Tuff Skins
I am bone tired. Monday night’s TKD class was relatively easy, but I ached until yesterday. Last night’s class has me wiped. The muscles around my hip sockets feel like they’ve been peeled like string cheese. The area around my shoulder blades feels like I might have once had wings and they were pulled off. I whine. I’m a big baby. It hurts to walk on my feet.
I have the nastiest feet of anyone I know. I mean like, dog paws. Run on hot gravel with my hooves, hard calloused feet. I try to keep the tops relatively inoffensive… nail polish, etc. But don’t look too close. And for your own safety, don’t touch them. They are nearly as tough on bottom as a year-old labradors.
Sometimes other women (particularly mom-women) make pedicure appointments for me. Once in a while I’ll go. I sense pity and revulsion in the heart of whoever is poised with a razor blade (among other tools and stones) and wants to file or, when desperate, cut off the offending material. I say “Leave it! I need that, these are functional feet.”
I have been working on these callouses since I was at least 17 as a lifeguard. A few years ago I did Afro-jazz, also shoeless. Lots of pivoting and dragging of the feet. Running, walking. And now TKD, with it’s requirements to do things like pivot your foot with it flat on the ground, about 70 degrees, while it holds all your weight. I look around class and all our feet are jacked, not to mention filthy.
The quiet destruction comes from shoes. I think most women can relate to this.
I come home and once my feet are clean, put on massive fuzzy pink slippers and walk around wincing. Sometimes I wear ok shoes, foot-wise, like the docs I have on today. Any shoe with the slightest heel and my arch doesn’t touch the inside of the shoe, so it’s all toes, ball, and heel. The boots with the 4” heel I had on tuesday, don’t even get me started. I have 34 pairs of shoes, after donating about 3 dozen to charity over the last year.
I love feet (in a non fetish way). I want to take pictures of all my friends with their hands touching their bare feet. Somehow feet and hands are so personal, so human and distinctive. But so are their shoes. why do i love shoes so much?
I just remembered being woken up in the wee hours by hearing someone (thing) go “Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.” It was likely a radiator or a pipe, but it woke me because it sounded like a voice in the living room. I like my apartment because it’s 97% sinister-vibe free.
I have a new photo album up - from “real” photos I took with my fully manual Nikon - of a Drag Race in Dupont in Fall ‘01. Soon I’ll put my other stupid long scrolling html pages into this auto-gallery thing so maybe they’ll be easier to see, and it won’t take me so long to get pix up.
neat idea about the hands/feet pictures. my own version of this would be a bit silly (*so* out of character for me ;).
since I spend a lot of time outside in the summer, and since I’ve grown fond of wearing sandals (next best thing to being barefoot), I’m left with sharply defined z-shaped tan lines on the tops of my feet.
people regularly giggle, point, and comment during yoga and other barefoot scenarios.
heehee very nice. it’s all about feet having character and stories. a conversation starter at the very least.
mia, my feet are horribly ugly things. I relate. I relate all too well…
what do you do with your feet? yoga is probably pretty tough on them.
I luv spending money on shoes, more so than any other clothing item. I’ve enjoyed my feet. The shape, the length, the way the shoes make my feet ever so more attractive.
However, my feet tend to stink. Summer, fall, winter, spring they smell, so I’m forced to scrub them with pumice-filled scented gels. The result? They’re usually pretty smooth.
Stinkfoot, darling! heheh Stinkfoot is one of the funniest Frank Zappa songs ever.
In college I had an American Indian Lit course. It was elightening, but dark. One of the things that stuck with me as a Native American Author, in narrative, criticizing “white people” for hiding from the rain, instead of raising your face to the sky and rejoicing in the feeling. Calluses are the same as looking to the raining sky. You get them from feeling. Going barefoot on hot ashpalt. Walking through dewey grass. Being a human animal.
i like that example
Next entry: Sensation
Previous entry: Commercial
