*cue Floetry's Feelings* Yesterday I could have been done with throwing shoes. I was so close. I had six pairs left of the thirteen I collected. I could have cast them off once and for all. Yet I didn't.
Realizing this part of my project is coming to an end left me with a bittersweet feeling. I was reluctant to put them back where I got them from.
I noticed some of the shoes I returned last time disappeared. I nestled a pair of moccasins in a tree, only to come back yesterday and see they were not there. I left a pair of Faded Glory knockoff Converse at the base of the tree I found it in. I am not the best at throwing, and after trying so many times, getting self-conscious when a man passing by was giving me weird looks (how could he not, I was chucking a pair of shoes at a tree in broad daylight while filming myself doing it รก la Uncle Rico), I gave up. They'll be fine, I thought, nobody will mess with them. I need to step away and come back to these with a fresh mind.
When I saw those shoes were gone it hit me pretty hard. I felt like I failed. My goal was to put the shoes back in their trees, high up like I found them, so they could continue their life cycle with my project being a small twist in their time in the breeze. I started wondering how they disappeared. Did the moccasins fall out of their precarious perch and get picked up by grounds keeping? It would make sense, but I later noticed the pair of Velcro grandpa shoes with orange yarn tied to them were still on the ground as I left them, just like I found them. Did somebody decide they really liked that half-degraded-dirt-filled pair of nasty moccasins and copycat Converse? I have a whole host of other questions now, aside from why and how all of those shoes got in the trees.
I returned three more pairs of shoes yesterday, and I was extra careful to make them harder to get. Given my height and lack of throwing skills I doubt it would be difficult for a taller person to pluck them off of their branches, but I like to believe I worked to make it less easy. You're not going anywhere I thought as I wrapped a pair around a branch a few times. It was more for my own benefit than the shoes'.
My camera was running out of battery. Since video saps so much energy I decided it was the perfect excuse to hold onto my last three pairs until a later date. Instead I carried my shoes and my camera and my tripod to the highest hill on the Ridges and sat and thought about everything.
It's funny how personal a public space can feel. That busy bit of field is constantly surrounded by people, but I felt secure enough to leave things and assume they would not be disturbed. The Ridges, decrepit and neglected at it is, has plenty of people around, but being up on a hill looking down on Athens I felt like the only person in the world.
This project is just as much about others as it is about me. I speculate about the ceremonies that accompanied other peoples' shoe tossing as I create my own. It's somewhat backwards. I yanked shoes out of trees with a branch as big as me and a found bungee hook (that in itself is something special). Now, like other people, I am throwing shoes that I have an attachment to back into the trees (but unlike the secrecy of other shoe tossing traditions, I am getting video of myself doing it and sharing evidence and anecdotes with friends and strangers alike on the Internet).
While I did not wear these shoes and shape them over time, I did make lifestyle changes for them. Initially they were piled up in plastic bags in the corner of my dorm room. They turned out to be dormant spider Trojan horses, and I kept killing spiders until they got so big I got paranoid about the arrangement (the shoes were then moved to a shelf in the Sculpture building after sitting in the cold for a few more days). I carried giant tree branches with me and casually keep them propped against my closet. I have bits of this project scattered throughout my real and virtual life.
Inevitably those final pairs will have to be returned. I can't hold onto them forever. Though I am reluctant, I think it will open up other avenues of interacting with these trees.
