Once there was a floating walking hand which went ‘round and ‘round the world darting and crawling, hoping to evade detection, sometimes scaring drunks and small children. A wild leaping scampering hand not wishing to be part of a circus but utterly mad, knowing only old routines and concentric habits like circles at the bone — to dance, to tap, and insanely, to shake hands. That‘s why this hand took to creeping into embassies and literary parties, so that it could crawl up table legs, wait for the right moment and then dive into a handshake, usurping the place of the intended other hand with a shrill kind of scream. This is the hand that madly signed papers over and over again, pouring wine glasses back into nothingness, tilting back beers, making its stump shriek like a whistle.
For a while the hand hung out with spiders thinking it might be one of them. It dreamed of running over buttons like a minefield, setting off sequences of roses in some drunkard‘s head, detonating poems like Q-blasts. “Arrrrgh! Take me to the abodes of people! Get me into a glove! I will buck and jolt. I will seize up and spit blood if I do not get involved in a caress.”
One thing the hand liked to do was grope and poke at parties — touch people in places no living human being could get at — give a poke in the dark and then roll across the floor like a combat-trained creature, chuckling with sheer unbearable squeals as the puzzled party-goer nervously eyed whoever was behind him.
Sometimes the hand liked nothing better than to ride the still surface of a stream like a water spider — to just hang there above its own reflection, each finger, as it touched the mirror, leaving a poem to the sky, an ode to the sun, a divine literature.
It is also true that the hand would sometimes go into a factory, start up the conveyor belts and madly assemble amazing gadgets, strange amalgams and marvelous gimmicks, all the while whistling with its strange humour until it fell down, exhausted.
Of all things, the hand most enjoyed slapping the faces of dictators when they made big speeches on television. This made the hand well-known to all despots, but due to the fact that these programs are pre-taped, the mad escaping hand never had the pleasure of having its handiwork seen by the masses. So if you ever see a political speech and, after a commercial, the great leader comes back on looking a little stunned, a widening red imprint spreading out on his cheeks, look at that shape, that map, that message in the right light and you will see it for what it really is — the mark of a mad hand.