Friday, November 13, 2009

I Don't Wear Shoes

It's true. I don't. That's not totally true. I wear shoes when I have been openly chastised by people who have some kind of power over me. That's annoying.

I stopped wearing shoes for a number of reasons, the initiating one being that my partner discovered several online writings, statistics, and data speaking to the validity of it. She spent some time telling me that I should go barefoot, and I responded by thinking she was totally bonkers.

The idea rolled around in my head while I watched my partner try to live in the world without shoes. Eventually, some sort of temptation manifested, and I found myself wanting to go a month without shoes. Then I did it. It was easy. I went to work barefoot, I drove barefoot, and I went to the grocery store barefoot. It was a good month.

For most of my life before going barefoot, I suffered from pain in my knees, pain in my hips, and foot fungus. The sudden escape from these problems was mind-blowingly immediate. I was able to run and jog for long distances without any pain. My foot fungus was pretty bad, but it cleared up almost entirely when the shoes came off and my feet were able to see sunlight again. A little diligence with a home remedy and some over the counter medication, and I was free of the foot fungus which had plagued me for my entire life before.

Then came the social backlash. When it was just a unique new thing that I was trying, people were charmed; but as time passed, resentment bubbled up towards my lack of shod feet. I was told at the grocery store that it was illegal to be there without shoes (which it is not). There are web sites devoted to archiving letters from the department of health for each state simply saying that it's not illegal to be barefoot in public.

The bus driver no longer wanted my happy, healthy feet to be exposed on the bus, and told me that I couldn't ride without shoes. Apparently, the bus driver (when I say the bus driver, I am referring to a number of bus drivers with whom I have dealt) was concerned that the bus would somehow be more dangerous for my feet than the concrete sidewalks and streets, and littered apartment complexes I had traversed to get to the bus stop. I am certain that there are no official rules on the bus requiring footwear, but I learned to carry moccasins or flip flops in my purse with me whenever I was about to get on the bus. It is far easier to wear sandals for the thirty seconds it takes to get on the bus than to attempt to win an argument.

The point I'm attempting to make with this long, blurry recollection is that shoes are stupid, Victorian-era hangovers that no one should wear. They cause the deterioration of bone an muscle in the body, they stunt the development of small children, and they fuck up balance. They also screw up one's ability to regulate their body temperature. I used to have consistently cold hands, but now my whole body is well-heated, even when I go outside and stand on ice with my little bare foots!

After my first month going barefoot, we took a vacation to Chicago. I brought sandals, as I was concerned with the amount of litter and general grunge that city brandishes. I walked at least six miles in that city barefoot through lots and lots of broken glass, and my feet were fine. My partner helped me pull a single, tiny piece of glass from my foot one of the nights we were there, but it was far from damaging to my foot, and the next day was spent walking through the city without a problem.

I'm sure there are more things to be said about wearing shoes, like the implications that it can negatively affect brain development, or that it can cause accelerated deterioration of bones and muscles (how many people over 40 do you know with bad hips?), or a million other things. It is a discussion I will have to entertain another day, because this post is just too long already.

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Thursday, November 12, 2009

Dear Diary, Today I will Write Some Slightly Interesting Rhetoric...

Life spends its time doing whatever the fuck it wants, and I struggle just to keep up. Every day seems to peel past, leaving a little more of the banana that is life exposed to the stronger forces of entropy. I can clearly recall feeling a sense of purpose to time at an earlier age. Everything felt like it had a purpose until I was booted out of the business end of the safe, developmental institution-train that so many in my generation ride.

Institutionalization in general seems to have been washed away from my surfaces very quickly, some of this erosion starting just before the end of college. Presumably, this quick descent was easy for me, as I have always felt fairly 'outside' of the human race. Indoctrination doesn't take unless you're somewhat normal. My wide range of developmental problems and unique political upbringing have insulated me from normal quite well for quite some time. Not that I haven't tried very hard to fit in at times.

I used to like the internet; it was appealing to me because my body was (and continues to be, in some ways) defective. I've come to realize that the internet is actually just a stinky pit of half-true rhetoric, just like television, and its friends radio, magazines, and newspapers. The voice of the ruling class is dominant in all modern media, perhaps going back into history as well.

Back to the disturbing feeling resultant from breaking the surface tension of institutionalization. Modern pop memes claim so very often to embrace individuality, but they do not. Without fail, the main character in any given show (save very few that are likely to get canceled, or have already been canceled by Fox) is a white, competent male, to whom we are expected to relate without question. This character is often surrounded by unique and quirky characters, who are actually just stereotypes standing around, eating watermelon, and practicing martial arts. I think we, as a screen-parented society, are trained to embrace the individuality of white men. Individuality in others is treated with incredulity- what gives them the right?.

Even within the context of being a white male whose individuality is embraced, though, I've found that breaking out of the herd is rather easy... and not well-received. All you have to do is stop using a product that is a) very profitable, b) heavily marketed, and c) very popular. Perhaps this is what can be the primary focus of this blog over time. More likely, though, this will be a place where I can anonymously post random and disparate thoughts.

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