These Boots, The Ones I Am Thinking Of

 

These Boots, The Ones I Am Thinking Of

I sit here thinking, and seriously, over such a trivial matter as boots. These old looking and beat up boots. One pair in a line of the same make, model and style. They have been replaced, with a new pair that looks—and soon will feel—just the same. They cost more, but inflation is inevitable. The specifications are the same, on paper. And, to be honest, in practical reality they are the same as well. That is why I have bought the same ones this time, and other times. Not year after year, and not quite a decade in between each either, but the same each time, when the time rolls around.

These are worse for wear than others in the line of succession. The first pair saw my first major hikes: my first ascents to mountain peaks, and first portages. Those are long gone, and went without this sort of deliberation. Maybe because I was younger and less sentimental. Maybe because they were less expensive. Well, maybe not if you calculate for inflation. But I am neither an economist, nor am I skilled in math, so inflation is more of an abstraction than anything.

These broke open with holes; the others didn’t. But they also scaled more peaks and pulled kids on sleds through the snow more. They even put out a budding forest fire we happened to come across. Without extra water, or sand and a decent shovel, they stomped and kicked and did the trick. And that is when the holes started, most likely. The pants and shirt showed holes right away and are gone already. The boots opened up slower, and still managed to reach the ceiling of the land I call home before they really broke open. But boots take time to break (and break in) that pants and shirts don’t.

These are not the boots of a peasant woman. No German can claim that and take them from me. No obtuse or begrudging academic can return them to me either, or would even bother on the off chance that someone tried to take them from me. They are mine. They are not a peasant’s, nor are they an artwork. No one cares about them. No one but me. They have never been painted, nor are they the focus of even a single, simple photo. Not the focus of a shot, but they are in the frame—or just outside the frame— of pictures that I have. The pictures and the fame— of the cameras and lenses— are even more artificial now when images are too easy and ubiquitous. Not painted, but snapped.

These boots were often on my feet as I took some great pictures. They are not a darling of the artificial frame of the camera. And my pictures are not shared or well known. I am only thinking of pictures that are personal, not anything of general interest. Famous? As far away from that as can be imagined: in kilometers hiked on rough, or nonexistent, trails in places people never go or even hear about. Pictures taken (or memories made) in places poor shepherds see and sometimes tread, but probably don’t even remember.

Yet, here I sit. Here and now (with the next generation almost broken in and mostly comfortable on my feet) wondering about these boots. They are mass produced and worn out. Do I reserve them for a later day, in a peripheral place not yet made, where they might still be useful? Hold them to be stored in the front closet of a cabin not yet made? Or a in place made but rarely visited? Held there as a standing reserve, just in case. (Or just kept as an impulse of archive fever?)

Or do I give them away? Can I donate them? Or is that an insult? A slap in the face. They are still useful, in reality… especially if push comes to shove. But in the shape they are in, they look bad. They look unreliable, but they are not useless. But looks these days… Given the way they look, will they be used? I know they could be. But I won’t rely on them. So, to give them away and expect them to be used: is that an insult? A looking down on someone? Or should I just burn them? Like an offering, or an old-time funeral rite. But they are just objects. Not matter what went into making them, they are just things. And a rite, and honor, for a thing? The smoke will rise like an offering… but to what and for what?

I don’t need the heat from that fire. And the smoke will do I don’t know what to people or nature. Still, maybe burning them keeps them forever mine, and forever gone from everywhere but my mind. Gone up to the sky in part, and also gone back to the earth in part. Back to the earth they helped me tread upon. Not left sitting useless, or used by someone else.

Too many questions. Too many angles. Too much (personal) history. Too many (personal) thoughts. They are just boots after all. But that was just a painting too, of boots. But that painting was done by a master. Was it a master work though? Still, through some writing, it became so much more than just anyone painting in the catalog of a master, at least to some. Yet, why? More importantly: what came of it? And what came of my boots, and the use I put them to?

So these are not just boots, but more. And that was not just a painting, or an essay. All of them are more. But why? They are more than just objects, or nothing, for people that feel something about them and make them more. For people thinking on them. Or thinking in them, or about them. Or when making them. Them: the painting, the picture, the boots, the memories, the thoughts. All of that. The painting became so much more. The pictures too, and even the boots… Not all boots, but some. Some pictures and paintings too. But why? No, more importantly: what came of it?

So, these are not just boots, but more. And the same can be said of the pictures and paintings. More because of the thinking. My boots are more because of my thinking about them. When something comes of that? Even though nothing more may come from the boots… And for who will it come? Just me? Still, that is what makes things things and more than nothing.

It is the human thought that makes things more. Use uses them up, and that too is not nothing. But thought makes things last more than their use, their physical purpose. Use can be so mindless and fleeting. It is the thought, and often not much more that makes them something. Often it is nothing more than thought that makes them more than nothing. It is nothing less than that that makes them less than nothing. But what, physically, could be less than human thought? The physical nothingness of human thought that none-the-less makes anything, or everything, more than nothing. These boots are a place where thought meets, confronts and even makes, the physical something more than just a mere physical thing.