Koan-Tum Leap

“So, what is the sound of a single hand clapping?”

I listened to the endless rain which now made the nearby creek full and running. I know about the sound drops of rain, drops of tears, drops of blood make. All three smell of that sweetness that lasts for a moment upon warm cheeks. It is sound and smell, the primordial triggers which make us run or stay.

A single hand and bitten nails. I have seen hands in well used gloves wave hello, and wave goodbye in train stations. Hands that find their way under the arm of a woman in a nursing home to help her out of bed.  Hands that wipe her eyes even when she could not see anymore. In streets of concrete and darkness, I have seen single hands held out asking for compassion. But also hands in long satin gloves asking for a kiss.  Single hands searching for other single hands.

What is the sound of a single hand clapping? Is it the sound of the search or the search for that melody ending in a celebration? I have seen newborn hands grabbing the blue, yellow or pink blanket. Tiny hands just learning how they will become part of their own bodies and of someone else’s body one day. I have also seen hands grabbing the blanket for the last time. Tortured, well lived hands. Often more vein than hands, more skin than flesh. Hands that do not want to clap anymore, for their melody will soon be unheard.

I have never been under the Bo tree, nor unselfish enough to forget my own hands. But under pine, ash and palm trees I have seen hands touch my face, touch my thoughts. Happy hands, lovers’ hands, friends’ hands, and hands of people I never met again. I saw careful hands pick night blooming Jasmine and rubbing my eyes with that perfume that is of the Mediterranean and of rocky shores. I have seen hands pricked by the rose stem they were about to place on a pine coffin.

And when people fell because other people wanted them to fall, I saw hands kept in pockets. Or behind the backs of those who looked away. These were hands smelling of tobacco, of gunpowder, of unwashed acts. Hands that once held a pencil and wrote pleasant letters on blue paper. Hands that now had ivory-yellow nails and did not want to write letters anymore.  When people fell, hands were used to keep them down, not to raise them up again.

“So, what is the sound of a single hand clapping?”  I have not heard it yet, but I know how it sounds. It is the sound of independence from another hand.  It is the sound of dissociation and content.  It is exactly the sound a hand would make if it could clap by itself. It is the sound of one person loving. For the pure comfort of loving.

June 13, 2013

©Vahé Kazandjian, 2013