polished shoes

It was so utterly complete and clear that I hardly dare write about it. It reached back what felt like a million years until the past curled around and bit the present on the ass. It was like an ancient taste whose known-ness over-rode anything as insignificant as time. It was astounding to me and probably meant nothing to anyone else....

It was, as some Buddhists sometimes ooze, "ordinary."

Because it is part of the regimen of the age I am, I went to a doctor's office this morning. I was early, grabbed a relatively-new issue of "Time" magazine and waited my turn with the one other 50's-ish fellow who was likewise waiting. He was wearing a conservative tie, a tan sports jacket, and a pair of neatly-creased black slacks. He had some sort of hospital-esque badge hanging from his neck on the left side. I couldn't read it without my glasses.

My eye, like some Star-Wars bit of light-speed gadgetry, scoped him out and filed him away in a nanosecond. Until something reached out and smacked me in the head:

The man was wearing black shoes.

They were polished and I knew in an instant that he had polished them himself. Personally. I knew because I too had once polished my shoes ... shoes that were not uncreased or brand new or plastic-looking in the way of so much that is for sale these days. The man cared for his shoes ... as we had cared for our boots in the army ... as people had once kept what was useful and broken-in.

It came to me in a rush.

All of it -- what had been experienced and what was no longer experienced. I knew that they were not new and they were, in their way, better than new. No one would spit-polish them as once, but still ... great movements rise up, shine in the sun, and are gone.

Polished shoes ... no one does that shit any more.