SHOES, WALLS, SKIN
My then three year old grandson Nathan would run barefoot down Fifth Avenue if his parents let him. In fact, he so disdained wearing shoes he once accidentally on purpose let a brand new sneaker fall between a subway car and the station’s platform; somehow it also slipped beneath the tracks, assuming its final resting place in the network of rat-infested tunnels deep under the City of New York.
If he had lived in the Egyptian desert thousands of years ago, I think even my grandson would have welcomed a pair of sandals, molded from palm leaves and braided papyrus, as protection from the scorching sand. Or perhaps, some 15,000 years before the birth of Christ, he might even have tolerated “boots” made from animal skin so the earth’s jagged rocks might not have been quite so piercing, to say nothing of its icy crust. Then he also might have a model for the earliest known depictions of human footwear: the cave paintings of northern Spain, where the men wear skin boots and women boots of fur. Less privileged inhabitants of cold climates, however, had to keep their feet warm inside woven bags which were padded with grass.
But by no means are all shoes meant to protect: the tradition of elaborately embroidered Chinese slippers made solely for erotic stimulation goes back over a thousand years . . .
Franz Kafka’s narrator wonders if the Great Wall of China, whose piecemeal construction he notes several times in the story of the same name, could actually provide protection from marauding tribes. If a wall has gaps, can it still protect? Maybe yes, maybe no. Probably the narrator did not know that any laborer who left a gap between the stones of the Great Wall was immediately executed. More important, Kafka’s narrator defined the word wall in a manner surprisingly narrow for a Kafka character: not every wall is a continuous structure whose only openings are those high and narrow chinks in the stone through which defenders can toss rocks or boiling water.
◊ And certainly not all walls are made to protect, except perhaps in a most indirect manner. We speak of walls of flame; walls of secrecy; walls of silence; walls of pain; walls of lamentations, like the Western or Wailing Wall in Jerusalem–which is, of course, at the same time literally made from stones . . .Derivation of the word wall has a link with the Latin word for stake, vallus, and the English word wale : a mark made on the skin by a whip or rod, related to the wales of corduroy.
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It may appear to be vulnerable, but human skin is remarkably tough and resilient as well as multi-talented: it can heal itself; can often keep harmful microorganisms from invading; generate nails and hair; make possible the array of sensations felt when we touch something. Certainly protection is one of its purposes, the most superficial, as it were, given its locus in the layers of dead cells that form the outmost part of the skin’s outmost layer, the epidermis. It’s the fluid from newly created cells that actually does the protecting, once transformed into a protein called keratin, rich with sulfur and robust– despite its literal deadness.
As I look at a blown-up photograph of the human skin taken with a scanning electron microscope, various details rendered in pinks, blues, yellow, and greens as well as quilted, puckered, and kernel-like textures, the skin’s layers cut so as to suggest a staircase, all I can do is scratch myself with amazement. Is it possible that I–and everyone else who has ever lived–have countless clusters of those Bulbs of Krause embedded in my dermis, as well as stalk-like things equipped with both Meissner’s endings and Ruffini endings? And that some invisible creature could make a grand entrance by swirling down the “staircase” of my skin from its keratin level all the way below to those globules of subcutaneous fat?
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2.
Pointed at the toe; their brightly dyed silk tongues adorned with brocade and elaborately gold-embroidered fish, flowers, butterflies, fruits, and ideograms; their heels high and wedge-shaped; and their overall size remarkably small (as befitting a woman’s bound feet), Chinese erotic slippers were so highly prized that only the most favored courtesans could wear them–and only at the discretion of their male admirers. Their contemporary equivalents include jewel-encrusted pumps with ice-pick heels, lucite sandals affixed with gold chains, black leather boots with upturned toes whose spindly heels would test the balance of a circus performer. Even men wore high heels for a while, back in the time of James 1, as well as boots with elongated “toes.” But the discomfort , to say nothing of actual distortion of the foot’s flesh and bones, was too much for even strong men to bear; only women still destroy their feet by wearing absurdly high heels–the better, presumably, to arouse men’s sexual desires.
◊ Indeed, shoes themselves have often been taken as vaginal symbols, most overtly in the story of Cinderella and her glass slipper, which in the original Chinese version was actually a fur slipper. In an amusing displacement of the symbol, there was that lubricious old woman who lived in a shoe with all of her many children; the real shoe was, of course, lived inside her body, what we might call her red inner shoe. Imagine how that poor shoe must have felt, its arch buckling from her nightly acrobatics, lover after lover pumping inside, the children waking up hungry for jam and bread, anything at all. . .In a modern urban fairy-tale, the woman would be the welfare mother; the shoe a crowded tenement. When reform of welfare laws eliminated the cash reward for having children, the “shoe” would be abandoned, its laces going limp, snow and wind entering its cracks.
