a word | walking this crooked highway

These shoes - these shoes have seen so many things, I suppose like anyone's shoes, if we stop to think about it, they would have a story to tell. They have been with me through the good and the bad. The happy the sad. The ecstatic, the heartbreaking. The momentous, the boring... and the vodka-tonic colorless inbetween days that add up to nothing in particular.

These I remember buying in Paris in a small shop near St. Sulpice, a quiet neighborhood, just after I had dropped in to, for whatever reason, even though I am not at all Catholic (or catholic) felt compelled to challenge my French and myself and every ethical thing I had or have and do study my whole life in university and beyond to meet with the very-French and obviously, very Catholic priest, and make a confession of some kind, never mind the fact that A. I felt I had nothing to confess and that B. I don't believe in confession really because I feel strongly if you are going to repent, then don't do a thing in the first place and C. This whole "sin" business just makes me want to pull out a peashooter and spitball the whole lot. If this is offensive to you, I apologize, but I find it offensive that I am judged so harshly by those who would not even know me - when I am an ethical person - so shall we sit in our respective corners and play "nonny nonny boo boo" all day long or shall we try to enter into some kind of dialogue (Socratic?) and reach reasonable conclusions about faith and belief - This, this is not going to happen.

It did not. The minister looked at me with his cloudy hazel eyes that were showing the first white stratus of glaucoma and asked me if I was "sorry" with a lot of "pardons" and me with a lot of "desole, et une autre fois, si'l vous plaits....merci bien..." but we made our way through this confession of sorts, and while i explained that I was not there for absolution (which puzzled him to no end, for why was I there then?) I tried to explain that I was there to serve him my good news, which was that he need not live by the tight restrictive confines of this particular faith. That yes, of course, the choice was and always will be his, but I suppose I was making the point that No longer was this my choice.

I never was a Catholic anyway.... I was always Anglican - in this country, Episcopalian. The high-holy Episcopal, the St. Thomas on Fifth Avenue, the Church of the Advent, the Trinity in Copley Square, the Saint Emmanuel, the St. John's in Winthrop, etc etc and the list goes on and on and of course let us not ever forget The Church of the Resurrection which, I believe, is by West 11th. These and many others and my alma - St. Anne's in the UK, which is where it all began.

So back to the shoes. Why the shoes? Because i bought those shoes right next door to St. Sulpice after the so-called confession non-confession where i left absolutely unblessed although it had been offered, and absolutely unrepentant, although this was offered but i felt i had nothing to repent for, and i felt blessed as altar linen regardless. I could have floated away for i was light as helium and my face shone bright white, no doubt - clear as any bell, as any saint. And then I bought the shoes because I had never seen anything so delicate, so beautiful, so absolutely feminine and almost impractical (although they have turned out to be among the most practical shoes I own), in my life.

Since, I have worn them (needless to say), all over Paris - that trip and others. They have walked the broad avenues of New York many, many times in times both good and bad, hard and not so hard, lost and found. They have tapped their way through Grand Central for reunions of the greatest joy, and they have tapped the same corridors past the violinist who plays the aching O Mio Babino Caro and I have wept. These shoes have seen me through a lot.

They have seen me at different publishing houses, at meetings with agents, at meetings with people who would consider themselves important - and who perhaps I might as well, surely a few, I did and still do and feel lucky to have the privilege of having known or knowing still or having met. These shoes have seen me almost arrested in New York City for passing through a gate for not knowing that this was not allowed even though I flashed my MetroCard and a transit cop stopped me and held me for over an hour, asking for my passport (yep, which is illegal in New York City, along with such questions as "Where are you from?" etc etc I was waiting for the "Known associates...." but she had already radioed in the station my social security number so it was only a matter of time before she knew my entire (rather, or somewhat, radical history and all because I went through a fucking gate, I thought). I remember I had these shoes on then when Officer Negrod stopped me, unclipped her cuffs, as if I were a threat to national security.

Hey, you can never be too careful.... Listen, I'm serious about that. I do not underestimate any threat. I remember the day well: It was about 4:30 on July 22nd, 2008 and I had just finished interviewing the filmmaker D.A. Pennebaker and was on the upper west side of New York city about to get into the subway when I walked through an open gate along with a bunch of other people, flashed my Metro card, which seemed appropriate, when suddenly, at the foot of the stairs, a rather brief looking police woman grabbed (yes grabbed, my arm and asked me why I had gone through the gate). I explained politely what I knew (which was what I knew, which was that I didn't know that I had done anything wrong, etc etc, all of which was true), and asked if she wanted to inspect my bags.

I remember I was wearing my hair pulled back into a sleek pony tail, these shoes, bare legs, a black wrap skirt that fell to the knee, and a taupe silk shift that clung to the body in what I would say were the right places and I had on a pearl choker and pearl earrings. Maybe there is no "type" - anyone could be a terrorist, yes. But did I with my little MacBook and notepad, on my way to the F train look really (come now, really?, let's be honest here) like I was going to blow up, or even had a thought to, or care to, or cross my mind! anything except maybe the gum in my mouth? That would be the only thing I was going to pop.

I get it though. I really do. What I don't get is the discrimination because I had or have an accent. That it is illegal in New York City to ask for another form of identification if someone presents you with an American driver's license (I did), then you cannot ask for further ID. Yet she did. I felt singled out. Make the example of. I wondered if it was the shoes. The shirt? The pony tail?

I flashed back to a girl in school when I was about fifteen who, as I was walking down the hallway one day (and my hair was long then as it is now), said loudly enough that I could hear her, "I'd like to take that fucking pony tail and just grab her by it, fucking thing always swaying back and forth...." And I remember not understanding that hostility either. Does this make me guileless? It doesn't make me stupid - I know this. It means that I do not think whatever way it is that this or that particular person thinks or thought. That a pony tail swinging should be so freakin' upsetting or cause such ire and envy is a source of great mystery to me. But hey... I'm living in the real world.

My shoes - the buckle is broken now. Of course, one cannot have such a history with a pair of shoes like this, all the interviews I have done in these shoes (given and taken as a journalist), and let them slowly dwindle away. No, they have to be fixed. The buckle broke one night this past winter - an absolute deluge was falling. I remember it well, and I walked with a friend through the pouring rain in a desperate attempt to find a taxi (futile, really) after our cheap umbrellas had surrendered to the wind (what do you expect for $5 from the local Korean shop on the corner, or any local shop on the corner in the city - they are built to last about five blocks - a dollar a block, I figure).

So there I am, in my lace and finery (jewels and binoculars, as Dylan says) splashing a path down the avenue arm-in-arm and laughing and freezing and awfully stepping into ankle-deep puddles and there it is, my buckle breaks, just unlooses itself somehow, slips, like the Gordian Knot.

It's funny how under some circumstances this would have been a frustration and would have just pissed me off, but under this, it was simply funny and yet another piece of a sweeter taste that was already in my mouth, honeyed and good. So there was no regret, no remorse, no need to "confess" my broken buckle, no need to run to the church down the street and say "Mon frere, mon frere, vite vite...aidez-moi, j'ai besoin de......" Quoi? What exactly?

Nothing. Spring is coming.
I am making my right way.

Thanks for listening.

s.r.p.

friday: 5:21 p.m.