Walking Around "Barefoot"

Blogger is increasingly coming up with new ways to "monetize" the blogging experience, allowing you to make money by putting up ads or amazon.com links. I'm a little leery of the idea, perhaps because I'm still wedded to the idea of artistic expression for its own sake, uncorrupted by commercialism--or something like that. It's hard not too, typing this post as I do in a non-commercial radio station.

But I have to say something about a recent purchase of mine: the Vibram Five Fingers.

I'm not going to use this space to wax poetic about the merits of barefoot shoes and how they let you feel connected with the earth man. Anyway the company's website already does that pretty well. I am going to tell a little story.

Since I got the shoes, I've tried to regularly go on short jogs around my neighborhood in order to get my feet used to running in a different way, and get used to the "shoes". On one such occasion I went out to the small park near my house in an effort to find more grass to run on. This park was apparently one of the reasons my parents decided to live where we live. "We'll be right next to a park! We can go running there whenever we want!" This didn't turn out happening very much...

I myself had not been back to this park in quite a while. One particularly memorable occasion sticks out though, as it did when I was finishing up my jog. A long time ago my girlfriend at the time and I picknicked, by the bank of the stream that runs through this park, and thinking of this I stopped there to sit for a while after my jog. My memory of that day is undoubtedly effected to the events that followed it, in the way that so many memories are changed by future events. Still, I remember it as one of my happiest experiences. We'd ridden bikes from where she lived down to the park and brought along some wine and cheese. It was the sense of peace and freedom that I remember most. I had the sort of feeling that makes one feel like this could go on forever, like there could be many other days like this one.

She had at one time told me about walking up and down streams out in the metroparks, barefoot, in the summer when it's really hot. She suggested we do this together when the summer came, and it was something I looked forward to as the spring went on.

Due to an added benefit of my "shoes" allowing me to go sockless, I decided to wade into the stream, which came up to my ankles. I walked upstream, with a sort of childlike sense of wonder at having gained access to a part of my home that had always been here, but just slightly out of reach. It's so easy and yet it's often the easy things that get put off indefinitely. It's a shame, because you don't always get another shot at it.

Remembering Birthdays

I've never remembered his birthday. Perhaps its because other family members would always remember before I would, so that I didn't have to, the way programming numbers into my phone prevents me from remembering even my best friends' cell phone numbers. Or the way that I would never take my bike in for service because dad would always take it in before I got around to it, and then lecture me about being irresponsible...

My dad was unassuming in that way--he did a lot of things without asserting his right to recognition for them at first. So perhaps it fits that he wouldn't push the issue of his birthday.

There is also the proximity to my parents' anniversary. Their anniversary is only a few days before his birthday, and this year, as last year when I wasn't here, it would be a difficult one for my mom. Something had to be done. And I realized then, that without any effort of my own, the issue would not be taken care of. Dad quite literally, wouldn't be able to take care of it for me.

So I picked her up some flowers. A small gesture, but one that made a difference.

I've always been a fan of the aphorism "it's the thought that counts" and with it the implicit belief that the important things in life are what you think and feel towards things. I've thought that the strength of a writer has to do with the originality of his ideas and that the packaging of those ideas was secondary, a means to an end. It is for this reason forgetting my dad's birthday worries me--I wonder what it suggests about my feeling towards him, our relationship.

But much of the time it is what you do that is really more important. Good intentions will only get you so far.

Funerals are thick with this. People are quick to promise that they will do "anything" for you, and that you have but to ask. But as it happens, people who are mourning generally have no idea what they want or need and lack the initiative to ask for it. It can at times be even more intimidating to have to remember to call these people who have offered their help, as though you owe it to them.

A friend just lost her stepdad the same week as my dad's birthday. Every time someone dies now, I feel as though I will know what to say, armed with my increased intimacy with death. But the words still aren't there, and the feelings are still muddled. It's a difficult thing for everyone. It is for things like this when deliberateness is important. When simply doing things even if they are the wrong things, is the best way to help someone. By putting a reminder on your calendar to do what needs to be done, to bring the flowers or the wine, regardless of whether you remembered the date.