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One of the benefits of staying home to take care of Ms. 8 is that I do not have to do much to make myself ready to face the world. That includes not needing to put on shoes; my feet get to air out and breathe, which is nice in that it helps me to feel cool. (It also offers me more reason to keep the floors of Sherwood Cottage clean, which is a good thing.) After spending days without having to cover my feet, though, my socks feel oppressive and my shoes feel heavy; I begin to understand again the reluctance of children to put such things on in the summer. (I write "again" because I was a child once. I do not recall liking it. I certainly would not go back to it, particularly if it meant having to go through puberty again.)

I have to wonder if the kinds of shoes we wear serve as metaphors for us. (I know that not all wear shoes. Not all have feet on which to wear shoes. I obviously do not include them among the first-person plural I use. This is not to say that there are no metaphors for them or that I devalue them in favor of the footed or the shod.) If I perceive them as heavy and confining, does that mean I perceive the society which produces and values them as likewise oppressive? If, as is the case, I own multiple pairs of shoes, does that mean I perceive myself as occupying multiple roles? Does the fact that my usual shoes this summer have been battered cross-trainers indicate that I regard myself as a failed athlete? The last one is a stretch, perhaps, for those who look at me, but I have been a competitive athlete, if not in many years.

I am reminded as I consider what my shoes say of me that a little more than a month ago, a friend of mine wrote of the stories some of his things have for him. He is correct that there are stories in our possessions, but there are things other than stories in them--for there are things other than the story in any story. There is always more to tell, more that is referenced or evoked by the way the tale is told, more that is connoted by the plot and character and setting. Inferences can be made about the teller of the tale and the audience expected to hear it; understanding of the human condition can be had from careful attention to the stories and the details of them. We can use them to better understand who and what we are (and here I do include those who lack shoes or feet upon which to wear them, both to understand and to be understood). And it is because of that possibility that the academic humanities exist as discrete disciplines (problematic as the boundaries between them sometimes are). It is because there is understanding of humanity to be found that the disciplines are needed. It is towards uncovering that understanding that I and my colleagues devote our efforts, knowing that we will never have the whole of it either singly or in aggregate, but knowing nonetheless that The Work must be done.