One shoe can change your life
–Cinderella
He sits on the third park bench on the left side of a different garden every month, and has been everyday, for the past three years and twenty-eight days. He sits with his feet together, knees apart as if they’ve offended one another. He wears black pants, black shoes, a black belt with a rusted silver buckle, black suspenders, and an all black long sleeved- t-shirt. Those who pass by wonder if he’s grieving. He sits and stares through empty wronged eyes, magnified by square lenses. He never carries any belongings except for a recent edition of John Steinbeck’s, The Winter of Our Discontent, which is always open to the same page; 13. Captured here is a rare photograph of him on the move, in his silky black shoes that inspired the suspenders.
Ever hear the saying, “‘till the cows come home”? This may be difficult to accept but it began with her. Obsessed with the next door farmer in Kentucky Village, she would spend every minute possible walking north and south of the same paths every day in hopes of finding him, or even better, him seeing her and expressing mutual desires. Why she never knocked on his door, wrote a letter, or gave a telephone ring was beyond the neighborhood, who knew all too well of her affections. However, when the cows went into the barn at an unpredictable time every night, she knew her farmer would not be seen again until the next sunrise. She would wait until the cows came home. When she moved to the city, London to be exact, she knew her chances of ever having her farmer love her back were slim. So she killed a cow, made the shoes, and is now the head designer at British Vogue.
A hero to her community, for she gave up everything at the needs and wants of others. She assured her neighbors were fed, and cooked large dishes for a weekly buffet three weeknights in the center of her community. All were invited. She would ask that others contribute or assist with the cooking but nobody ever did. As those around her would ravish in her goods and ask for money, books, and food, she lost everything, even her clothes. That is why these shoes don’t fit, they were left behind in the third stall of the bathroom at The Old Vic theatre and all she holds on to.
​Stuck in an arranged marriage with an older and wealthy gentleman to please her grandparents, she loved another. She would be shunned from the city if they knew of her love affair with the woman who bartended next door. When the bartender had to leave the city forever, both knew the extreme danger if they traveled together. Insisting that her heart could never work without her bartending lover, she ripped it out and placed it in her biker boot for the bartender to take with her. Four years later, both were found poisoned and dead by their arranged spouses. The safely kept biker boot and her heart grew twelve times the size because at last, they reunited with each other. Now the boot and the heart live on a high London tower, watching over those who can not be with their true love and instead wear their hearts in their soles.
​He screamed and cursed at authority figures every time they raised their voices, and he was always told to “bite his tongue.” Well, he could not do that for obvious reasons so instead he would bite and suck on small packets of ketchup. It took years, but he eventually became addicted to most condiments, though especially ketchup. The doctors warned him about all of the risks and sugar he was putting into his body, encouraging him to quit cold turkey. He keeps some on his shoe everyday, not so close that he can smell it and would be forced into temptation, but close enough that it is on his person as a security blanket.