Like a shoe you imagine that you are a special fit. Still, like a shoe, companies have been making size 12 for as long as feet have existed. The people native to America used to dip their feet in smoked rubber to keep the thorns from poking their soles. Were these shoes replaceable? Did they often throw away old pieces of rubber in favour for a fresher batch?
He said he would colour the soles of his feet.
Paint them some absurd colour, maybe purple or black,
so every time he would walk down the street
They’d see for themselves, he was leaving a mark.
– Something Quite unlike myself
But what good is making a mark if the rain keeps pouring and erasing every imprint your feet leave in the sand? Hansel and Gretel still got lost despite leaving breadcrumbs every step of the way. So when you looked behind and found nothing but the last step you took and a sea as muddy as the future why were you surprised?
Did it shock you to see a multitude of people walking in the same path?
Were you meant to imagine that somehow your feet were only replicable by your feet? And that the mark you were making was somehow something that would only touch yourself? Still, you trudge forward because forward is the only way you know how to move.
No looking back because in back is what’s done.
– Common
And he who does not know his past is destined to repeat it
– Williams
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
– Fitzgerald
And now, like a shoe, you find their feet have outgrown you. You know it isn’t personal but, somehow, it feels that way. You watch as they continue to move and wonder how many times you will be resold at gikomba before it’s over.