We love to go a wandering
{These trainers with their history and their semiotics the three stripes marking time giving context as differentiation from other similar footwear, worn daily now, footsteps as metronome of pandemic. My mother’s open toed sandals signifying 1950s signifying housewife the toes belonging to a body always open always receptive. Where the feet take us: to turn this way or that, the choices available to us in our own letterbox of time and culture. To stand still. Through electric blue platform boots signifying spaceman signifying buccaneer signifying superwoman. Alas seen as available seen as inappropriate seen as pantomime in the eyes of a series of beholders. The calves of the man jogging past me, his footwear bearing the three stripes, a brother in choice, pronounced and marked with a tattoo a symbol I could not interpret. Through Doc Marten boots signifying masculine signifying skinhead signifying opposition signifying lesbian. The signs misread misinterpreted misleading ms-leading. Workwear flats and kitten heels worn through decades in subservience in pursuit of position in conformity of necessity. Signifying nothing. Then barefoot with the personal history of length and shape, the slight curl a legacy of broken bone, the soles which carry mileage across continents up mountains through cities and forests, up hill and down dale. She loves to go a wandering with her knapsack on her back bearing the legacy of war through the echo of trauma her own and her ancestors’ way back across the waves of time. A dog runs at me, showing teeth, his eyes flickering with possibility. Without footwear, these bare feet in water shimmering under sunlight or moonlight the sand and small shells a crenellation a pattern sensuality of water drawing back and forth the Greek Island of honeymoon where pebbles shone like precious stones in a turquoise sea. Sandals with leather straps that wound around the ankles signifying slave signifying centurion signifying hippie signifying I am in part my mother’s daughter. The history carried and repeated here and gone now and then a tidal flow that is never ending that is circular that is inside and outside time. The steps up from the park marked with my tread. {You can watch a video of this I made on Vimeo here ]
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AuthorJo Colley Archives
January 2022
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