I was asked a question as I walked back to my room. "Hey, aren't your feet cold tonight?"
"No," I replied.
The conversation ended. Just a quick remark, and indeed it is not surprising. However, it is a question that pops up again and again with my recent decision to go barefooted at the college I currently attend. And I do definitely enjoy every experience that comes with barefootedness, accessing the many dirt particles that a white foot black, or maybe gray or brown. I ask, though, why the shock. Most of the students at my college are barefooted, even in class at times. They seem to be proud of this, almost an achievement to walk into a classroom barefooted and learn.
And personally, I agree with this approach. There is something triggered in our minds when we are barefooted. Sensory neurons certainly have to fire on and off, telling me what is sharp or what is as flat as a rug to where I brush off my feet. Or where the cracks in any particular surface are, or where different pieces of glass are on the floor. But I feel these different surfaces. And indeed this is the beginning of my adventures as one who is barefooted, at least at his college; however, I cannot emphasize enough how there is a sense of connection that comes with being barefooted. It is amazing to note the surroundings and the concrete, the soils, the adobe that I trample on with barefoot, the surfaces that I once glided on with tennis shoes. (I do put on sandals when indoors to get food and to receive service from the college.)
Yet when walking on artificially made surfaces like concrete and adobe, I feel a separation from the ground. I feel like something else. It would not be best to say that I am a virus affecting something that has already existed before--nature--but rather I am invading something sacred. This "something" is my relationship to the natural world. To walk on concrete or on adobe is to surrender almost animality insofar as I realize on my spare but increasing occasions on dirt and other natural surfaces that I am a part of those surfaces and the plethora of nature that rises from them than the buildings arising from our foundations. We give birth to and the dying die on these grounds as though we are coming and going from an extremely long movie in a movie theater. The movie gets so long that we leave because we do not want to be around for the whole thing, or we sit as long as possible for it but somehow fall magically asleep and awake outside the movie theater. We labor on these artificial grounds, recreating the highest temperatures to make the metals that assemble our foundations or work in freezing conditions to preserve what we have received from what we have manipulated of nature's harvests.
We do much with lots of lazing about; what we do not know is that we laze around because we work to maintain what we need to survive. We make shoes that provide the ultimate perfection for feet, and maybe even the ultimate comfort for them. (Now, if we are talking about heels, I am sure those are so painful. And I am sure footbinding can be a pain too.) But we do not let our feet do the work of repelling the rocks or distributing the shock around the feet equally. There are so many things we try to change that in the end we become lazy. We change so much to enhance our own laziness. At least humans know how to poop and to pee on nature's beautiful skies and oceans with leaving trash around; what we consider disrespectful the Earth considers BO. I don't know how she holds her breath in for that long, lol. But somehow, when we are not lazy, she doesn't have to hold in her breath as we let things progress as is with minimal adjustment to anything. To be not a part of nature's game is to sit above the treelines of the Atalaya and to look over the valleys and say that we can turn a whole valley into a whole city--and we do that as nature introduces erosion and chance into the equation.
And maybe this is why I do not wear shoes and go barefoot instead. I am very interested in seeing and partaking in nature's festivities instead of lazing about.
"No," I replied.
The conversation ended. Just a quick remark, and indeed it is not surprising. However, it is a question that pops up again and again with my recent decision to go barefooted at the college I currently attend. And I do definitely enjoy every experience that comes with barefootedness, accessing the many dirt particles that a white foot black, or maybe gray or brown. I ask, though, why the shock. Most of the students at my college are barefooted, even in class at times. They seem to be proud of this, almost an achievement to walk into a classroom barefooted and learn.
And personally, I agree with this approach. There is something triggered in our minds when we are barefooted. Sensory neurons certainly have to fire on and off, telling me what is sharp or what is as flat as a rug to where I brush off my feet. Or where the cracks in any particular surface are, or where different pieces of glass are on the floor. But I feel these different surfaces. And indeed this is the beginning of my adventures as one who is barefooted, at least at his college; however, I cannot emphasize enough how there is a sense of connection that comes with being barefooted. It is amazing to note the surroundings and the concrete, the soils, the adobe that I trample on with barefoot, the surfaces that I once glided on with tennis shoes. (I do put on sandals when indoors to get food and to receive service from the college.)
Yet when walking on artificially made surfaces like concrete and adobe, I feel a separation from the ground. I feel like something else. It would not be best to say that I am a virus affecting something that has already existed before--nature--but rather I am invading something sacred. This "something" is my relationship to the natural world. To walk on concrete or on adobe is to surrender almost animality insofar as I realize on my spare but increasing occasions on dirt and other natural surfaces that I am a part of those surfaces and the plethora of nature that rises from them than the buildings arising from our foundations. We give birth to and the dying die on these grounds as though we are coming and going from an extremely long movie in a movie theater. The movie gets so long that we leave because we do not want to be around for the whole thing, or we sit as long as possible for it but somehow fall magically asleep and awake outside the movie theater. We labor on these artificial grounds, recreating the highest temperatures to make the metals that assemble our foundations or work in freezing conditions to preserve what we have received from what we have manipulated of nature's harvests.
We do much with lots of lazing about; what we do not know is that we laze around because we work to maintain what we need to survive. We make shoes that provide the ultimate perfection for feet, and maybe even the ultimate comfort for them. (Now, if we are talking about heels, I am sure those are so painful. And I am sure footbinding can be a pain too.) But we do not let our feet do the work of repelling the rocks or distributing the shock around the feet equally. There are so many things we try to change that in the end we become lazy. We change so much to enhance our own laziness. At least humans know how to poop and to pee on nature's beautiful skies and oceans with leaving trash around; what we consider disrespectful the Earth considers BO. I don't know how she holds her breath in for that long, lol. But somehow, when we are not lazy, she doesn't have to hold in her breath as we let things progress as is with minimal adjustment to anything. To be not a part of nature's game is to sit above the treelines of the Atalaya and to look over the valleys and say that we can turn a whole valley into a whole city--and we do that as nature introduces erosion and chance into the equation.
And maybe this is why I do not wear shoes and go barefoot instead. I am very interested in seeing and partaking in nature's festivities instead of lazing about.
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