Something Knitty

I'm a little behind on my Friday Night Lights viewing.  A few weeks ago I watched the first couple of episodes of the most recent season.  One story line has former Panther QB Matt Saracen (why is he still part of the story again?) doing an internship with a local artist.  When prompted to give his opinion of Matt's work, the crusty old jerk (love him) flips roughly through Matt's portfolio, chooses one drawing, rips it to shreds and hands Matt a scrap of paper.  I think it was a drawing of a hand.  "This part right here doesn't make me want to throw up.  Work from there."  

If you rip through your writing, throw out all the cliches, and get to the heart of it, which is the part that doesn't make you want to throw up?  Write from there.  

A close-up shot of my computer, complete with mustache, inspirational quote, small pictures of the kids, and desk detritus

Name the first 10 Things that come to you when I say the word "Shoes."  Then scroll down to see what I came up with.  Go! Run! Shoe!

 

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1.  My stepfather's boots.  

2.  My Teva sandals and my running shoes.  I'm usually barefoot.  These are the most likely shoes to find on my feet. 

3.  My $3 black heels from Savers in Albuquerque.  The only comfortable pair of heels I've ever had.  I've worn them twice.  

4. Screaming shoes, a.k.a. any shoe for Sonar X7 up to a pair of red Keane's last fall. Child hated shoes for most of his life.  Not just that he didn't want to wear them.  They caused him to melt into a screaming mess as if they were burning his feet.  

5. Brand new white soccer cleats.  I guess these make me a soccer mom again?  Reminds me of an Everclear song.  Except I drive a VW, not a Volvo.  Also no experience in adult media.  *cough* Never mind. 

6. I do not comprehend the fascination of some people with designer shoes.  They look like torture.  Maybe @shaydenFL gets them?  If not he can add them to his list of #shitidontget

7. In middle school I really wanted a pair of huarache sandals.  I got them eventually.  I never ever wanted a pair of jellies though.  Or crocs.

8.  Baby shoes are completely pointless.  Ditto baby socks unless it's cold.  Just one more (small, easily losable) thing to keep up with. 

9. When my brother (five years younger) grew to have the same size feet as me.  I was in eight or ninth grade. We shared my huarache sandals for an afternoon. 

10.  White canvas Keds.  This was my go-to shoe for many years.  Cheap and easy.  In high school they were my marching band shoes.  We slathered white shoe polish right on the canvas to cover stains.  When they were too raunchy for marching band, I'd scribble all over them. 

Bonus: "SHOES" by Kelly. Betch. 

Comments:

This list was strangely difficult for me.  I got sort of stuck on details for number one.  A snapshot of the details...

My step-father grew up in New York State, where he started his career as a police officer.  I don't know what kind of shoes he wore there.  Some sort of standard issue glossy black dress shoes, I suppose.  But when he moved to Albuquerque he always wore black cowboy boots with his uniform.  They probably took twice as long to polish as dress shoes.  He had a boot jack to pull them off of his hot feet at night.  When he went to plain-clothes work, he still wore boots.  Usually brown.  Still took forever to keep polished.  He wore his service weapon in a holster on his belt or under a sport coat.  He loved cowboy boots because he could keep a small gun in a clip holster inside the top of his left boot.  Just in case.  Cowboy boots as secret weapon cache. 

What were your 10 Shoes?  What kind of shoes do you wear to work?  Do you have any shoes with a story? 

I haven't played the 10 Things game over here for a while.  I'll give you the prompt, you spend a few minutes writing down the first ten things that come to you.  Then you can scroll down and read my results if you want. 

Ready?

Write down 10 reasons you might steal bags of soap out of the dispensers in public restrooms.  GO! GO! GO!

 

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My results:

Disclaimer: I wouldn't steal soap, people, nor do I advocate the stealing of soap in any way.  Remember my philosophy over there in the sidebar: Steelers are ok (some of them), but not Stealers or Thieves.  Be good.  

This is an exercise in creativity and imagination.  I also love the phrase "soap stealer."  It hits a sweet spot in my imagination.  It goes well with the phrase "criminal mischief," which, in addition to theft, is what you might be charged with if you do these things.  

