Shoes and security

   I like to think of myself as having rather simple taste in clothing, and have had a similar taste in shoe style for quite a few years, I don't believe that wearing any brand name or style makes a person better than someone else, so you might gather that shoes are not that important to me, but they are; enough so that they have warranted that I write this blog entry.

   Shoes are listed on most clothing websites as accessories rather than as their own category like 'shirts', 'pants' or 'outerwear' are. They are regarded mostly as something that adds to some other thing, rather than as the basis, but when I look at shoes on my feet, I see them as very base; they mark where I meet the earth, where I begin and the rest of the world exists, and they are the buffer for that coming together, which can feel harmonious, but at times seems volatile and hazardous. Under these conditions, shoes must be for me something more than just a covering and protection for my feet against the hardness of the ground below me.
   I should also add here that I have a condition in my feet called plantar fasciitis (which requires that I wear orthotic shoe inserts or shoes with excellent arch support), as well as being prone to foot calluses, but these conditions have only heightened my anxiety about where I meet the world; I don't believe they gave rise to it.
   Phillip Guston and Alberto Giacometti are two artists which have dealt with similar issues in their work, and I've always felt that the most interesting artists are the ones whose anxieties dominate their work. Problematic relations to oneself and the world are not necessarily enjoyable, but they can be productive, and possibly interesting. They produce something which is perplexing and hard to describe.
   Shoes for me then must possess extra powers. Like the spacesuit of an astronaut, they must be both in and 'out of this world'.

The Clarks Desert Trek...at one time my only pair of shoes

Poor Steering

   I drive my car, at least a little, just about every day. This has been the case for only the last 8 years or so, since my wife and I came to San Francisco from New York City, where I almost never drove. Being behind the wheel of the car can help me to feel free, but it can also give rise to feelings of agitation and anger, as other drivers (and often bicyclists) do things which I find at times to be disrespectful, dumb and downright dangerous. Being in control of a car seems to give me the illusion that I am in control over other things, and when other people do things that I don't like, the illusion is shattered, and I become frustrated. 

   Recently in my life I have taken time to learn better how to keep focus on my feelings by practicing self-reflection and meditating during my regular morning walks, but when I get into my car, I often forget these; it's as if I've opened the window in the car and my consciousness has been sucked out. I try listening to quiet music, talk radio, or sit while driving in relative silence (which does seem to help a bit), but still I find myself stymied at times by this strange powerlessness I seem to have when I am on the road. Perhaps if I can focus more on feeling out of control when I am behind the wheel, I can gain greater power over myself.

Nearing my apartment, as seen from the driver's side of my car

Light worry

   I'm 51 years old. I own a smartphone, and use it, but I'm not constantly looking at it like most people of the generation that followed mine, or even the half-generation that followed mine.
   Still, I'm apparently quite reliant on having an internet connection, and the concern over temporarily not having one seems to actually worry me more than being without it. The worrying is worrying.
   Yesterday morning, I was looking at my emails and reading the news while having my morning coffee before work, when the page I was trying to read would not load, and that's when I noticed that one of the green lights necessary to have an internet connection was not illuminated on my modem (this is what you see in the picture below). I also noticed that the normally steady light on my router was no longer steady, but blinking, as it does when it's beginning a connection or losing one. In this case, it seems to have lost one that it has not yet regained. In the past, I have been able to fix these type of issues without much difficulty, but in this instance, I could not. I tried to fix it on two separate occasions by unplugging cords, restarting things, moving tables, and calling my internet provider, but as of right now, I still have no connection.
   I have tried to make myself feel better about the level of worry this disconnection has caused me by telling myself I pay all my bills online, and this problem could take a while to solve, if in fact it's able to be solved at all, but it still doesn't add up to the reality of the situation. This is no light worry at all.

C'mon, ds light

The lady that prayed to trees

   I was looking at some of the older pictures from my phone, as I do periodically, deleting ones that I no longer felt were necessary to have close to me anymore. Usually this is because the experience I had when I took the picture no longer had as much importance to me, or because the picture itself no longer seemed to capture that time as well. Either way, looking through these pictures is always enjoyable, often makes me smile, and sometimes reminds me of something which I previously had seemed to forget.

