Dirty Boots

They always come in pairs but one of them always cracks-up before the other. That’s exactly what happened to these old boots of mine. It came as no surprise when I first noted it some months ago; there was something joyless about them going all buggered, a message within that caught on me recently, when I finally connected all the little dashes and dots drawing Lilliputian roads accross the sewed parts and found the torn edges and holes that reflected on my life. After all, these boots had been around me for a considerable chunk of my life, they travelled all over the world with me. From sand to snow, gravel roads to museum floors, gardens to office complexes and drunken nights to happier days at the mall. We certainly shared something more than my feet and those Homer Simpson socks. I will dare to say that they were closer to me than you and I ever were.

They haven’t been around forever, that's true, but they were around when I conquered your territories or when I started ruling your heartland, they lived some of it, if not for the most part, in several reincarnations that is. And just like this old pair, there was always another one before… Oh yes, you do remember them, that old pair, don’t you? - Because when you and I faced each other before the eyes of the great battle, the first thing you noticed where my yellow boots. Soldier boots aiming at you, with their hungry soles hoping to cross your borders, those shoelaces made waves as I approached your barricade and then you were hopelessly caught off guard. You had fallen and I celebrated by raising my flag upon you. I stood proud; always wearing my dirty boots. And then a new pair would play substitute for the former ones when they wore off, then another one would come and go and so forth, but one thing you should have known back then is that I always stood by your side wearing the bloody boots. They characterized the working man you told me I was, only that I’d taken the given meaning a bit further to hang it on a more adulated place. As I worshipped you, I believed I wore worshipper boots.

When the emancipation conspired against me, it was all about the boots again. It just had to be about these boots. You could not see past the object, the matter, the leather, the colour. These boots where to you a sign of stagnation and non-progression, nothing more than a symbol for conservatism and alienation. Your country-self felt threatened and you never allowed for our own revolution to start. Instead you empowered the Rubber-Dwarf from the plastic fairy tale to advocate for you, to lead you where I was leading you after all, only with a different, fancier banner and under a cheesy discourse. All conditioned by a bid for foreign aid (which I know you have actually accepted). When it came down to a reason, you simply pointed at my boots. I had underestimated the power of the small food darts served at the sushi bar that day you proclaimed sovereignty.

As I prepared to close a chapter for these boots, yes they have to go, like the other pairs in the past. A new pair is already at hand and trained in the art of walking. Somehow they always seem to overlap the chapters in my life, always carrying a bit of the previous chapter into the next one. It's such a comfortable feeling to know that these boots I once wore, never stopped seeing and keeping track of the changes you never contemplated in the footsteps we left as we walked on.

Beware:
A dirty boot footprint has been left on your mind and possibly on your heart.