instance — yes, there is a for instance, because I do these things so you don’t have to — my right ring fin­ger just bru­tally attacked my left fore­finger dur­ing a re-enactment of a mar­tial arts scene from a Quentin Tarant­ino movie of which I have only ever seen a few clips on the inter­net. It was sur­pris­ingly graphic. The re-enactment, I mean. Not the film. Though the film might be. I haven’t seen it. Only clips. But I men­tioned that already.

Earlier this even­ing, I also per­formed my own back­lit fin­ger ver­sion of A Room With A View, the mem­or­able 1985 Mer­chant Ivory adapt­a­tion of the E.M. For­ster novel, using only my little fin­gers. It was dread­fully uncon­vin­cing, since neither pinky par­tic­u­larly resembled either Helena Bonham-Carter or Julian Sands. And after their first tender kiss, Julian Sands (right pinky) wanted to go fur­ther with Helena Bonham-Carter (left pinky) than she was pre­pared to allow due to her prim and proper deport­ment. Whereupon Julian became a sexu­ally raven­ous mon­ster con­sumed by unres­trained Edwar­d­ian lust, and the whole scene des­cen­ded into just another Quentin Tarant­ino mar­tial arts movie, with Helena (left pinky) deal­ing Julian (right pinky) a swift blow to the clavicle fol­lowed by a sharp kick in the testicles.

I am cur­rently immersed in the dif­fi­cult task of plan­ning the cast­ing for my fin­ger sil­hou­ette ver­sion of 12 Angry Men. It is prov­ing trau­matic. I may need to bor­row two fin­gers from somewhere.

This is my life. Pity me.

I am not sure this series of posts is one of my bet­ter ideas. I feel — because to ‘feel’ is all the rage, you know — that it will not make it to a second instalment.Though I will, of course, keep you informed. Won’t we, left pinky? Won’t we, right pinky?