◊ But shoes have a number of other symbolic implications, some linked with death (the German Totenshuh); some with social status–for many centuries only the upper classes wore shoes and beggars were particularly expected to go barefoot; some with freedom, since shoes made it easier to travel–a matter of particular importance since the time of the Crusades; others with possession of the ground, a theme that turns up frequently in the Old Testament. Both feet of the recently discovered Neolithic hunter trapped in Alpine ice for over 5,000 years were covered with sewn leather shoes,their straps attached to a net of knotted grass, presumably stuffed into the shoes for added warmth. Analysis of the shoes, along with the fur and hides of his clothing, has helped archeologists confirm both the dating of the Ice Man and the roughness of the terrain he had to cross.
◊ Even in their role as a second skin, however, shoes have ambivalent implications: they can protect the foot from rough ground, broken glass, carelessly discarded tacks and nails, etc. but also seal it against the pleasant sensations of walking on freshly mown grass, running across damp sand. . .
◊ Because they enclose, walls, too, are considered female, particularly as seen from within the space contained by the wall, even more particularly if the wall is circular, as in some medieval fortifications and walled temple cities like Angkor Wat. In “The Song of Songs,” Shulamith actually identifies herself with a wall. But since enclosure can imprison as well as protect, association of walls with the feminine inevitably takes on all the negative connotations of the latter: passivity, suppression, even matter itself as opposed to spirit. But walls also separate people from one another and mark territorial boundaries–reflecting masculine concerns with power, especially in the context of war. Is there any female equivalent of Hadrian’s Wall?
◊ Even skin has female connotations, and not only because of its protective characteristics or some cultures’ taboos against exposure of female skin, be it a woman’s shoulders, thighs, or her entire face, let alone her breasts or pudenda. In ancient Egypt, skin was associated with both birth and rebirth; a hieroglyphic composed of three skins knotted together signifies birth and the amulet given to the newborn consisted of three animal skins wound around a miniature sun. Why three? Because, claims J. E. Cirlot, of the trinity of body, soul, and spirit–an explanation I myself find vague to the point of irrelevance. Perhaps the number three alludes here to the newborn as the result of a collaborative act on the part of its two progenitors?
◊ To wear the skin of a sacrificed animal implies another sort of rebirth; in Aztec mythology the practice is linked with the seasonal renewal implicit in the return of spring. Likewise the sloughing off of skin, particularly associated with serpents’ ability to bring about their own “rebirth.” Actually,we humans are champion sloughers, our keratinized cells constantly falling from the skin’s surface, so much so that most household dust literally consists of dead human skin. Not that we like to admit to such nasty matters. Even more shameful: a whole cluster of skin cells falling from the scalp, scattering small white flakes on sweaters, shirt collars, shawls. Scant comfort, is it not, that sloughed off cells are always being replaced by new cells, every 19 to 34 days, one of our few verifiable claims to rebirth?
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◊ 3.
◊ DISRUPTIONS or discontinuities in walls built for purposes of fortification include:
◊ *Keyhole-shaped gun ports, horizontally slotted for cannon shot.
◊ *“Murder holes”: round openings through which scalding water, boiling oil, and hot sand could be poured on enemies below.
◊ *Slits for ejecting arrows, sometimes called arrow loops or simply loops.
◊ *Machicolations: openings in the floors of projecting stone galleries through which rocks,
◊ lead and various other missives could be cast on intruders.
*Hoardings: wooden versions of machicolations.
*Crenelations (sometimes called crenels): notches and indentations between battlements.
*Observation slots, always well concealed, not to be confused with thin windows
hidden behind iron grills, possibly for the amusement of the ladies.
*Putlog holes: for loading wood in order to make fires.
Natural disruptions: *Worm holes; *Knot holes in walls made from wood; *Gaps between interwoven sticks and thorns that lined Celtic walls made from clay (earthwalls); *Crannies: small narrow openings or fissures that can be either natural or manufactured.
DISRUPTIONS commonly found in shoes:
*Small rimmed holes for insertion and criss-crossing of shoelaces.
*Spaces deliberately cut in front of women’s shoes so the big toe can protrude, to be distinguished from holes.
*Cracks in old leather, to be distinguished from slits deliberately created to expose fleshy parts of the foot and straps that reveal ankles, as in the ancient Roman calceus, a once fashionable shoe with slits on each side.
*Tears, often ragged, in cloth sneakers and slippers.
*Holes in worn soles.
DISRUPTIONS of the skin:
*Pores.
*Hair follicles.
*Goosebumps.
*Wrinkles, lesions, pimples, scars, rashes, cuts, discolorations, pigmented areas; tattoos
◊ created with needles or other puncturing agents and then rubbed with colored pastes; holes pierced in earlobes, nostrils, genitalia.
◊ Different as they might be in texture and particular purpose, all of the preceding exemplify the dichotomy between concealing and revealing.
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◊ 4.
◊ One might think of the walls that commonly enclosed cities as comforting, but not only could such a wall be at the same time a means of imprisonment but an embodiment of a political ideology so rigid that its self-anointed guardians would prevent the population on one side of the wall from contact with the population on the other side–lest the latter spread a plague carried not by microbes but by words. Even the artwork of those on the other side could be threatening, even more so than bullets or stones. The most famous example, of course, is the Berlin Wall, erected by the Soviets on August 13, 1961 and finally opened, then torn down on November 9, 1990.
