Sunday, April 11, 2010

A Bird in Hand


The older I get, the more I crave the tactile, the real, the palpable. So much of my formal education was spent in the abstract appreciation of the aesthetic and the theoretical, but now I relish the beauty of practical things. For my morning exercise, I've been climbing stairs while listening to the Modern Scholar lecture series from Recorded Books, and it has surprised me how much more I have preferred the lectures on human anatomy over music. Perhaps it is my own simple-mindedness, but the context of basic survival makes the questions of form and function seem more significant, and the solutions more elegant. Oftentimes, the most useful is also the most beautiful.

Take the Alpine Butterfly, pictured above. In preparation for a rock climbing class I've been learning some basic climber's knots, and I don't think I have ever seen such a perfect marriage of simplicity and function as the Alpine Butterfly. If you need to hang something from the middle of your rope, you could not in a hundred years invent a thing more symmetrical, practical, or easier to remember than this very basic knot, made by passing a line a few times across the palm of your hand. I have read many poems in my time, but none more elegant than that.
[Above: Another wonderfully symmetrical knot--the Double Fisherman's Bend, an ingenious means of joining two rope ends via interlocking hitches.]


K. has also enjoyed learning with her hands, taking a weekly sign language class from the wife of a deaf man in our congregation. I have always been a little envious of the expressiveness that sign language affords its speakers, which is probably why some cultures (I'm looking at you, Italians) love speaking with their hands. [Above: K. makes the sign for "bread." Below: the sign for "magic."]

Say "Cheese!"

6 comments:

Melissa said...

I think that I shall never see,
A poem as lovely as a . . . knot?

I think you can hang more on a well-wrought, truthful bit of verse than on any hank of twine, no matter how artful and practical...

Stephen Tanner said...

Hooray! Now I know how to say "MAGIC BREAD!"

Becca B said...

I have been delighted at how much easier it is for my kids (and me) to learn and remember things when accompanied with signs. I didn't know the one for magic. Need to look that up.

Diagnose Rachel said...

we were just talking about being life long learners, and how Grant and I hit a wall. You guys were cool before, but to keep learning is celestial!

Unknown said...

In CA we had a deaf neighbor, a member of the ward. She had been lip reading all her life and finally decided she (and her 7 children and spouse...) needed to learn to sign, others were invited to join the class. One day I knew I was spending too much time with her (and on learning the new subject) when Dad came home from work and I accused him of not listening to me! "I can hear you just fine," he said. "But you're not LOOKING at me!" was my reply...and then realized what was going on!! A later high point was using some of those skills (mostly forgotten now) to give a deaf girl a half year of piano lessons--she ended up loving to play and sing, but her mother said the two did not go together well...

Unknown said...
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