I water her every day

About this time last summer, my espresso machine clogged up. After several failed attempts to clean it, I gave up the double espresso filter basket for dead, and resorted to drinking singles. This week, out of the blue, as if I was waking from a stupor, it occurs to me that I might find a replacement basket online without having to replace the entire machine. Twenty-four hours and twelve dollars later, I resume double-espresso mornings. It's a productive and creative week, and also a happy week. I can't help but wonder if all my breakdowns and tirades, my crises of faith in myself and in others, my angers and resentments, and even the desperate explorations into myself — all my emotions — were simply the result of not enough coffee.

It turns out that my tomato plant is cherry tomatoes after all — pluck one, pop it in your mouth, and it's gone. I'd wanted something more substantial. After some initial disappointment, I find I am able to harvest a couple dozen at once after all. This balcony garden yields meagre offerings, though I am grateful for the herbs. I will plant more and better next year.

After 141 days of working from home, I return to the office to retrieve some personal effects. I had a scheduled entry time, with specific instructions about arriving with my own PPE, not arriving by public transportation. I walk the eight kilometres; I arrive early and wait. No one is there to verify my protective gear. No one is there to make me sign a waiver or to attest to being symptom free. No one is there except one of the porters, who looks mildly shell-shocked, like working in isolation has driven him slightly mad — the graveyard shift in broad daylight, with only the ghosts of employees to clean up after.

I recover two pairs of shoes from the cloakroom. I pick my Fluevogs out from amid several dozen sneakers, all neatly lined up expecting their owners to step into them at the start of every workday. The last time I went to the office I was still wearing winter boots.

There are no laptops on the desks, but there are monitors and wires, pens and notepads. Sweaters on the backs of chairs swiveled as if abandoned mid conversation. I am reminded of the pictures of Chernobyl schoolrooms, only this feels more invisible, less organic.

There is an uprooted plant on the floor of the cafeteria. The weeping tree in our studio looks as if it might crumble if I stroke its leaves — it's cried itself dry. Remarkably, my happy bean plant still looks happy — its arms are straining toward the window and it's thirsty, but I swear it twitched for joy as I approached, my every step sending tremors through the bones of the building.

I sit the bean in my bag atop the reference books I came for, padded out with my hoodie. I grab the office-issue headphones. I empty my drawer of instant soup packets and handcream — I may need those.

The rest of the day feels weirdly decadent: hanging out with my sister on her terrace, window shopping, lunching out at an open-air market. Is life normal again? How come I didn't get the memo? Ich will in die Zukunft reisen.

At home, one of the indoor plants continues to have the company of mushrooms. One sprouts and dies, another takes its place. 

Since lockdown, there are now four novels I have read that I have not (yet?) written about here. I continue to read essays by Didion and stories by Carrington ("A Man in Love"):

We went through a door at the back and reached a room where there was a bed in which lay a woman, motionless and probably dead. It seemed to me that she must have been there a long time, for the bed was overgrown with grass.

"I water her every day," the greengrocer said thoughtfully. "For forty years I've been quite unable to tell whether she is alive or dead. She hasn't moved or spoken or eaten during that time. But, and this is the strange thing, she remains warm."

We are overgrown — by masks and gloves and viral effluvia, by our metaphorical mushrooms — but somehow we remain warm.  

Temporal groovyness

After feeling a little lovelorn the past few days, I resolved it was nothing some expensive shoes couldn't rectify, so yesterday, having had a few glasses of scotch in the boardroom at the end of a long workweek, I went shopping.

The shoes are fabulous, but this morning I realize the bag they came in offers better therapy for my soul than does the footwear.

End of story

In New York City last month, I treated myself to some shoes. We hadn't set foot in a single bookstore (gasp!), so it's the least I could come away with. But it's only this past week that the Montreal streets were finally entirely snow-free and I could wear them out. So I've been wearing them. They're my new editing shoes.

The brand is Poetic Licence, and this particular model of shoe is called "End of Story." Complete strangers have complimented me on my shoes. They're my best foot forward, my final word, my stamp of approval. My end of story.

God, death, and atheism

Brenner and God

I read Brenner and God, by Wolf Haas, earlier this summer and thoroughly enjoyed the story and the fresh manner of its telling (see my review).

A Q&A with the book's translator on the publisher's website offers some insight into the author's style:

What constitutes good style has been drummed into us to such an extent that, as good readers, we still bristle when a writer upsets those ingrained ideas. And what I see Wolf Haas doing is prying open this chasm between, on the one hand, how language behaves, and on the other, how language is enforced — and then letting his reader fall right in.

