The off-hand

One of the best parts about teaching is that I’m in an environment constantly infused with new people and new ideas as students come up with their own particular projects. Sometimes, those are invitations for collaboration, which is how I found myself writing a pair of sonnets about my favorite cryptid (the Loch Ness Monster and all related plesiosaurs-or-otherwise, such as Champ of Lake Champlain and the Lake Erie Monster, natch) for a handmade chapbook project. I’m really happy with the poems I wrote, and those came together two months ago. This past week, though, it was time to do the last part of it: each of us contributors would draw the monster we’d written about in each of the dozen copies of the chapbook that were being assembled. With our non-dominant hands.

That part of the instructions was in the original invitation e-mail, but somehow, I’d forgotten that detail until the poll came around for when we’d get together and draw. I whined. Audibly and inelegantly.

I shouldn’t have done. The original instructions were there; it’s on me for blanking on that part. Or rather, probably repressing it, hoping (somehow) I could get it to not apply to me.

The scheduling portion was a difficulty I couldn’t resolve, which was just as well, since the last thing I wanted to do was do a bunch of drawings that could not, by definition, be my best in front of other people. But it’s the latter part that was the real problem: I didn’t want to do something quick, chaotic, silly. (The absolute point of it was to lean into the chaos of using the non-dominant hand, and then also attempting to color the images in, with colored pencil. The intent was to let it be fun and free and improvisational, and I love that idea, so much—for other people.)

But doing it is something I said I would do, and the project would look out of kilter if exactly one person stamped their foot and said no, I am allergic to this kind of fun, so I did it. So I found 75 minutes (and a piece of scrap paper to at least make a test-shape) and borrowed the set of colored pencils everyone else was using, and did the thing.

(You know what’s coming next.)

Doing it was pretty all right. I won’t share any of the project before its proper debut, but maybe at a later date you’ll see my Nessie rendition here. When I was a kid, I doodled sea monsters—this particular silhouette of Nessie, especially—with my right hand, so I had a shape in mind. The irregularities were not as many as I thought there would be, likely because I chose something with more sweeps and curves than tight, precise angles, though left-handed coloring and shading chucked me out of my outlines in a way that infuriated the ten-year-old that still apparently resides inside of me, with very strong feelings about how coloring should be done. The more shocking in thing in all of it was that my left hand showed more dexterity in the process than I thought it would. I am in no way functionally ambidextrous; left-handed, I cannot even wield a spoon confidently in a bowl of cereal without wearing a fair bit of milk. But maybe because of all of the arts and crafts, which at least require the participation of ma main gauche, my left hand could do something, as long as I didn’t expect it to do it in exactly the same way as my right.

I simply had to manage my expectations. I’ll keep working on that.

What I’m making:

It’s the end of April. Next time I write to you, it will be in the middle of finals week. A cup of tea is mostly what I’m making just now, and I get to show you my new mug, which I did not make.

My favorite piece of opinionated tea-writing: George Orwell’s “A Nice Cup of Tea.” I disagree with most of what Orwell says, particularly the level of adamancy that he deploys, but I also love the clarity and directness of Orwell, and while he surely loves a more astringent brew than I prefer, I have always found the particular astringency of his writing magnetic. My favorite tea, however, is Assam, and I prefer milk with it, not cream or half-and-half, so we share that, if very little else.

What I’m reading: I’ll be honest: until final grades are done, all of my serious reading is off the table. So it’s more re-reads of the bedtime variety, and now I’m on to The Name of the Wind by Patrick Rothfuss.

What I’m writing: Grindingly, two or three hundred words at a time, I’m nearing the end of a brand new short story. As with all of my short work, I feel wildly in love with it in the moment, as I’m writing, then am convinced it’s absolute rubbish once the clear light of day lands. But I’m excited to have something new to share with the workshop group for the first time in ages.

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