no shoes

There is a strange thing that I have observed.

Perhaps a mere trifle of the confounding intricacies of time: a piffling coincidence. Nothing to think about, maybe. Not worth a ponder. Without grounding, possibly.

This thing, I am sure, is more than just random, terrifying synchronicity.

The girl who was bombed. She was pictured alone, lost, frightened, bloody, matted. Wandering, dusty, metallic taste in her mouth. Ringing ears, pink dress, utterly scared and shoeless.

The five year old who, disentangling herself from a minor wipe-out on her little skis – mistakes teaching new tricks on a daily basis – met her match. It was a man up the hill who let go. Who dropped the dead weight of wood, metal and rubber, and watched the cable drum hurtle down the hill – it had nowhere else to go, gravity will do that. Who slipped and made his small mistake into her largest ever. A tiny girl in the path of a gravity-guided missile, one minute fully dressed – overly dressed, even, it was the mountains, afterall – the next, shredded, hat and gloves torn off. Skis, poles, goggles yards away. Footwear – plastic skiboots – snatched from her still, baby feet.

The car crash. A hundred guesses. It was horrifyingly raw. Freshly crumpled metal, tears, blood and blank, almost blindingly white confusion. The people stood, not understanding and the empty pair of shoes sat neatly next to to the wreck. An audience quietly, yearningly trundled by on the silent tarmac. A thousand guesses.

The autorickshaw and the mountain track. Perhaps twenty kinks in the potholed road, hugging the dry, rocky, steep valley sides. Winding, suddenly flicking back, moving forwards and back on itself again. A bad road. The tuk-tuk careered into a corner, didn’t brake and flipped. Flew. Lunged, lurched, collided, crunched, rolled, slammed, punched, popped then exploded. Then stopped. And in a sickly silence, dust falling, glass tinkling, three pairs of bare feet, laid naked by the journey. Six lost shoes and one soul, expired.

It may be coincidence. But it seems to me that No Shoes is an eventuality of disaster.

in the end there was the beginning

In under 48 hours, I will board a plane bound for India.

A land spiritually governed by the cyclic rythmns of Hindu beliefs and shaped by waves of power, belief and hope. I realise that I haven’t had time to prepare much and hope that the shutters to my virgin subcontinental mind will be flung open and laying it exposed and absorbant, ready to be bombarded by the sensual overload that I expect awaits.

In the past 20 days, three people I know have died and three people I know have given birth. My colleague became a father on Christmas day. Hot on his heels, my big sister eventually, theatrically (and excessively descriptively, if you are one of my mother’s friends) gave birth to an amazing, skinny, pink frog. The very next day, my work-mate and fellow office skivvy, Mike, died. On the very last day of 2008, my friend Louisa’s father died suddenly in his sleep. In the meantime, a friend had her first baby boy.

And so on.

As new life bubbles up, froths, squelches and hiccups into the world, slightly less new lives ooze, sigh, simmer and evaporate, leaving empty spaces. The cycle is undeniably poetic but as metaphorical as the Hindu wheel of life is, the process is solid, tangible and real. I have never realised before quite how circular, animalistic, predictable and natural life, and death, are.

It’s been a sobering few weeks. I’ve felt confused, responsible, lost, invigorated and adoring at once. I’ve cried, laughed, cooed and touched the tip of the enormity – and fragility – of human procreation. Albeit in a pretty small, urban way.

Steamy heat, city beat. Billions of fingers, toes, eyes, teeth. Millions of tongues, pony-tails, noses and tummy buttons. Mouths to feed, bodies to wash, phones to answer, babies to change, life to move on.

India. The timing is perfect.