********************

Death in Breslau

I don't recall how I first came across the series of Eberhard Mock investigations by Marek Krajewski, but they're among the most curious mysteries I've ever read.

Melville House Publishing is set to release the first novel, Death in Breslau, in September.

The first three books in this series were previously released by Quercus Publishing — and I've written a bit about them here (Death in Breslau, The End of the World in Breslau, Phantoms in Breslau) — but I'm pleased that Melville House will be making (at least) the first book available to a whole new audience, even while I'm trying to get my hands on the fourth: The Minotaur's Head.

Set in interwar Breslau (now Wrocław), these books offer a weird view on a society that is a historical and cultural mix of German, Polish, and Jewish. Nostalgic for the past, that society is shown to be perverted and corrupted and completely hypocritical in its drive to be modern and free-thinking. I enjoyed the first book particularly for how the police investigation was shown to be conducted amid inquiries regarding internal affairs and with a hovering Gestapo presence. Dark and original.

********************

Shoes for atheists

At long last, atheists have their own shoes — atheists have soles too!

These shoes started off as a Kickstarter project. They look well-crafted and divinely comfortable. And they have a sense of humour — a black hole for a logo and a sole stamped with a message.

I haven't decided which colour I want, but I love the write-up for the literarily inspired "Nabokov cream":

Is there anything more beautiful in life than the pure, sweet, wondrous innocence of an unblemished, open and untainted soul?

Yes... the delightful process of getting that sole so fucking filthily dirty, and soiling its purity with so much titiliating sin and hedonistic whoredom that it can scarcely remember what colour it was to begin with.

This creamy, ivory, blank canvas of a shoeling is resplendent in her off-white milky maidenhood... but not for long, the little nymph, for you will introduce her to the real world... blemishing and sullying her with every step you take.

You're about to make a grown-up of this shoe.

The website as a whole is a cheeky bit of atheism-awareness, which maybe the world could use a little bit more of. And I could use some new shoes.

Crammed with shoes

It was still raining. Paris was gray, dirty, and confused — a nightmare. It was crammed with people who had no idea where they were going; crammed with streets, the ones around les Halles where people slipped on rotting vegetables; crammed with shop windows that were crammed with shoes. It was the first time he'd noticed all the shoe stores, the hundreds and hundreds of pairs on their shelves.

— from The Man Who Watched Trains Go By, by Simenon.

It shames me, and fills me with regret, to realize that for all the times I've been to Paris, I never once bought shoes there. Scarves and purses and berets, and even a haircut, but never shoes. I must rectify this.

This week I am far from Paris, and far from Montreal too. In many ways one might say my hometown is the opposite of Paris. But today, I bought some exquisite shoes, all manner of greens, from lime to olive, on gold-flecked platforms, with wide silk ribbons to swathe my ankles.

So for the moment I am content to let Simenon walk me through Paris. Through his eyes, but in my own new shoes.

Slingback

A moment's consideration for the copper-toned slingbacks, worn this week after months of hibernation (with the exception of that romantic little vacation break) — my favourite shoes ever! — now on their last legs. (Pictured here in happier days.)

I loved your subtle points, the way you swooshed sexily around my ankle. You were the perfect height, your heel slender yet solid. Your flexible sole carried me along through some difficult times. You fit me like a glove.

Almost three glorious years we've had! We had a rough patch in our second summer, when your heel needed mending and I couldn't be sure it was worth the cost. Forgive me! It was such a small price to extend our time together.

Remember that time on the beach in Varadero? Our last great adventure. Today you let spill a few grains of Cuban sand from your seams, and it brought a smile to my face.

It's been a difficult week for footwear. These are days in which there are sightings within minutes of each other of both fur-topped boots and flip-flops. But you handled the situation perfectly and with finesse.

I need to replace you, but this year's model is a little too tall, too flashy, bares a little too much toe. I can't bear to be parted from you just yet. Please, one more walk together...

Monsterpiece Theater presents

The Taming of the Shoe



"To thine own self be shoe."

Fetish

I make the mistake of going to the post office at lunch. The post office at Ogilvy department store. I don't recall there being a post office at Ogilvy, but seeing as there isn't in fact a post office around the corner where I thought there was one, and seeing as I need to mail a package, and skeptical as I am of the word of my coworker on this matter, I have little time and no better option to try.