◊ No architect has included an enclosing wall as a feature of a modern city. As the architectural historian Mitchell Schwarzer has noted, however, there is at least one instance of an accidental wall: the long series of skyscrapers that lines the lakeshore of Chicago, thus walling in the rigid grids that make up the rest of the city. For those fortunate enough to live or work in the lakefront skyscrapers, the view across lake and prairie justifies the “wall,” but those who live in the closed grid might disagree.
◊ In “The Shoemaker and the Elves,” both the shoemaker and his wife are rewarded for their piety. The martyred Nicola Sacco, of Sacco and Vanzetti, made shoes in Stoughton, Massachusetts; St. Crispin, of Shakespeare’s Crispin & Crispian (Henry V) did the same in Soissons, France, with leather supplied by the angels. Sometimes the humble cobbler was endowed with magical powers, especially if he could make seven-league boots or lead-soled sandals capable of defying the wind from blowing away one Philetas of Cos, ca. 290 B.C. The maker of votive shoes, placed in tombs so the deceased could walk in splendor, or at the very least, travel in comfort to the next life’s terrain, had a near-sacred occupation.
◊ And though the misuse of shoes themselves could lead to dire consequences–e.g. placing new shoes on a table or turning them towards a bed might invite a visit from the devil — it seems odd that the shoemaker himself has sometimes been considered satanic. Possibly he was linked with the fear that shoes can spread dirt and disease, thus contaminating a sanctified, or at least private (walled-in) space with matter from the outside? Of course, one is expected to remove one’s shoes upon entering a variety of places, both sacred and profane: mosques and Buddhist temples, houses in countries as disparate as Japan and Lithuania, the restored residences of famous people.
◊ Swedenborg associated shoes with man’s most humble and despicable qualities, his earthy resemblances to animals. . .though except for those Park Avenue poodles whose owners cover their paws with hand-crocheted booties, I’ve yet to see a shod animal. There may also be links with the symbolism of the foot itself, the part of the body that comes in closest contact with the earth, and whose prints leave their mark on both good and evil paths: hence the widespread purification ritual of washing the feet.
◊ My own memories of the neighborhood shoemaker conjure a man (never a woman) whose dark shop smelled like fruit; when you handed over your wounded shoes, he would hum “M’Appari” from Marta and affix a little tag on their soles. How did he ever manage to keep track of them? There was a throne-like chair upholstered with black leather from whose bottom there extended gold filigreed platform. And a bin that I thought of as a sort of shoe morgue, filled as it was with scuffed oxfords and pumps, sometimes mateless. The unclaimed shoes. Did he eventually distribute them to the needy? In the suburb of Washington, D.C. where I now live there are no shoemakers. It’s been years since I’ve heard anyone say they were taking in their old shoes for “lifts.” And there’s a real shoe morgue on display at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum downtown.
◊ Are the many uses of skin–I speak here of animal skins or hide–good or evil? Evidence from Lower Paleolithic sites in Europe suggests that as far back as 300,000 years ago, hominids cut the skin from an animal’s body, scraped away any clinging meat or fat, then let the skin dry in the sun so it could be stiff enough to cover a hut or bear a load. Hunter-gatherer cultures also cured hides with agents like urine or smoke to make them soft enough to serve as clothing and blankets or be shaped into containers for food and water. Later, of course, hide was used to make parchment and leather bags as well as shoes. If a skin offered as well a thick covering of fur, it was especially useful as a source of warmth. And yet, and yet. . .To this day, leather shoes are frowned upon in India because they are products of the sacred cow; some strict vegetarians also refuse to wear leather shoes or carry leather purses no matter where they might live. Animal rights groups, especially in New York City, have frequently condemned the use of fur by vividly describing the cruelty involved in the creation of a mink or beaver coat though at one time such items were considered highly prestigious and are still popular in parts of Europe.
◊ Only the most ghoulish, however, have experimented with using human skin–for trophies, for decorations, for lampshades. . .And only the most stupid have based their opinions of others on the color of their skin. Indeed, no other part of the human body has caused–and continues to cause– so much violence and sorrow.
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◊ 5.
◊ “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall”–Robert Frost, “Mending Wall”
◊ “Wit is the only wall/ Between us and the dark.”–Mark Van Doren, “Wit”
“As if this flesh which walls about our life/ Were brass impregnable. . .”–Shakespeare, Richard II.
“If a line of poetry strays into my memory, my skin bristles so that the razor ceases to act.”–A.E. Housman, “The Name and Nature of Poetry”
“Why my skin hangs about me like an old lady’s loose gown. I am withered like an old apple-john.”–Shakespeare, from Henry IV, Part One
“Skin for skin, yea, all that a man hath will he give for his life.”–The Book of Job
“You do not do, you do not do/ Anymore black shoe”–Sylvia Plath, “Daddy”
“All that I live by is with the awl. . . .I am, indeed, sir, a surgeon to old shoes.”–
Shakespeare, Julius Caesar
Who is worse shod than the shoemaker’s wife?” –Proverb
“Sing, Heavenly Shoes!”–anonymous
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