Over the Line

A decade in Japan created in me the habit of wearing shoes without laces, preferring the whole Mr. Miyagi, slip on-slip off thing. The shame about this is that I lost a creative outlet of artistic self-expression: tying a pair of worn-out shoes together by the laces and throwing them over a power line.

I was reminded of this in spying a pair from the train I was riding, as it pulled into the station in Los Lunas. The link between these shoes and my own is further paralleled and linked with trains, as I most often threw my own shoes over a wire shaded by the upper eaves of that massive tree beside the rail station in Santa Barbara. Just as these shoes welcomed me back to my native Valencia County, no doubt hundreds of passengers were waved at by my shoes as they blew back and forth in the Santa Ana winds of the Central Coast.

On the turntable: Ricardo Lemvo, "Ay Valeria!"