The Mystery of the Blue Suede Boots

   After spending half of the lovely first Sunday of Fall inside my cave watching football, I felt obliged to go outside and take a walk in the balmy air that seemed not to want to let go of Summer. It turned into one of those walks you take by yourself sometimes to figure out where you’re going and what you want to do with your life. The daylight wore the clouds like a gray sweater it didn’t need after all. Kicking through the season’s incipient layer of leaves in the street, I noticed a few splashes of red, orange and yellow, the stigmata of the autumnal equinox. As I descended into the cooler atmosphere of the shady ravine, I imagined risking a new start and sidestepping the March of Time. But before I could break away from the path I was on, I needed to solve the mystery that had held me in such excruciating suspense for so long. I had to know why The Girlfriend never came home.

    When I’m walking or bike riding down the ravine, I usually have to remind myself to keep my head up and enjoy the scenic view of this sylvan corridor instead of focusing on the the wildly irregular surface of the patched and potholed asphalt. However, no amount of innate concern for my personal safety could have prevented me from noticing  the incongruous presence of two cornflower blue suede, high-heeled half-boots sitting in the glade between the road and the rocky bank of the creek, barely hidden by a lace veil of leaves. Their intensely colored skin and flamboyant design brazenly called out from the quiet woodland browns and greens. It was as if two pieces of sky had fallen to Earth.

    I wondered what the story was behind this oddly conceived still-life. I assumed that a woman had purposely set them there because they were standing next to each other, carefully aligned side by side, the way they might be neatly stored on the floor of her closet. She hadn’t just tossed them away like the various forms of debris thoughtlessly strewn along this precious thoroughfare. It was unlikely that she had forgotten about them. On her way out, the rough terrain under her bare feet would have reminded her. She had probably placed them there temporarily with the intent of retrieving them upon the completion of an adventure in which boots could not play a part. That plan had apparently gone awry in a manner so serious and unforeseen as to cause her to reject her need for their comfort, endure the pain of an unfettered retreat and abandon a once-cherished item of her wardrobe.

    All that remained for the inquisitive passerby was the silent image of a lonely pair of boots, empty of their human companion, unable to follow her, unable to move forward and no explanation to be found.

The Visit

My son, Ruyd, would have been 36 years old today.  I visited the pecan tree in Goodale Park that was planted with some of his ashes. Over the past nine years it has grown tall and broad creating another oasis for Comfesters seeking shade near the Main Stage. There’s a little bronze plaque installed at the base illustrated with the small relief of a squirrel holding an acorn. Ruyd always had a thing for squirrels. A couple splotches of guano had landed on the metal and I cleaned them off with spit on my fingertips. On previous trips, I would talk to the spirit I imagined inhabiting the tree. Today, I was silent, remembering a recent radio discussion of the poem  “On The Nature Of Things”  by Lucretius and his revolutionary idea, for a Roman, that death is the end of a person. There is no one there to talk to anymore. The living are left with only memories. So I just stood there and gazed at the thick trunk and the profusion of thin green leaves.

Suddenly, a squirrel descended from the branches above. His headfirst scramble froze right in front of me as he clung to the rough bark of the trunk, seeming to defy gravity, with his tail flicking in the air above his head that was cocked up to allow his big eyes to look straight into mine. He stayed in that precarious position for what seemed an extraordinary amount of time considering how close he was to me. He showed no fear of me. On the contrary, he seemed mesmerized by me. I stood still and silent, meeting his stare, returning whatever effort he was making to connect with me. And then, I smiled.