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| "Style NO.:SY1618/$33.71 include freight fee" by souftshoes is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 , Photo adapted by Mackenzie Andersen |
When I was of the age about to embark for art school, I had a dream that I was crossing a bridge over a field of shoes in pairs, of every type. Too many shoes, How could I possibly choose?
Despite that feeling of being overwhelmed by the multiplicity of choices, truth be told , presently, I remember a single pair of red high heels glowing in a bright light against a background of many shoes. What an inappropriate pair of shoes, I think as my next association becomes Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, holding her dog TOTO and clicking the red shoes together three times and saying "There's no place like home" and there she is, at home!
However the first thing I want to do when I get home, is kick off those high heel shoes and put on something comfortable. Home is where one feels comfortable, but what are those red high heel shoes? Now I put on my therapist hat and say go find some red high heel shoes and walk around home in them!
I never owned even black high heel shoes. The closest thing are wedgies. The only red shoes I owned were a comfortable pair of loafers.
Red shoes are the stuff of magic.
High heel shoes, like the ones the Trump ladies wear, are like walking around on weapons, useful for ones own defense and power.
I however exercised another form of power. It was an instruction, that I placed in my own mind in the days of my youth. It was a simple idea. I was not going to live my life by fear. It was as if I programmed a computer operating system with that central directive. Once that programing is in there, its functions kick in automatically.
I first experienced this automatic programing when I was walking through the streets of Brooklyn, NY with a male friend when we were accosted by a weaponized individual, but he was only weaponized with a conventional weapon, either a gun or a knife. Without effort on my part, my own weapon, fearlessness, auto engaged. Fearlessness is not aggressive, as aggression is a function of fear. Fearless is calm, and in appropriate circumstances this calm is eye to eye contact with one's assaultant. I looked into the eyes of the assailant, feeling no fear, and our assailant told my male companion, that he was going to rob him but he was not going to rob her (me).
None of this was planned or decided in that instant. It was strategized when I programmed the operating system,inspired by a female friend who was always talking about how dangerous the neighborhood was. She would never go out alone until one day she did and she was robbed. I put myself in the shoes of the assailant and determined that I would be looking for someone who was afraid, but if someone was not afraid, I would be thrown off my game, facing an unknown quantity.
One night I was walking alone on the street, late at night. I saw a group of young men approaching from the other direction. I instinctively calculated that I could not directly connect with all via eye contact. On the spur of the moment I entered dance class mode and adopted the posture and the attitude of the approaching group, as if I were one of them. I executed an unrelenting bee line line path directly through the center of the group, without altering the pace of my stride. and passed through them with neither physical nor verbal interaction. It was as if I were invisible, or passing them in another dimension, but actually, it was just my pre-programing.
I am a human- programed to auto respond like a computer!
