As you can probably already tell…..I love hands……not all hands mind you…..I love hands that can ’ do ‘.

The limp and the useless I can do without…..they are usually attached to the passionless and hang lifeless and flabby at the sides of their owners.

Hands I think can tell you so much about a person. If the eyes are the windows of the soul then the hands probably cut the wood , tied the sash cord and added some great molding  just to finish off the job nicely…..oh and anyone got any putty for the glass?

Edith Sitwell( whose wonderful white hands would not be out of place a top a Plantagenet  tomb and  appear on a previous entry) said that her hands…..were her face. Given that she had been the victim of parents who publicly showed dismay over her wonderfully odd appearance I can fully understand that she would see their skeletal beauty as some divine payback!

I personally  feel that most people I meet who display wonder and glee at everything  life offers them, get the the good hands!

I am including in this entry my friend Chris’s hands. They are always brown as a berry, never manicured in any way and often as not are either gripping the handle bars of his bike, a surfboard or as of late, making…… Things! Simple, poetic and amazing things from scraps, found or bartered: the spines from a long dead sea urchin are married with a splint of wood to create an elaborate comb suitable only for a mermaid.

Hands are incredible things, capable of feeling the difference between a single strand of hair and a piece of thread. They can build a cathedral or knock down a wall.

Usually if I really like someone, I love their hands also.

Which brings me oddly I suppose to Wabi Sabi? 

Not to get too philosophical on all of you but Wabi Sabi is a Japanese principal of aesthetics that basically boils down to the notion that there is  something beautiful in the worn, the not so perfect  and the irregular.

Or more poetically it nurtures all that is authentic by acknowledging three simple realities: nothing lasts, nothing is finished, and nothing is perfect. Amen to that!

I like to think that this also applies to all of us over the age of a chrysalis and I for one will be sticking to this principal as my wrinkles lengthen and my eyesight shortens.

When I started to think about what FLEA would be about it made complete sense to me that it would be all about the pictures. It is after all what I do. I collect and find, rent and purchase props for photo shoots here in NYC. But as I began to wander the booths with a fresh eye I realized that there would have to be a much needed dialogue  to truly capture the nature of this Aladdin’s cave and so each entry has become a little rambling tale of mine own! I was actually surprised that that is what they were! Little stories, anecdotes of everyday things and objects that have been cherished, washed and worn by hand after hand or customized and made anew.

I could in all seriousness make a book simply of images that evoke all that I have written above. But where’s the fun in that? I like pretty, I do pretty…but I like my pretty with some content.

So this week is simply a celebration of all the hands that have touched, handled,sorted, pieced together, picked up, put down, sewn, repaired,polished, cleaned, packed and unpacked so tirelessly weekend after weekend so that more hands can pick over, unfold, try on, caress and sometimes even…..buy!