More On Traveling Shoes
Friday, December 26th, 2008
In my mind I have been hankering for travel. But I haven’t been able to get the body to cooperate. This has been going on since April. It is now the end of December. I know where I want to go. I have personal projects to accomplish in my next destination. A revisit, to a place I’ve been to before. But my heart hasn’t been in to making the definite plans.
I was out in The Escape Pod three days ago, the day before Christmas. I had decided to store campy type things from the van in the house, so I was getting the portable kitchen items out from under the bed when I discovered my old traveling shoes.
I pulled them out from under the bed and held them in my hands. A pair of boy’s slip on Campers with a wide velcro strap. Size six or seven, I can’t remember. I remember buying them at Shoe Pavillion. The last time I had these shoes on I was flying home from Paris. It was 2005. My last long trip.
I held those shoes in my hand and thought about all of the places they had taken me. All over The Yucatan, San Francisco, Paris, Reims, Epernay, Vertus, Fontainebleau, Chartres, Beauvais, London, Berlin, Pottsdam, Prague, Dolni Bezdekov, Kutna Hora, Zurich, Aix-en-Provence, Marseilles, Arles, Tarascon, Beaucaire, back to Paris, and then home, back to the van in San Francisco. And many points in between. Airplanes, trains, boats, and buses. Subways, metros, and trams. From the boulangerie to the cemetaire, to l’eglise. Through all of those little villages in Champagne. Sitting in cafes drinking wine, pivo, or coffee. Shooting photographs. Mulling over decisions. Standing next to the graves of my ancestors. Two and a half months of being somewhere other than the place I call home.
I brought those shoes into the house, with the other stuff, and put them on. Immediately they felt, no, I felt, like I was home in some way. The memories of the places they had taken me came flooding back. I felt my psyche shift from someone who wants to talk myself into traveling to someone who has traveled, who is going to travel. Like, ok, I’m going now.
They feel so comfortable on my feet. Familiar. I’ve been wearing them for three days, even though both soles are cracked through and they need a shine.
Photos: Above is walking the 2kms between Bratonice and Dolni Bezdekov, the first home of one of my grandfathers. The bottom photo was taken in the square in Arles, opposite from Saint-Trophime.
