Happy Jan. 2nd! Which actually feels more than yesterday like the beginning of the new year, since today I must return to work. Took not only a good long walk yesterday but also this photo, just as I was stepping onto a small wooden footbridge that connects my island to NE Minneapolis. Surely there is a story behind this shoe, though it may never be known by anyone, or maybe by only a select few.
This was on New Year's Day, so the night before had been ... well, you know what it had been. Maybe a couple of merrymakers had wandered out of a nearby bar and into the cold and bleak night, gradually zigzagging their drunken footsteps to this bridge. For example:
"Damn, baby, I don't even shee how y'can walk in them damn shoes."
"I get lotsa practice, don't you worry."
"I mean, damn girl, aren't yer poor little feet cold?"
"Ooh, a bridge! Let's go that way!"
"Aw, it's cold out here, babe, let's go home now. You don't wanna walk anymore on them shoes."
"I can walk to China and back on these shoes, never you mind."
"Damn, this bridge is slippery!"
"I think it's lovely.
"You're gonna slip and fall in them shoes."
She stops to light a cigarette. Snowflakes begin falling, sparkling like a gossamer curtain being drawn down around them. The night is calm and beautiful and very cold. She takes a long drag on the cigarette and blows the smoke slowly into his face. The smoke combines with the breath of her lungs made visible by the cold to form what looks like a giant ghostly cloud that envelops his head and entire figure, so that from a distance she seems alone on the bridge.
"Don't you wanna kiss me?"
"Baby, it's fucking cold, our damn lips will freeze together!"
"Wouldn't that be nice?"
"And you in those shoes, you're gonna slip and fall and I'll fall with you."
"Goddamn you and the fucking shoes!" she finally snaps. She slips out of them, one foot at a time, and she is so small and the shoes so big that it is as if she is getting down from a stepladder. Then she picks them up, and cradles one at her breast with one hand while, with the other, she flings the other shoe as far as she can. She has a girly throwing arm and the shoe doesn't go far, but catches on the fencepost at the end of the bridge. She does better with the second shoe, which sails out over the bridge's railing to plop into the stagnant, frozen waters of the Mississippi.
From a distance, it still looks like a single figure on the bridge, at least until it begins moving, lurchingly, back across the bridge. Then, if you look closely, you can make out the two heads of this odd figure, with a pair of legs sticking out at around belly height, as if the moving figure has a parasitic organism attached at the waist. Then, if you stare hard, you can make out the bare feet at the ends of those legs, and the arms wrapped around the neck of the host, who trudges slowly and carefully through the frosty night toward home. Visible puffs of condensed breath issue from two different mouths, rising above their heads and dissipating, like the smoke from two different chimneys.
And it is now the year 2013.
No comments:
Post a Comment