The problem with the post office outlet at Ogilvy is that its customers are primarily Ogilvy clientele. They are snooty, long-winded, and with some complex gripe or concern, perhaps justifiable but ultimately boiling down to the point that they deserve satisfaction, that they deserve better, that they are somehow deserving.

So I face a long line of select people, a rare breed (but not so rare as I'd thought) who know this outlet exists and believe it exists solely for them.

The really big problem with the post office at Ogilvy is that it's at Ogilvy. Fourth floor. One must traverse pretty much the whole of the first floor to reach an elevator or escalator. Past the cosmetics counters and all those lovely (expensive) hats and pretty (expensive) scarves and Burberry goods and Hugo Boss shoes (expensive and expensive).

I try for the elevator first but don't hold out much hope. Inexplicably, in all my shopping expeditions at Ogilvy I have the sense that I am completely alone, that I am privileged to be their only customer, but the elevator is always full and always going down, likely for the panini sandwiches, or possibly the toilets. As I expect, there is a crowd waiting; four young, polished, name-tagged women, but their number is in essence doubled, as each grasps a naked mannequin by the waist.

The escalator then. An ascent through temptation. I resist; I have post office business. But once completed, I lose my bearings a little; the wide aisle is temporarily aswirl with more women gripping mannequins. The way down, something breaks loose inside me, opening up a little hell.

I pause between escalator flights. There are shoes everywhere. Lovely, lovely shoes.

I note that many of them bear labels I've never heard of, at prices I shouldn't consider reasonable.

I dart about aimlessly and awkwardly. I tuck one foot behind the other As if a professional might be so easily thrown off! to not notice that my shoes — the ones currently on my feet — are, well, cheap. I am less ostrich, head in the sand, than flamingo — no! more drab, more common: seagull — pulling its leg up into a belly of feathers; less to hide — my embarrassment or my shoes — than to distract from, with odd behaviour.

I've yet to determine my philosophy of shoes: better to have a couple pairs of good, solid, well-constructed, expensive shoes (and here I assume also comfortable) or cheap pairs aplenty aspiring to the latest trend (along with a healthy supply of bandaids)? (I remember one impulsive summer of shoes, cheap plastic in primary colours, feet to match.) I generally compromise, on all elements, and this leaves me unsatisfied.

In Ogilvy I stand on 20 dollars' worth of rope fiber, 3 inches of it, some black canvas running over my toes, the whole contraption secured by ribbon round my ankles. Strangely, I love these shoes. Even as I stand in Ogilvy. I should not betray them.

I've spent most of the last few years behind my desk at home barefoot. When it got cold, I burrowed my feet into a puddle of blanket. When I came to Montreal 5 years ago, I had one good, solid (expensive) pair of shoes. I wore them into the ground. I got by in sneakers and an old pair of sandals while I searched for a replacement. I found them — the exact same shoes; I called out my size, put down my money, and went away with a skip in my step. It took a while for me to notice that they were tight. I wore them when I had to wear nice shoes, but my feet weren't very happy about it. It's taken me years to come to terms with the fact that the weight of pregnancy somewhat flattened my high arches, causing my shoesize to increase.

I got great shoes in Washington last fall. I was overjoyed at the prospect of working in an office, for giving me a reason to wear them. I wore them proudly for a couple weeks. Then suddenly it was summer. My fall styles would not do.

I spend most lunch hours shopping for shoes. Not buying them, mind — mostly looking, hoping, rarely coveting. Since starting this job, I've purchased: 1 pair sandals, Italian, solid, classic, but a little boring, but at 75% off, too good a deal to pass up; 1 pair pointy-toed slingbacks, in cognac, the sling being kind of swooshy, and very sexy, I think; 1 pair beribboned canvas-fiber things, cheap, as noted above.

I look for shoes everywhere now. I've come to recognize coworkers and fellow commuters not by their faces but by their footwear. I try to size up the workplace, both employees and the environment — better to wear $200 flip-flops (I hate flip-flops!) or discount store pumps? In the metro, I no longer try to make out what passengers are reading — I check out what's on their feet.

They are almost none of them perfect. I look for telltale signs — the bump of a blister, the hint of a limp. If only just a little less this, more that — less strappy, more pointed, not so high, less sparkle, more red.

I walk out of Ogilvy, tall on my cheap shoes (but I can wear them only so many hours a day), without having bought anything. I'm searching for the perfect shoe (Why is there not a shoe store called Cinderella?). A shoe that grounds you while letting you float above the world. I deserve a perfect shoe. Or two.