A Sudden Notion

I love shoes.

They are partners who have walked various times of life alongside my own. Even the sneakers full of holes that I loved to wear in my student days, I still can’t throw away, and now and then I gaze at them and steep myself in the memories of those days.

In the past, I once arranged flowers in those shoes and displayed them in the entryway.

When a friend came to visit, he said, “Why are you arranging flowers in such filthy shoes? Flowers are meant to go in a vase,” and the words I shot back on the spot were: “This flower can never move from the place it bloomed for its whole life, and closes its life in that very spot—so maybe, just like us, it wishes it could travel to all sorts of places. That’s why I put shoes on it.”

My friend said, “I didn’t know you had such a romantic heart—but it does put me in a gentle mood. Maybe I’ll try it too.” At that one remark, it dawned on me: that by telling the story of an impossible scene, that culture takes on a sense of necessity, leaps like a spark, and gains the possibility of one day taking root as a matter-of-course culture.