Yes, I have shoes . . .

Boots. God, I love them.

Having grown up in the land of Imelda Marcos, I suppose I was bound to develop a shoe fetish at some point. But until January of this year, I prided myself on being the girl who had only two pairs of shoes -- army boots for the winter, worn with everything from jeans to flowing flowery La Cache dresses, and Birkenstocks for the summer, worn in my youth with hairy arm pits and a don’t-mess-with-me ‘tude. I did not have a shoe issue. That was for other people.

After my fire, I noticed a marked increase in my desire for shoes. Well, boots, more specifically. Women’s apparel has rarely lured me inside a shop, but suddenly I could not walk past a shoe store without pressing my nose to the glass and salivating.



And I mean that: I salivated, for real. Was this new desire for boots literally rewiring my reptile responses? I mean, you can’t exactly eat shoes! Yet there must be a reason why the words “delicious!” “scrumptuous” and “edible” came to mind.

What was this new boot love and why did it have such a grip on me? I have always wondered about men and their cars – like who the fuck cares what kind of vehicle you drive? It’s for getting from A to B, so what does it matter what emblem festoons its hood? And even if some stranger on the street thinks your car looks cool, it’s not like you’ll ever know that person’s thought, so how does it benefit you? Or, it’s not like even if you did know that person’s thought it would improve your finances, your love life, or anything else in your world, except perhaps boost your ego for a nano second. Someone admiring your car is not someone admiring you.

So what’s the car desire about?

A few years ago, my friend Kim and I shortened the term “issues” to “shoes” and now I see the connection clearly, tracing my new shoe fetish back to this metonym.


Having lost every object I have ever loved, I guess it makes a certain kind of sense that I would choose something solid in the world to fixate on while sorting out my issues, aka: shoes. And shoes make even more sense as a metaphor/metonym as I frame my future in terms of the path I am on, the steps I am taking into the unknown with no safety nets – no home, no stuff, no job security, no partner. I am figuratively walking through the desert of my life. And for that journey, it makes sense that I need good shoes.

But do I really need $300 Trippen boots bought in Berlin and loved for their exterior seems, their Red-Cross-logo shaped heels and the fact that they even have the wonderfully evocative name, “Nurse”?

Yes. I need those boots. And here’s why. I finally understand William Morris’s insistence that we surround ourselves with aesthetic beauty, regardless of our financial situation.


One needs beauty as much as one needs love and security. Visual desolation carves up the soul as surely as abandonment. At least that’s my experience. Case in point: when I walked into a friend of a friend's apartment once to find out why the baby living there was always screaming bloody murder, my first thought was, “what a horrible place!” The unhappy baby's mother lived in her partner’s cozy, decorated-with-love apartment, while she had installed her baby in the next-door apartment, and had left the space utilitarian – empty-but-for-her crib, bereft of friendly Winnie-the-Pooh decals, or soft colours on the walls that might entertain and sooth the baby until her mother finally made her appearance to proffer some human comfort. I believe the baby suffered from beauty abandonment.

My Trippen boots, which I have only worn twice, bring me enormous pleasure nonetheless as purely aesthetic objects. This pleasure sends a warm feeling through my body, which feels a lot like being in love. I even contemplated making a painting of my boots all summer, so I photographed them often.


And this desire helped me answer a question I have had for a while about the purpose of plastic Japanese food, the kind you see in display cases outside Japanese restaurants.


So, what is the purpose of plastic Japanese food? These facsimiles are ubiquitous in Japan where I assume most consumers know very well how to read Japanese menus, and are intimately familiar with what their food looks like, so it's not like they need a visual aid. That must mean the plastic food's purpose is not informative. Therefore, it must be purely aesthetic. It’s an expression of the desire to represent something in the world, something someone loves. And that’s why I paint portraits. To represent what I love. And in so doing, I effectively don’t just copy something in the world, I create another version, a discrete entity that goes on to have a life of its own. I used to collect plastic Japanese food items because they were these perfect objects with no purpose but to be their own aesthetic selves. And as discrete objects, I loved them differently than I love sushi, which I also love. But when I lost my plastic collection in the fire, I did not return to that love. Instead, I switched to boots.

When I wear boots, my Trippens or the others I have, for I have four pairs, I feel strong and beautiful. And Nurse is the perfect name for them because when I feel strong and beautiful, I’m one step closer to healing. My boots empower me to walk the way Nancy Sinatra walked, although instead of "walkin’ all over you,” I am walking into my own life, my way, even when running shoes seem like a better idea, and other people’s paths glow, like crack, with the promise of a smarter, safer life.


The streets of my journey may look dodgy to others, and often they scare the crap out of me, too, but I wouldn't trade them in for cleaner, Disney streets any more than I'd choose a beach holiday over Berlin, nor would I traverse them with anything less than a beautiful pair of boots!