i am a good little clock

This picture comes from Animal Sleep Stories, the website of artist Daria Tessler, whose work I've recently fallen in love with. Her illustrations remind me of pictures in the 1970's back issues of Cricket magazine I used to obsessively pore over back in elementary school. (There was a supply closet with several cardboard boxes full of them. I used to hide in that closet when I was cutting class.) Kind of blocky and flat and simply colored, but highly detailed and surreal. Children playing with realistically drawn animals or odd-looking monsters. I especially like this one, with its cephalopod, pelican, seaplants, and androgynous, vaguely Audrey Hepburn-ish reclining figure smiling amusedly at the wild things surrounding her (his?) bed.

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Back in Pennsylvania (with my parents, siblings, dog, and the German exchange student they're hosting for the month) for Fall Break week, I've been luxuriating in the purple-painted, poster and postcard-collaged walls of my room, a floor that is not made of linoleum, a fully stocked refrigerator, ect. All the things that're scarce in college dormitories.

I have these boots, brown, sturdy, that I bought in a Chicago thrift store one year, seven months, two weeks and I'm-not-sure-how-many-days ago. I have this thing where I kind of perseverate on shoes, so that even though I probably own more than one pair at any given time, there will be one pair that I default to, that I wear far more often than any of the others, that I'll be reluctant to retire or leave behind. That I will, generally, wear to pieces inside of three years. My Chicago boots were doodled on with liquid paper, paint, and sharpie markers. They explored abandoned train stations, grocery stores, and farm houses. They walked me all over Germany, protected my feet from rain in North Carolina and snow in Pennsylvania and broken glass in Tennessee. Ran with me to catch up to a hundred departing busses. They've served me well and true and faithful, my boots. But, see, the soles are worn down now to the point where they've lost almost all their traction. The lining inside the shoes is just a few tatters of black fabric. There are small holes around the toes where stitching has come undone. They're still basically wearable, but they're aging fast. I knew it was time to start looking for new default footwear, but you can't force that kind of special bond with an object. It has to be a spontaneous connection. I find I can really only get it from thrifted shoes, stuff that's been worn before. I don't know why. Maybe some ghost of the previous owner lingers in each shoe, endowing it with personality. Maybe I'm just so used to secondhand clothing I can't really feel at ease in anything else. I don't know. Anyway, though, I went to the local Goodwill yesterday to look around, mostly as an excuse to take a walk in the gold October sunshine, not really expecting to find anything good. I did, of course. Look, aren't they lovely?

They're like Alice in Wonderland shoes. Or little girl Frankenstein's monster shoes. They're black and shiny and they've got little buckles and even this stippled fleur de lis design on the toes (you can't see in in the photograph), but they've also got some seriously thick soles and aren't remotely flimsy or hard to run around in. It is like magic, when you're idly poking through a rack of children's flip-flops and ugly men's basketball sneakers and giant fishing waders and you find some really neat shoes that seem like they got stuck in there by accident, and then they actually fit you to boot. And they're seven dollars.



Well, boots, it's been good, and I'll probably keep you around in my closet for a while yet. But I think you have a replacement, for all intents and purposes.

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Here, have another Daria Tessler drawing for the road:

I want to write a story about this one. It seems to ask for one, don't you think? Something about that overflowing knapsack of tangerines...