prematurely grey

Back to basics. I’ve been trying to figure out who sings the life-affirming line “got to scrape the shit right off your shoes.” Why, you may ask. Well, yesterday was a two-clog day. Which means I went through two pairs of clogs while picking up the unfathomable amount of dog shit that was in the back yard.Pair one was the current default–the black Rocket Dogs–found in a moment of triumph at the Designer Shoe Wearhouse while on the Boot Quest of 2005. I love the Rocket Dogs; I’ve had them before. When they appeared instead of pointy-toed who-is-the-biggest-bitch, bitch? black leather boots, well, it was kind of a homecoming. Back to the mornings teaching preschool in my round, puffy, black suede clogs, striped socks and cropped black pants, my Pippi Longstockings Grows Up and Becomes a Preschool Teacher look.

But over the past couple days, the dark side of Rocket Dogs has reappeared–their rapid and painful deterioration. This deterioration takes the form of a deep molding of the inner sole to my perhaps overly developed big toe ball (that sounds completely lewd–hey baby, have you ever seen a big toe ball like THIS?). Yoga is great and all, but it has indeed fucked with my feet. The deep molding is followed by the unpredictable and complete collapse of support of this super-joint, most likely caused by the fact that there’s nothing but two inches of air between the inner sole and the bottom of the shoe. And right now, I’d be willing to bet about half an inch of air is missing.

The effect of the big toe collapse is the sensation of walking in a very bizarre orthotic combined with pain in the mid-foot ball (or should that be mid-ball of the foot) when the clogs have been removed, leading one to put the clogs back on until getting into bed. Suddenly, the logic of foot binding has become perfectly clear, doesn’t it?

Pair two was the red Danskos. Now, everyone loves their Dansko clogs. They’re the clogs to have. They come in cute colors, have that full back option, some have the strap (which is what I really want). But, truth be told, I hate Danskos. They are so fucking low to the ground. I feel like I’m walking around in a hole when I wear them. Maybe not the same hole I’m walking around in my Rocket Dogs, but a hole nonetheless. The hole that keeps me from being taller.

I wear the Danskos kind of like slippers, but only when I can’t handle my high heel clogs. Such as moments when my foot is in total pain from wearing them or the rocks trapped inside the heel are making so much noise that I can no longer handle wearing them (see Old Navy black corduroy clogs, slightly squared toe, worn continuously from 2003 through 2004 when High Heel Rocket Dogs were not in production–where are they–did I actually GET RID OF THEM–SHIT?). I brought the Danskos to Montana last March and wore them in the house after skiing.

Bottom line: You can put the New Yorker in clogs, but you can’t take the New Yorker out of the clogs while she’s wearing them. In some twisted way, I have turned my completely un-New York number one choice in shoe into a New Yorker thing–it’s high heel clogs for me. Oh yeah, those high heel clogs are so sexy, the way I wear them, looking just like one of those ho’ Bratz whose feet come off. No sexy little tottering wood Nordstrom clogs here. I go for the Japanese school girl style. If Gene Simmons wore clogs, I bet he’d like mine.

It’s on again. Sweet Virginia. Exile on Main Street. My favorite Stones album. Period. Paragraph.

I’ve been have a shitty time of the creative life, lately, as the complete absence of any writing might suggest. But maybe, just maybe, the two clog day was a blessing in disguise. The blessing of dog shit reducing me to thinking about my clog obsession and shit scraping. I’ve been scraping all sorts of shit since mid-December. I’ve let life (or the life I want to live) pass me by.

Yesterday, I ended up in the crazy clogs–brand spanking new pink Marimekkos, wood bottoms, purchased instead of sexy shoes in San Francisco the day of the bridal shower before the television show. Yesterday, the people in the house seemed genuinely shocked by them. I felt like a nurse on acid. I put on the cool slouchy brown suede, crepe soled bots for pick up, because it’s hard enough to be a nurse on acid when you’re alone in your house, so forget about not being the center of weirdness attention at pick up time if you’re wearing pink Finnish clogs. BUT I did put them back on to make dinner. They’re a little tight and a little insane, but my feet didn’t hurt. Now I’m wearing the red fake-clogs-for-active-types, to try to be cool again. They’re the worst when I step in shit–stars all over the bottom and a girl doing a karate kick. But at least they don’t rattle when I walk around and so far I haven’t noticed any shooting pain.