Twiddly fine close up detail. Careful microwork, eyes trying to focus on a tiny point, like threading a piece of cotton through the eye of a needle – almost impossible. I wet cotton in my mouth to make it more workable, it’s flat taste makes me squirm and gag. Things seem to go in and out of focus as I hold the sliver in my finger and try to guide that floppy thread through the eye. Might as well be a camel trying to slip through there. This fine fine work, this delicate work. Maybe that’s how God works with us, trying to guide us through different things maybe he needs to use tweezers to pick us up sometimes, gently, delicately.

The only thing I use tweezers for these days is making plastic models. I have no need for eyebrow plucking, though I do recall using them to extract splinters- painful process which brings me back to a needle again – heating it over a blue tinged gas flame, watching the metal turn orange, feeling the heat from the flame resting on my skin. Digging the needle into my hand or knee or wherever the culprit is, being amazed at how it can sit under the translucent pinky brown layers without hurting . When contact is made with the fragment my nerves sing with pain. It persists as I try to dig and catch hold of an end, but drive it deeper. I dig around the entry trying to make a hole for the splinter to escape, but it doesn’t budge. Now I feel the sharp tip of the needle as I furrow. Perhaps another try with the tweezers; The shiny steel clamps together and I wince at the pinch, blood forms a globule, but I think I see it now, the culprit. The fingers of the tweezers reach out on a space shuttle docking mission. Crackly radio transmissions are sent back to brain base, thrusters fire from the controlling hand, the payload secure I clamp down and feel the shard release. The pressing numbing pain disappears and I am left with the ache of the surgery and a red welt that deserves a band aid.