Sketches

From the archives: The Red Boots

I’ve been soaking up the dreamtime, biding my time, not feeling pulled in any particular direction for nonfiction writing. I have been writing, almost every day in fact - but - I’ve been writing fiction. Sketches of scenes from the fantasy worlds of my mind. Bits of dialogue. A scene unfolding from a scrap of an idea. As much as it is an inspiration, a movement, and passion, writing is also a muscle, and I’ve decided to start a whole new set of exercises.

One consequence of how I have been metabolizing this season of inner dreaming, is that I haven’t felt like writing anything here. The spell will break, but I’m not sure when. So for the sake of touching base, for fun and what-the-heck, I am sharing an essay that I initially wrote in 2011 or 2012. I wrote this just for myself, to encapsulate and remember an experience that struck me deeply, though a small disclaimer is appropriate. I wrote this piece when I was struggling with the juxtaposition of emerging technology and what I was perceiving as a loss of culture. I suppose this contrast is still relevant (a perennial issue for us evolving humans), but I don’t carry the same kind of resistance. What follows is a sort of multilayered time-capsule, as all writing tends to become.

The Red Boots

I walked into Torcaso Shoe Repair this afternoon with a pair of dark red, leather boots. Boots that my mom lovingly named el-cheapos when I asked what brand they were. They had been hers and I didn’t like them at first, but I needed a pair of boots to complete a corporate casual look for my first salary job. By the end of three months, wearing them 4-5 days week, they were faded and scuffed, with the heel peeling away from the boot itself in some places.

I rounded the corner to the shop, and saw who I assumed to be one of the owners standing outside the door. Apron on, with a shoe in one hand, the phone in the other, pressed to his ear and mouth talking. The leather of my boots felt smooth and supple in my hands. 

I passed him by, and stepped through the doorway into a dimly lit space that was clearly utilitarian, not for entertaining customers. It was a space of service, of craftsmanship, and smelled like something that only our parents or grandparents now remember. A smell from their childhood. The cobbler.

Three men sat in the back room, or whatever word might be appropriate for the space that was theoretically separated from the receiving room by a few beams and plaster, no door. There was no cash register or queue to find, hardly a counter that indicated a place you were supposed to “order” your service. The back did not appear to be a private work room, but a place that to the untrained eye was a hodge-podge. Shoes everywhere. Tags. Hand written signs – like the one that said “no credit cards or checks accepted, cash only.” One man, body facing me but never looking my way, was talking a mile a minute to the two other men in folding chairs, his captive audience; talking and talking, nothing about shoes, nothing about business. About life. For a minute I was back in India at the tailor’s, where the men sat all day talking and drinking tea while they were working, showing fabric, cutting fabric, folding, waiving to people they knew on the street, the tailor always working – clicking away madly on his sewing machine – click click click click in such a satisfying repetitive stream that sped up and slowed down according to the course of the needle and thread. I felt something similar between the tailor and the cobbler, a kind of archetype or family of archetypes expressing themselves in the forms of the tailors sitting crosslegged amongst the shelves of fabric, and the men sitting and talking and listening in the shoe repair shop. In the cobbler’s, the smell of leather and chemicals was soothing not alarming; redolent of hands working and forming, shaping, giving, saving, not throwing something out that could be renewed. A renewal that comes from love and care, a lineage of knowledge and tradition. Artisans of purpose.

The man on the phone followed me inside and hung up, acknowledging my presence with a smile that said he was busy but kind. I stepped up to the counter, which was completely full of shoes, and handed him my boots. He pulled out a manila tag with several fields, asking for my last name. I gave it to him, spell it why don’t you he said, and then said he’d start way over to the right. I spelled it out and he tore off the small ticket at the bottom. A big sigh – it’s been a flood this week he said, can we say Wednesday? I’m not in any hurry. That’s good he said. I gave him my boots and walked out with a tiny cardboard stub, wondering how they keep track of everyone’s shoes. That was it. 

On Wednesday I stopped back after work, walking straight up to the counter and waited to be noticed. The same man with the same apron appeared. I handed over my manilla stub, and he rustled around in the back - in what looked like a library of shoes - and came out with my red boots. They looked brand new.

Between drop-off and pick-up, it took me less than ten minutes to go through the entire experience, and I came out feeling like a better person for it. Moved by the alchemical magic of stepping into a space that carries the practices of time passed, rather than ones that trend headstrong into the future, forcing us to barrel through life like a train in a cartoon that goes so fast it rips the bricks out of the walls next to the track, which follow behind the train like a flock of mad birds, at last crashing into the train and crushing it like a comical can of soda, flattened by the hubris of its own speed and hurry. Instead, practices of life, of people. Humans who sit and talk and thrive on something other than texts and electronic screens and the ethereal relationships of social media clouds. A livelihood that is a craft. A purpose that supports life and living.

…

[These days, I can’t find it in me to speak poorly of emerging technology: the internet, smart phones, social media, and the like. I used to think that technology would erase the artisans, but the truth is that there are always people who value working with their hands, and the quality that comes from masterful human creating. Where it used to be the norm, now we have to intentionally seek it out. In the thirteen or fourteen years since I wrote this essay, I have come to recognize that technology is a tool - one that I admittedly love to use and benefit from. While I used to think that life in the analog was somehow superior to interactions within digital world, I recognize that for the myopic view that it is. I have met some of my dearest friends online, and keep in touch with my wide web of connections thanks to text, voice and video chat. As evolving creatures, we are learning how to integrate. I think discernment is an important part of the mix. How long can I stare at a screen and still feel good and well? To each their own is always relevant, and when it comes to the speed of life, I think it is our individual balance that really matters.]

From the archives of the life - mending and creating