I write from an Amtrak Roomette, which is my favorite place to be in the whole entire world. I really would love to pretend that in fact I love some room in a library, or a corner of a storied park, or some hidden section of some museum that is free to the public on Wednesdays. But at the end of the day, I walk into the Amtrak Roomette and I experience a feeling that is different than all the other feelings. Maybe it is because I know that I will be allowed to sit in silence and stare out a window at remote bodies of water stretching past me for twenty-one hours in a row, and no one is going to be like, “Hey, could you take out the recycling?” Or, “Isn’t it about time for you to take a walk to the market?” (Granted, the person who tells me to do those things is always me, and in some kind of perfect world I could feel this way all the time, not just on big metal boxes outfitted with compact little bunk bed rooms.)
But anyway, I would like to write about my feet. I have already started to write this essay twice, and I didn’t get very far. I think that this is because I have some excellent stories about feet and I’m struggling to find the details that are most integral; everything feels important. Last time I tried to write about my feet, I spent a whole 3,000-plus words just explaining why I love my friend Bethany. That is a nice thing, but it has very little to do with my feet. It has to do with Bethany and my desire to show her in a public way that I value the person she is in the world.
Years ago, there was a form of writing called “The Personal Essay.” This was a type of essay that was intended to be read by only one person. You put care into it, like you might put care into a baking a little cake or a knitting a sweater (also presumably intended for one person), but then you put it in the mail like it was just a letter. A Personal Essay isn’t about you as much as it is intended for a single other. What made us collectively decide to stop writing these? My initial foot essay was a Personal Essay that I should have put in the mail to my friend Bethany. Which might have been overkill, because we are roommates.
Anyway, there are four foot things I would like to tell you about, and while I’ll bet you can’t imagine why you should be bothered to read an essay about my feet — and maybe you SHOULDN’T be bothered! — I promise to draw some potentially useful conclusions. HOWEVER: since you may not want to read four entire mini foot essays, I am linking each of them separately here, so you can pick the one that is most fitting for this moment in your life.
Here we go.