What was it like, the first time I touched something with my hand of glory? I can’t recall what it was I touched first, although I suppose I was very careful to choose something auspicious. The sensation took my breath away and left me gasping as if my chest were being squeezed in a vice. It wanted to be alone and swinging freely by my side, although I could just stand having it in my jacket or trouser pocket, if not for too long. It felt at once too much and too little. Texture, pressure, temperature, all in the abstract, in comparison with the unremarkable and ordinary sensations transmitted to me by my quotidian right hand. If I were to place it on the desk in front of me, for example, I would feel a tactile version of an image of the grain of the wood, and the feeble warmth of the desk lamp that shone on it would register to my nerves as a sort of patina, finely granulated and measured out in an exact number, unknown to me, but not entirely. The fingers opened and closed as usual, the hand moved on the wrist, which still itched maddeningly where the flesh had knitted together so precisely there was no mark at all, no sign of any kind that any graft had taken place. But even then, the motion was also abstract. Each movement of each digit had a distinct character and numerical regularity, or I should say a geometrical aspect, I couldn’t understand, couldn’t rationally fathom, but which I could feel as plainly as I might say “that’s the color orange” or “this chicken is salty.” My hand of glory inscribed its geometrical designs for itself, or for someone, to see, or not yet, directly into space, etched them there with every motion it made, even as it hung from the end of my arm, and I passed from place to place. With greater understanding and keener vision through the darkness of everyday life I perhaps will one day see those lines and read those angles and figures as readily as I do written words now.

It still makes me smile, when I remember how terribly terribly careful I was with my hand of glory at first. It still makes me smile...