On Shoes and Afairs

I was out walking with Ace today and the day was queer.  I felt an enormous unrest all around and through me.  It was a loud unrest, a forceful one i could not shrug off, or explain away.  The sun simmered on the verge of boiling and the clouds charged across the sky, intent on speed and in my speculation, escape, because you cannot know the why in clouds.  The leaves where on the verge of riot in the wind and the birds cawed instead of chirping and the grass was conspiratorial amongst it's members.

No room for misunderstanding.  The day was disturbed.  So, I had been walking for maybe thirty minuets, if you judge a walk by time, and was beginning to feel genuinely distressed, so I pulled my irritable mind out of it's bed and dipped it into my surroundings.  With the immediacy of a meal to a starving man, and about as overwhelming, the rush of voices that filled my head astounded me.

Whisper-lings, and thought tendrils pleaded for my attention.  It was a moment of weight, of complex logistics and simple wordless emotion that sparked and snapped like oil and water in a hot pan.  And it was hot.  The day was a hot one.  I hadn't noticed.  But the pavement was burning my feet.  I walked on.

The clouds had the most to say.  They and the bushes had the loudest voices.  But all the earth, as far as i could hear with this seeming new sense, they where all, and it took all of them for the complete idea, saying the same thing.  This is an enduring day. A waiting for darkness so I can close my eyes and not have to see, day.  A day for the beautiful to feel ugly, for the desirable to feel worthless, and to be treated worthless, and in so doing become worthless.

It was worse then i had initially thought.  A jogger passed me.  Three joggers passed me.  Two boys on bikes and then another.  A man was teaching his child soccer.  And they were laughing.  My tone might lead you to believe i became angry at these people for ignoring the day, but i wasn't, i was more stunned and baffled. 

How could no one feel the immensity of such a day?  Despite the state of the world, they do not come often, at least not my finite interpretation of often.  The earth is a powerful she, and her children the days are reckless and crave to revel in their short life span, despite having such dull playmates in us.

So why when Pan stops playing his flute and dancing do these people not ask why? But it was not a difficult question to answer after all.  They didn't ask because they had no question.  They couldn't hear, didn't even know someone was talking and thus weren't even attempting to glean from the echos.

So why couldn't they hear in the least, and i couldn't even muffle the noise?  A dull flicker of pain answered my question.  My feet where burning almost beyond bearing now.  They were burning on the hot asphalt of the pathway that wound through the hills like an old scar.  No one else was stupid enough to be barefoot on such a day.  And it was through my feet, though dulled by the path, that the day's voice was reaching me.  As I walked over it's rises and falls, and stubbed my toes where it's roots had tried to heal the scar I received it's heart in a rhythm not at all unlike morse code, or like a blues rock song.  

And it was then that I realized, two people cannot have a successful romantic relationship without physical contact.  It would seem that we want to treat each day like a business partner, or perhaps more of a secretary here in America, then a lover.  But that's all wrong.  This is why we die before we knew we were alive.  This is why we are unhappy, and almost wait for each day to be over with, so we can finally get whatever  we're waiting for.  We are adulterers, one and all.

We have stuffed our ears with our shoes and minds with cheap laughter and pleasure.  Our noses we have filled with the smell of sizzle and sparkle and our eyes are weak from the billboards and nearly blind from the flashing white teeth of our idols.  Our overworked hands shake and our hearts are repressed.  Put simply, the dark enemies of humanity's closets may have been filled with skeletons and secrets, but each of ours, possibly more frighteningly, is filled with 10-15 pairs of shoes. 

I have identified a symptom, nothing more, and through that seen a clearer ultrasound of the issue, and the issue is mindset.  And worldview.  This is was day of perspective, one i felt was too valuable not to share.