Ambidexterity
I go both ways, she says.
The difference between curbing your hunger and curbing your thirst.
Training at the drum set where I have lost the athleticism of martial rudiments learned as a high school drum corps nut, my left hand pronounces my handicap at drumming altogether one summer day. My grip strength only meets me where my weakest finger snaps back the stick. I press further into my inability to naturally operate every finger of this left hand in the way my right hand flows freely, an arrogant dominant hand. My breath contracts, my heart accelerates in a vacuum, a shrinking hamster wheel. Why can’t I control my left hand the way I control my right? Recognize the feeling without trying to change it, I tell myself. The left hand finally does what it wants. I am now the proud drummer of two hands.
Wish you were ear.
The only reason anyone is surprised by what we do, and often do well, is because “anyone” has been looking in the wrong direction this whole time. Anyone could not find what they did not seek. It had to be offered, like humans inviting in vampires.
—
I tore through Keith McNally’s memoir I Regret Almost Everything. It frames regret so beautifully, taking the embarrassment away from admission of guilt, but not boasting of his failure like a petulant modernist either. He regrets divorces, he regrets business deals, he regrets calling out James Corden on Instagram. But not to apologize to those he hurt, necessarily. This regret is less apologetic and more matter-of-fact. As if the way it happened was always going to be the problem and not the decision to go through with these acts. We must be more decisive, and then the way it comes together will become a matter of fact. In other words, he’s better suited for Reddit.
Something about this method of regret feels very bisexual, and not just because he begins his autobiography with a gay romance.
Assessing regret with the intellectualism of a buddhist is bisexual in the same way Pringles are the Earl Grey tea of potato chips. Excuse me. I’m told Pringles can’t technically be qualified as “chips” because they’re made of processed and extruded potatoes, like bologne is not pork. But you could say Mortadella is the Earl Grey tea of ham, the left hand is the tea drinker of caffeine purists, and Asian buddhists are the bisexuals of religion but White buddhists are “questioning.”
Let your recessive hand accept its receptive nature. Hang a curtain with your fingertips and reach for the ceiling on your way there. Our eyes adjust to light designed for romance more quickly than the light designed for productivity, because we want to be told what to look for without seeking. It has to be offered. My hand lays prone, waiting to be discovered. This is the invitation.
