I only got a pair of barefoot shoes because Cost-Co had them cheap, and I needed something besides my sneakers (which were all I had besides boots) for my Georgia trip. Apparently, they're a big thing right now among runners. "Barefoot shoe" is a textbook oxymoron, isn't it? But it got me thinking about how useful and prevailing a metaphor it is, too.
I was seriously, literally barefoot for sporadic periods throughout my twenties. Stanford's campus in spring rains, so manicured and smooth; the treacherous redwood cones off in the woods. Athens, Greece, where I lost a good pair of Birkenstock knock-offs at the American School of Classical Studies having left them on the landing one time too many. Hawaii was where it stopped. Initially, despite centipedes and machetes, I was flauntingly, exultantly barefoot. Even in the dark. Since I climbed barefoot, I still mostly walked between trees barefoot until the inevitable careless time I stepped on a spike and was hobbled for a few days. Not that the flip flops I donned thereafter saved me from centipedes.
Still, after shodden years in Alaska, bootees even indoors, I'm attached to the idea of barefootedness. Those paddles that bear our whole bodies, bare to the ground--grounding.
I need a barefoot shoe as cartilage to smooth the contact. Diamond on the soul of my foot, carbon on the palm of the ground.
My ego needs a barefoot shoe. Oh, when my abilities were called into serious question my barefoot ego was jabbed and poked and opened up to painful and disastrous potentials bleeding all the way down to destitution and death. But when my abilities were seriously praised here it was like stepping on soft sand, healing, softening, but afraid of the sand getting in the wounds and inflaming the ego.
My diet has a barefoot shoe. This time last year I was drinking stevia-sweetened tea by the gallon and eating less and less. This time this year, I'm drinking stevia-sweetened tea by the gallon and eating less and less, the bittersweet of the stevia a literal oxymoron in how it fills me. BUT--last year I was on my way to Foie Gras Farm and nothing I could do to gainsay that. Or, I was actively dying. This year, I'm at the Georgia Review, parlous, fragile, transitional, but not going to no Fois Gras Farm. The barefoot shoe is the coconut milk.
Still, after shodden years in Alaska, bootees even indoors, I'm attached to the idea of barefootedness. Those paddles that bear our whole bodies, bare to the ground--grounding.
I need a barefoot shoe as cartilage to smooth the contact. Diamond on the soul of my foot, carbon on the palm of the ground.
My ego needs a barefoot shoe. Oh, when my abilities were called into serious question my barefoot ego was jabbed and poked and opened up to painful and disastrous potentials bleeding all the way down to destitution and death. But when my abilities were seriously praised here it was like stepping on soft sand, healing, softening, but afraid of the sand getting in the wounds and inflaming the ego.
My diet has a barefoot shoe. This time last year I was drinking stevia-sweetened tea by the gallon and eating less and less. This time this year, I'm drinking stevia-sweetened tea by the gallon and eating less and less, the bittersweet of the stevia a literal oxymoron in how it fills me. BUT--last year I was on my way to Foie Gras Farm and nothing I could do to gainsay that. Or, I was actively dying. This year, I'm at the Georgia Review, parlous, fragile, transitional, but not going to no Fois Gras Farm. The barefoot shoe is the coconut milk.
If I have a can a day, that's about like two Ensure pluses. Divided in three, that means I get in 260-ish calories per meal despite whatever else I do. This would be pretty good all by itself. And actually, the coconut milk tends to be a gateway drug. Mostly, not always, I've been hanging onto the daily can (I daily can? Most days); somewhere in the whole mess of me the part that wants to stay functional wins out more often than not. So those "one shredded carrot and teaspoon protein powder" or "single grapefruit" meals are quite generously barefoot-shod by the coconut custom.
Do I always pick the right barefoot shoe? I left work yesterday, my blood sugar tank empty, my mug half full of half-caffeinated tea saying I knew I shouldn't borrow from my adrenals(the half empty part) but was going to anyway (the half full part).
At a light, I rolled forward and tapped the car in front. After ten minutes of horror, tears, hunting through the glove compartment, cursing myself for causing such trouble to my friend, for having an accident in a strange place in a car not mine, the other lady came over and said really there was no need to call anyone; there was no damage. Down by the railroad tracks in a quiet neighborhood, a near miss of the park I was trying to reach, I got back on the phone.Toward the end of my conversation, an SUV came out of the nearby house, backed up fast, and hit the back of the car! A dent this time, so definitely my friend would be upset (she wasn't). Lahillala wi wi look what I did should I not have been parked there omigod how surreal...and back to pieces I went.
But this morning, cockily caffeinated, grapefruit in one hand, small bottle of coconut milk in the other (like those motorcyclists with the helmet dangling from the handlebar), I headed out to the car never doubting that everything would be fine. And it was, but what about late this afternoon after working intensely all day, when the sugar-tank is empty? Will I look for free coffee samples at the grocery store?
Do I always pick the right barefoot shoe? I left work yesterday, my blood sugar tank empty, my mug half full of half-caffeinated tea saying I knew I shouldn't borrow from my adrenals(the half empty part) but was going to anyway (the half full part).
At a light, I rolled forward and tapped the car in front. After ten minutes of horror, tears, hunting through the glove compartment, cursing myself for causing such trouble to my friend, for having an accident in a strange place in a car not mine, the other lady came over and said really there was no need to call anyone; there was no damage. Down by the railroad tracks in a quiet neighborhood, a near miss of the park I was trying to reach, I got back on the phone.Toward the end of my conversation, an SUV came out of the nearby house, backed up fast, and hit the back of the car! A dent this time, so definitely my friend would be upset (she wasn't). Lahillala wi wi look what I did should I not have been parked there omigod how surreal...and back to pieces I went.
But this morning, cockily caffeinated, grapefruit in one hand, small bottle of coconut milk in the other (like those motorcyclists with the helmet dangling from the handlebar), I headed out to the car never doubting that everything would be fine. And it was, but what about late this afternoon after working intensely all day, when the sugar-tank is empty? Will I look for free coffee samples at the grocery store?
What are your barefoot shoes?
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