Tuesday, October 21, 2003

City hiking
Every time I am in New York I regret that I left the hiking boots at home, every time I go I look at the boots and think: no, I am not carrying those. This time I did what I have wanted to do every time: I bought a pair. Black, aggressive looking and heavy they protect my feet as if they were held gently in a cradling hand, and the worn pavements and the broken brick of the perpetual construction site that is New York no longer hurt my feet.

But a big city has more than hiking boots. This picure is mainly a message for Susana, to say: I found them! And they are comfortable too! I have been looking for high-heeled red shoes for years, and since my feet match the rest of me, and no part of me has ever comfortably fit into the dainty sizes of feminine fashion, it has been more than a search: it has been a quest.


These two pictures represent something else, as well. They are the first pictures I have managed to post on this blog from the new camera. I had decided I did not want to post fragments of myself, but my own views out, away from my body. I will still do that. However in a way these fragments represent the situation of my life at the moment. After ignoring my own welfare for years until I was done with the PhD, my body strikes back with a vengeance. Both hands hurt, my thumbs are really painful when I try to hold on to something, and at times I lose sensitivity in the three major fingers of the right hand, feeling substituded by a fierce tingling. My body is protesting in fragments against the lack of attention given to it, my arrogant assumption of mind over body. So perhaps this is not wrong, to spend some of the time here focused - not inwards as in introspection, but towards me, seeing the body and its needs for a while.

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