Feet are not supposed to be pretty and mine are no exception.
They are long and wide, lacking the daintiness which is considered feminine and beautiful on someone my height. My toes match, long and stubby all at once, like carrot sticks or the roots from potatoes. The baby toe on my right foot (the tattooed one, not your right) doesn't quite reach the ground, permanently tangled from a break a few years ago. The nails are dirty, visible even with the polish. When they're stripped, the surface always looks a little ruddy, permanently stained by years of lacquer. The heels are cracked, the balls are calloused, and the arches are bruised. They are scarred and marred and bruised and broken.
I have tried to make them beautiful. I have used lotions and pumice stones and keep the nails as trimmed and polished as I possibly can. I have spent hours in The Chair, hobbling away with a masterpiece on my swollen flesh. The tattoo helped, but, in the end, it still has the misfortune of being on the hideous canvas that is a foot.
Feet are not supposed to be pretty. They are our support system and our guide, the part of us that is the most physically connected to our experiences.
My feet are my two-part autobiographies.
The peeling skin tells of the pebbled paths I wander at night, of Alumni Walk during my first week on campus. How the dewy grass licked my toes and kissed my ankles and helped me find my way home. The scars sing the water's melody, of the crayfish that lurk beneath Chemung County creeks. The slick rocks send me splashing, catching my feet and leaving their marks behind. The arches hold bruises so my face and pride wouldn't have to, pounding pavement and initiating evacuations. Each purple and green tell the world how I survived and of how he'll never catch me.
And my ship, the sails flapping in the wind, keeps the story moving along.
When I lose my way, not sure of which direction to take, I look down at my feet and just head off in that direction.
ReplyDeleteThere are many great one-liners here: They are scarred and marred and bruised and broken., The peeling skin tells of the pebbled paths I wander at night,and The arches hold bruises so my face and pride wouldn't have to.
In the second the last paragraph, last sentence, I am having trouble with "he'll never catch me." Who is "he". I feel like a fish looking at a hook...should I bite? :)
You have done your own Philip Lopate here! And probably even better because you have "sung" them in all their glory and un-glory. What was interesting to me was the way you got down and dirty with the feet and then moved into this more elegant memory riff, especially the part about crayfish beneath Chemung County creeks. I felt like I learned something there. The piece grew larger. All from feet.
ReplyDeletevery cool how you started with the obvious and stepped the ladder down into to world of Ellen. I feel like this could be a really great beginning to a bigger story. For example you could just take one detail from a mark on your foot, and magnify this to the 100th power. But always come back to the foot. Come back to how its Ellen.
ReplyDeleteI feel the same way you do about feet. Mine are size 15, long and narrow with a club pinky toes but they have kept me standing when things tried to knock me down. It's cliche but you have a such a way with words.
ReplyDelete