1.  To wash my car

2.  Because I can't afford soap at home

3.  Because the scent of the soap reminds me of someone or something important that I have lost 

4. To install in the restroom of my favorite struggling indie bookstore, thus saving the bookstore money

5. To add to a stockpile of soap that will be used to enhance an incident of mass mayhem (NO NO NO)

6. To add to a stockpile of soap that I will use to fill up my bathtub, either to bathe in or to perform science experiments

7.  To make giant soap bubbles

8.  To drive the janitor crazy, wondering what I'm going to do with it

9.  To sell on the industrial-sized, liquid soap black market.  There's a black market for everything, right?

10.  To mix in dye in my favorite color before returning to it's bathroom of origin

 

Several of these things are not nice. Do NOT try this at home or anywhere else.  Capiche?  

Growing up, I was not an athletic kid.  I was a tiny, scrawny, little white girl.  I could not hit a ball, I could not run very far, I never lasted very long in dodgeball.  I played no sports.  My closest brush with athleticism was in high school marching band, where I learned to march backwards while holding crash cymbals steady for a snare drummer to play.  (Don't laugh.  Those cymbals are heavy and we did it in the New Mexico heat.  In hideous cream and brown polyester uniforms and plastic egg-shell hats.)

I will be 36 later this year and the desire to keep my body fit and healthy presses on me.  Simultaneously, the effort to keep my body fit and healthy seems to rise exponentially.  I'm not interested in joining any sports, and my options are limited there anyway.  I'm not interested in anything that requires an investment of equipment or a membership pressure.  I have found, however, that I really love to run.  I feel good when I run.  Unfortunately, the first thing to go when my schedule gets busy is my daily run.  So I tend to run in fits and starts.  Running regularly for a few weeks or months, and then not at all for months.  Sometimes I'm derailed by the general mayhem of family life.  Once I was knocked off track by the flu.  

A few weeks ago at the library, I found a copy of Haruki Murakami's memoir-ish book What I Talk About When I Talk About Running.  I'd not read any of his work before, but was led to him in my quest to read through some magical realism this summer.  I haven't read any more magical realism since I suffered through Love in the Time of Cholera (I'll save my ennui with that one for another post perhaps), but Murakami's personal tale of writing and running gave me a swift kick in the butt on two counts.  

For Murakami, running and writing work together.  He does not write when he runs or even particularly think about ideas.  But it seems that running gives him an absence of thought and an ability to focus that increases his ability to focus on writing.  By training to run (and he is a serious runner of marathons and triathalons) he is a more focused writer when he is writing.

In spite of the particularly harsh and dry summer we are experiencing here in the coastal bend of Texas, I have been running five or six days a week for the past two weeks.  Since I haven't run for months, I'm back to doing interval work to build up my stamina.  I'm up to half-running, half-walking a little more than two miles a day and it feels great.  I'm not sure if I'll ever build up to a marathon, but if I could continuously run a few miles a day, without being sidetracked for months at a time, I'd feel very proud. 

Running is hard and it is hot and I get sweaty and dirty and funky.  But I've been injury-free so far, and working my body just feels so good.  I am more physically tired, but it is a satisfying tired.  Now that I've settled into a running rhythm, and my body is getting stronger and I am less worried about injuring myself, my mind is free to wander as I run.  Mostly it wanders into empty spaces.  Thoughts do come to me as I go, worries sometimes plague me.  But in running, I find that I can embrace meditative thought more effectively than I've ever been able to in other ways.  The thoughts and worries don't linger.  They float by me like clouds, and I am able to consider them dispassionately, letting them pass without clinging to them.  At other times my mind wanders to the beat, counting the steps, predicting my tempo, comparing the beat of my heart to the thump of my shoes.  

And I'm learning (or rather reminded), slowly, that I need balance in my life.  Everything feels better when I'm running.  Everything feels better when I'm writing.  Everything feels better when I'm crafting.  But all three of those things have to work together somehow.  When one of those things drops out of my life for a while, the other two tend to disappear as well.  

Besides blogging a little bit more often again, I can't say that I'm actually writing again.  But I'm getting closer.  I'm working the balance.  The writing notebook is on the desk again.  A few ideas have been scribbled in it, and the more I run, the more the ideas come to me.  The more ideas for writing I get, the more crafty ideas I get and the more enthusiastic I get about running each morning.  

I'm chasing my activities around in a circle.  I just have to keep them all moving in a positive direction, moving with balance in mind.