We are so
sure of ourselves: we know everything like the back of our hands.
But turning one hand over and then the other, we realize
we know little about either. They are the anonymous covers for
the palms which contain everything of interest, including a map
of the world we will travel for the rest of our lives, with paths,
trails and highways leading in directions we can never be sure
of—like those chiseled markings that stretch for miles
in the Peruvian desert and, when viewed from airplanes high above,
resemble gigantic animals we half-remember from dreams or drunken
parties that inevitably end with each of us alone gazing up into
the night. The four ridges that bulge on the back of each hand
lead to five peninsulas separated by canyons that drop away into
empty air as full of sudden squalls and blizzards as the mountainous
landscapes of Tibet. So it is that when we finally study the
back of our hands we shiver, and not from the cold, but from
the recognition that whatever we thought we knew we didn’t
know at all.
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