It’s true. I don’t have to avoid puddles, or those annoying instances where property owners feel it necessary to water down the sidewalk out front. The reason I walked around or otherwise avoided these scenarios is because my shoes had multiple and rather sizable holes on the bottoms, meaning my socks might get a little or a lot soaked, causing discomfort and irritation that no first world tax-paying heathen should have to suffer. I carry a spare set of socks in my batchelor bag. But I never had to use them to address the wet sock syndrome. I avoided water rather successfully, an urban skill mastered by few because it is needed by few.
I got new shoes and went out with them yesterday for the first time. I’ve been locked on Teva sandals for years now, unlikely to accept or consider an alternative. I wear them out, which is a bother. But it takes a couple of years, at least. It’s hard to give up on a well-worn pair of shoes, even if the holes in them put you at direct risk of sharp objects and splinters digging directly into your footy flesh.
I had an incident once where I was breaking in a pair of MBT shoes, the kind that claimed you would develop leg muscles because of the funny way they made you walk. WHat they didn’t tell you is that when breaking them in for the first time those shoes will eat your ankles and drive you to the ground in agonizing pain, forced to remove them lest one more step causes your foot to be severed from the leg, running off on its own as your instantly amputated body blithely watches.
The MBT incident occurred in a spot where I could have been left for dead, or I could have sat in place for a very long time before anyone discovered me. It was near Old Calvary on a stretch of sidewalk covered with shattered glass and squalls of discarded food. I managed to get up and, miraculously summoning the skills of a professional podiatrist, I was able to resecure my feet back to the proper place as appendages to my legs. I flattened the back part of the shoes and walked on them like unsecured flip flops, looking for a dollar shop where I could either buy socks or some cheap flip flops. I don’t remember what I ended up purchasing but got home in one piece, one bloody, still-bleeding-from-the-ankles piece.
A moment in that little adventure that still kind of haunts me was sitting on that sidewalk looking at the bottoms of my feet. It looked alien to me. A body part I would not recognize if, for some unthinkable reason, I had to identify the bottoms of my feet in a photo lineup of mine mixed in with other peoples’. The toes seemed so much longer than I would expected, and the muscular landscape so much broader and expansive than anything I might have drawn up should, in another impossible scenario, I be required to do a pencil sketch that part of my body. I guess it’s like my asshole, or my back. Certain parts of the body just get never my attention. I don’t think I know what the back of my neck looks like.
All told I do not much like what I look like these days. Sitting at a desk most days has made me pasty and fat. I findally got some sun yesterday but it was hardly enough. The days have simply not been sunny and warm, as I’ve come to expect and even rely on for reasons of Vitamin D and sweating out the toxins. I love a good, all-natural sweat where I can feel the toxins pouring out. I sometimes take a hot shower late at night, thinking it functions as a mini-sauna, raising the toxins from the flesh and out the pores. It feels somewhat effective but nothing like a true sauna.
There is a street around Queens Plaza called Harry Suna Street. I don’t know who Harry Sun was but, because I am 10 years old, I can only ever see that name and think “Hairy Anus.” Suna spelled backwards is Anus, and I have to believe he got ridiculed for that name throughout his life, which was apparently illustrious enough that he has a street named after him.
OK, I looked it up. Suna, when his name wasn’t being spelled Anus, was a savior of the nearby Silver Cup Studios, Good for him, good for everybody, I guess. I’ve never been in those studios but I hear they are fine, and now I know why a street in his honor exists nearby.
I think I will feel good today. Yesterday I felt crabby inside, hungry but no appetite. A desultory stramble sent me to the end of the L train, at Rockaway Parkway in Canarsie. My intent was to get video of the full length of the elevated portion of the L from Rockaway Parkway to wherever it goes back underground. But the scenery was pretty drab, just a lot of closeups of fences and trees. I gave up but maybe should not have. The descent into the underground part included some cemetery sightings. But the ride was confusing. The doors opened on alterating sides of the car, while I much prefer shooting that type of video when the doors always open on one side. The trains also got pretty crowded with post LGBTQ+ paraders, or post-poaraders. I saw some boobies on the L yesterday. Full bore, just hanging out boobies. Yay.
Incidentally, news crossed the early radio blips that the very train I was on yesterday derailed later that night, around 9pm I think. No injuries but must have been unsettling. I had nothing to do with it, I assure one and all.
I remember from pre-Covid there had been a number of dead Verizon phones along the L line. I found none, but made a Bushwick stramble of it, taking the L one stop then walking the distance to the next top. A lot of graffiti and quiet roads. I was in kind of a smoggy daze with the humidity. It rained but I missed it, probably while underground in the L. I entered a small thrift shop on Grand Street, skeptical that any genuinely thrifty thrift shop exists in New York. I saw no prices but made barely a cursory pass through the place. A lot of clothing, no things. No 35mm slides or old photographs, no LP records but a quantity of CDs and DVDs.
I’ve been considering mobility options besides just walking everywhere. I don’t think you could pay me to bike in this town but something like a scooter might work. Something I could fold up and easily carry when I’d rather walk. Something with handlebars. My brief attempt to learn to skateboard left me reaching for handlebars.
