intuition

I once asked Maggie, "What is the Sixth Sense, the female sense of anticipation?" She raised her hands in front of her face and, wiggling her fingers slowly, answered, "Intuition is sensing the winds of change, the way things are going, the mood of the moment, and how it will affect the future." Here a woman, cantilevered off an automobile spring so she gently bounces in the wind, contemplates her open brain and the impulses coming into it through her antennae, the fingers. These are also cantilevered on springs so they too undulate in the breeze – as do the passionflowers and love-in-a-mist. Waves in synchrony and counterpoint.

Intuition is not a normal sense, nor limited to women, but the idea that it could be presented through moving fingers grasping at a thought just out of reach was a favorite notion of Einstein. He referred to brilliant scientific intuition as "fingerspitzengefühl," a feeling at the tips of one's fingers, and believed a developed sense of this anticipatory sensitivity was essential for scientific inquiry.