Pedestrian Newsletter 04

An Old Pair of Shoes, Katamari Damacy, Save the Post Office

Hello and welcome to Pedestrian, a monthly newsletter by Alex T. Wolfe about walking and our everyday surroundings.

Pedestrian Magazine Issue 5

Pedestrian Magazine Issue 5 was released earlier this month and is now available to be purchased online! Contributors include Khutso Paynter, Inga Danysz, Julia Brandao, Purely Circumstantial, Catherine Hu, Chris Maggio, Thomas Wilson, and Laura Quan. 40% of all sales will go towards GirlTrek, a nonprofit organization for Black women and girls who use walking to inspire healthy living, families, and communities. You can purchase the newest issue here.

Patreon

Big thanks to Hannah and Janet for becoming patrons this month. If you’ve appreciated Pedestrian in the past, enjoy it presently, and feel excited for upcoming projects, please consider supporting for just $5 a month. In return, you’ll receive a copy of Pedestrian Magazine 5, digital copies of Pedestrian Magazine 1–4, and more in the works. Thanks to all current patrons for your ongoing support. I really appreciate it.

Thanks for reading,

Alex

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An Old Pair of Shoes

I’m due for a new pair of shoes. My current pair has lasted me a record 15 months of consistent use and it shows. A hole in the toe persists despite a quick sewing last October, the heel loops dangle on by a thread, a long rip has spread across the side exposing my sock (it’s especially bad when the sock doesn’t match the shoe), and the soles are just about bald.

As I search for a new pair, I can’t help but reflect on all the time I’ve spent wearing these shoes. Each one represents accumulated experiences both big and small, serving not just as the vehicle assisting me from point A to point B, but as a marker from one point of life to another. These shoes offered daily support and basically became a part of me in the last 15 months. I remember wearing them as I walked along the Mississippi River in New Orleans last summer or in May when I completed an 18 mile walk that spanned three different boroughs. They accompanied me during the more mundane moments of life too, like riding the train to work, walking the aisles of the grocery store, or moving apartments.

Shoes are the mediator between our bodies and the world beneath our toes. As I walk, I imagine each foot collecting a piece of the world I’m experiencing in exchange for the tread of the soles. A celebrated video game from 2004 titled “Katamari Damacy” (Japanese for “Clump of Souls”), comes to mind. The game puts players in control of a character named The Prince as he assists his father, the King of All Cosmos, in the re-creation of stars and planets by using a highly adhesive magic ball called a katamari. As you move The Prince throughout various maps, the katamari picks up increasingly larger objects, ranging from a thumbtack to buildings, until the ball is large enough to become a star. As you complete each map you come to realize that no object is off-limits for the katamari. Eventually The Prince collects enough material and the universe is restored.

Thankfully my shoes do not grow larger and larger as they continue to collect experiences. Imagine all the places you’ve gone in the shoes you wear now: the sidewalk, the park, a trip across the country, the neighborhood bar, the laundromat. Everything. A well-worn pair of shoes has a life of its own and is an unlikely commemoration of a time and place during our lifetime. A similar commemoration, while widely fallen out of practice, is seen in locks of hair that are often found in family and personal papers of the Victorian Era. Locks of hair were saved as a token of friendship and love or a tangible reminder of life passed. Because hair does not decompose, they were considered a symbol of eternal life. It made one feel closer to those who passed away.

I’ve considered holding on to an old pair of shoes once that new pair finally arrives, but it’s ultimately out of my control. The shoes will begin decomposing and slowly fall apart, but this hasn’t stopped me from saving other things in the past. I’ve made a practice of storing found ephemera and detritus, (receipts, grocery lists, salon advertisements, business cards, etc), into binders filled with archival sheet protectors. Much like the katamari, these archived objects slowly take up more and more space on my shelves as time passes.

What I choose to archive doesn’t always make logical sense, but I’ll keep doing it anyway. The items retain some value by reminding me of the time and place I was at in my life when I decided to keep it. I’ll likely just stick to the binders for now and toss the old shoes in my closet until it’s finally time to say goodbye. While I’m not trying to recreate the stars and planets, I am trying to preserve some kind of memory of the world I lived in for my future self and my shoes were definitely a part of that.

While writing this I realized I wrote a newsletter about purchasing shoes at the Chicago Shoes Center a couple months back. It was unintentional, but perhaps it’s time to rebrand this newsletter Pedestrian: the newsletter about shoes.

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Links

• #SaveThePostOffice - The U.S. Postal Service is under threat of being privatized and needs your help. Newly appointed Postmaster General Louis DeJoy has established major operational changes that could slow down mail delivery, prevent overtime, sacrifice efficiency, and cede the operation’s competitive edge to private-sector rivals. The USPS is a crucial civil service of the American people and not a business. Please consider contacting your local rep to support stimulus funding, repeal the 2006 PAEA, and investigate this deliberate curtailment of mail. More from the American Postal Workers Union.

• Listen to Part 1 of David Wojnarowicz’s Cross Country Tapes documenting his thoughts, dreams, fears, and environment during two separate road trips he took to the American Southwest and West Coast in the first half of 1989.

• Bianca Giaever just released Constellation Prize, a new podcast with Believer Mag. Her first episode features Sophia, a school crossing guard. Listen here.

• Chicago Works: Deborah Stratman is now on view at the MCA Chicago, featuring a twelfth chapter extension of the artist’s film The Illinois Parables in the form of a recreation of Studs Terkel’s WFMT radio booth and an accompanying audio program of the oral historian's interviews. If you live in Chicago and wish to go, please consider reading the letter from a collective of staff at the MCA demanding accountability and action to uproot white supremacy and racial injustice at the museum.

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Thanks for reading. Stay safe and I’ll see you next month.

Pedestrian tells stories about the people, routines, and connections we make as a result of moving throughout one’s everyday surroundings. It began as a quarterly magazine in 2018 by Alex T. Wolfe and is occasionally released as a podcast.

Be in touch: pedestrianmagazine@gmail.com