The Tiny Ways You Love Someone: Or Soft Feet

The finest inheritance you can give to a child is to allow it to make its own way, completely on its own feet. -Isadora Duncan

After two days of self deprecation, frustration, and general blue-ness, I have successfully de-funked.

I'm getting good at this.

This is a whole discussion that I could expound upon later, but when I sink into these boughts of mini-depression or sadness, I naturally become more introverted.  (This obviously isn't singular to me.)  I become more pensive and subsequently more artistically minded (generally speaking.)  Daily life merits innermonologues and constant semi-poetic narration (or at least I glorify it to be so) and every event qualifies as a subplot in an indie film.  I'm much more productive in a creative manner when I'm sad or alone--which helps elucidate why most artists/musicians constantly battled depression--that and the fact that they became dissatisfied with the mundanity of daily life; I digress.  Regardless, I've noticed a recurring motif (is that redundant?) in my life the past couple of days--water, cleansing, and catharsis.  (Said observation would not have occurred had I been the happy version of Katharine.  I would have been too busy being happy.)

This afternoon, I watched one of my favorite films: Big Fish.  It wasn't as grand or glorious as I recall it being when I was 14 (13?) but it was still thoroughly enjoyable.  I love Elfman's score, the whimsical nature of the cinematography, the vivid colors, the costumes, the slightly over-the-top nature of it all.  An overromanticized version of an extraordinary biography.  Anyway, for those who don't know the film, Albert Finney plays Edward Bloom--a man who is larger than life, a storyteller by nature--to the point where it's indiscernable what is fact and what is fiction.  The whole point, ultimately, is that it doesn't matter.  Fact or fiction, his stories are what characterize him.

Transition to my life.  Rehearsals continue to be fantastic.  However, all this delicious dancing has marked a triumphant return of what I call "dancer feet."  (This is not a pretty thing.)  This entails blisters, bruises, and callouses.  (Callouses are your friend. For realz.)  At any rate, they are no longer lovely buffed and pedicured; they are janky and unattractive.

(I promise this will all tie in together eventually...hopefully.)

Perhaps influenced by the water/catharsis/cleansing motif in Big Fish, I felt compelled to just soak my calloused, blistered dancer feet in the bathtub.  So I did. And as I washed my feet, poured lotion on them, lathered them, and rinsed them (minding my lovely new decorative additions) I had the strangest memory arise--my grandmama washing my feet, tickling them, and telling me how soft they were as a child.  I remember thinking back then that I wanted them to be well-worn--that I didn't really like the softness.  I always had a problem with being "young" (which is something I'll undoubtedly regret in a few years.)  This doesn't mean that I don't ever act my age or have oodles of immature moments and bad choices; I do.  But I always wanted to be a step ahead--be the mature one.  I was the kid you resented who immediately befriended teachers and your parents.  I hung out in the teachers lounge in kindergarten.  I'd rather sit at the "adult table" than with the kids.  Fortunately and unfortunately, life granted me my wish; I had to grow up relatively quickly.  And bizarrely, I somehow feel as though my feet are indicative of that.  You can tone and lotion your legs till kingdom come, but your feet are a bit more honest--they're bound to give you away.  I don't know that having "lived-in" feet is quite as romantic as I'd envisioned it when Grandmama played with my little soft five-year-old toes or not, but it definitely marks a change of sorts--and clearly represents an interesting bit of nostalgia.

I guess this is sort of a mini-20-something version of Nora Ephron's "I Feel Bad About My Neck" manifesto.  You can fix anything (surgery or not) to defy your age, but your neck is something you can do nothing about.  I suppose feet are the same way.  Alas, I suppose there's not much that I can do about it.  Besides write unnecessary blogs about them, and keep walking.