it's 4 am and i find myself wide awake, twisting from side to side as though the furtive movements will eventually tire me out before finally giving in and sitting up. i turn on the lamp next to my bed--touch activated, a novelty in the 1980s it clearly dates to--and reach for my phone and the book I am halfway through reading. of course, this is purely for symbolic purposes, or maybe an incorrigible habit i adopted before my phone became an extra limb.
after distractedly shuffling through a montage of facebook videos-- old couples on vacation, white people calling the cops on black people for absurd reasons, a vice video about something to do with a fake fashion show (or restaurant, or drug, etc.)...
suddenly i am fixated by the image of a boy, no older than 14, whose hands are expertly binding together slats of timber using what appears to be a natural twill of some sort. he builds a cylindrical wall around a hole he has already dug out, his hands moving efficiently and gracefully, creating the perfect structure. with the miracle of time-lapse he soon creates a wheel out of hollow logs carefully woven together, and a mechanism attached to the wheel which allows for several "cups" to successively dispense water from the water reserve below. voila-- a well.
thinking about this boy's masterful use of hands, the aptitude with which he designed and created this whole thing machine before my very eyes, i hear that tormenting voice in the back of my head and i start to wonder. if a 5 minute time-lapsed video of my skill was to be made, what would it show? beyond the soup of cliche resume points, like "team player" (am i really?), or "excellent communication skills" (they're okay), what real skills do i have?...
somewhere between wondering what college program i can quickly enroll in to overcome this, and blaming my parents for not forcing me to study something more tangible, more valued in "the real world", i slip back into sleep mode...
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