Its sort a twofer. BOGO. Write a piece for CCWC and publish it in my blog as well. Win win.
The assignment: to write about shoes. Usually I ignore assignments. but there was a sort of siren’s song about the topic. Granted, it is a little gender stereotypical, female-centric, but I could ignore that. S-h-o-e-s, it whispered. A biological imperative? Maybe.
After all, did Plato see shadows of Manolos on the cave wall? Did Proust flash back to a lifetime of memories upon slipping his feet into a pair of strappy heels? Interesting to contemplate, but the answer is no.
But I digress.
Its 1959. My mother and I are in Block and Kuhl’s shoe department. I stare at the high heels. (That’s what we called them them, back then) I am fourteen and it’s almost Easter. I get to buy high heels to go with my very grown-up blue tweed suit, a narrow dark blue leather belt riding just above a snappy peplum flaring over my non-existent hips.
A pair of shoes catches my eye, standing out like neon against all the rounded toes and low heels. The perfect shade of blue. Stilletto heels, maybe 3”. At least 3”. Pointed toes. And the piece de resistance: a tiny, ornamental, brass trimmed blue leather change purse right at the toe cleavage. My heart races. The smell of new shoes. The smell of fresh leather. I ask to try them on.
My mother laughs, Not in a mean way, but in surprise, or more likely shock. I am such a mousey little thing, and those are bad-girl shoes. The salesman detects my lust, and hopes for the power of a daughter who has fallen in love to loosen a mother’s purse. I slip them on. I turn my feet this way and that, gazing at them. Those shoes are so much better than I am. I want to know those feet. I want to do what those feet do.
Easter morning, I slip blue leather pumps on my slick, nylon-stockinged feet. Modest two inch heels. Self effacing rounded toes. Mousey girl shoes, confirmation of who I am, and who I am not.
More than half a century later. The world in a pair of shoes.
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And now to current concerns. A lady whom I greatly admire does not admire herself enough. That, I think, is a common condition among seriously talented people. Much of what I will say is hypothetical, because she is also very private, and not given to confiding, which can be an admirable trait when the world is filled with those who overshare.
She is leaving our little writers cohort because she feels she has no more to offer. There are times when the gift, the muse if you will, leaves us all, or most of us, at least. It is a scary moment. The artist, and she is a real artist, fears the art will never return. It's like youth, gone forever.
I hope I can assure her, if by chance she reads this, and I am pretty sure she won't, that it doesn't work like that. A field cannot flourish if it doesn't lie fallow. True, there are some who create year after year, a prodigious outpouring without break, but who is to say they would not have profited from the nourishment a pause would give. For some, the pause is long, lasting months or years, and then one day, the muse is back, ringing the door bell, barging in with cheese and crackers and a bottle of wine and demanding to be heard. She will then keep you up late, just as she once did, and you will feel yourself racing to keep up with yourself. And, dear friend, it will happen to you.
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