   This is a picture of an older woman that I used to see walking around Stow Lake here in Golden Gate Park, where I walk daily. She was about 4"11", and always wore the same tracksuit you see in this picture. Although I wouldn't see her everyday, when I would, I found her intriguing; she would at times veer from the walking path, put her hands together like she was praying, and touch a particular tree. I would see her do this on occasion, and it always helped me appreciate even more the beautiful surroundings we were both sharing at that moment. 

   It took a few months of seeing one another for us to eventually say something, and I would say hello to her, while her response would always be "good morning, sir".  It took some time after that for me to finally get up the nerve to ask her what kind of religion she practiced with the trees, and she told me that it wasn't a religion at all, "just something I do".  The fact that I had asked seemed to amuse her.

   I haven't seen her in many months now, and I'm a little ashamed in some way that it took my looking through my phone to remind me of her. 

  

Cars with Yakima cases

   It was summer here in San Francisco, California, when I originally wrote the draft to this blog entry. It feels like that time of year here now, in late February, as it's about sixty five degrees. During the summer here children are on school break, adults are often taking time off from work, and many people are making sure their Yakima cases are securely fastened on top of their cars before heading out for that drive to go biking, hiking or camping. When I spot one of these space-age things on a roof, it's usually on an SUV or, often, a Subaru Outback. These cars have appear to have a lot of storage room inside, so the question often occurs to me; what exactly is hidden on those roofs?

A Yakima attachment awaits its case

Stop acting like a human being!

   Although I often judge people that have pets, especially dogs, in a negative way when they are in public, I do tend to think of animal behavior as being more 'natural' than human-animal behavior; it's really just their association with human beings that disturbs me. I see these pets as enslaved by human beings, who fulfill their basic food and shelter needs, and who, in my reading of them, rob them of their nature, of their animality.

   When I am taking my regular walk in the early morning hours around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park, I often see ducks and geese engaged in what I assume to be territorial battles, chasing and nipping at one another, and it all seems very natural and appropriate. In fact, it bothers me when people try to intervene in these scuffles; I resent them trying to impose their humanity on their behavior. To me, when animals appear mean to their fellows, they are really engaged in something very organic and appropriate, but people are trying to impose their own sense of normalcy to their behavior. 

   When it comes to human interaction though, I become very suspect, and words like 'motive' and 'judgment' enter my mind. I suddenly wish people would act more 'human'.

   

Home and loss

   Every morning before work, I take a long walk around Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park. It helps me to relax before I'm inundated with the stresses at my job, and at certain points during the walk, I actually feel like I'm just existing, rather than thinking about my place in the world, and all of the thoughts and feelings that entails.
   There are places at Stow Lake which have incredible sounds (birds calling, water droplets falling), amazing smells (Eucalyptus trees, flowering plants), and great things to look at as well. One of those things was this honeycomb (pictured below on the left), which I noticed about two months ago. When I first saw it, there was a small amount of bee activity around it, but not enough that it seemed to be so active a hive anymore, just a few bees buzzing around the lower portion of it. I wondered what had happened that it seemed to be nearly abandoned, with only a few, apparently confused individuals seeming to be find this beautiful object useful anymore. For the next few days, I thought about what may have caused the demise of this object, and noticed that as the days passed, so did the activity around it. I thought about taking it home, to have as my own, to rally around it like I was a bee, to preserve the memory and feelings that I had felt as I passed it. I thought about removing it, but concerned about the possibility of angry bees still lurking nearby, and feeling that perhaps its' place was there in that tree crevice, I decided not to touch it.
  The next time I passed it, it was gone.Two days after that, while walking near it, I spotted a young, evidently homeless man sleeping on a bench near the tree that formerly held the honeycomb. I have never seen a homeless person sleeping on a bench anywhere around that lake for the eighteen months or so that I have been walking there daily, and it seemed like that person's temporary home for that night had somehow referenced those bees' missing home. It made me sad that the sleeping person was so young to be homeless, but as I passed him walking the next time around on the path he appeared rather healthy, and I wondered if his choice of that particular bench had somehow rejuvenated him, as that honeycomb had rejuvenated me so many times previously.