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Painting and Story by Lehan Winifred Ramsay
I found a pair of red shoes in a shop in Melbourne.
It was a long time ago. It was a seconds shop. I brought them home not liking them much, grew to love them more than any shoes I’d ever had, wore them out. When they broke I wasn’t too perturbed. Shoes aren’t so difficult to replace. But I couldn’t ever find a replacement for them. I looked around. I found myself in Melbourne, went back to the shop. It was gone. A year after that I began looking regularly in the second hand shops, but they never appeared there. Every week for nine months I looked for them. A few years after that I realized how much I missed those shoes. Every time I went to another country I would go to shoe shops I passed, hoping that there would be a shoe like my shoe. Germany, France, Amsterdam, America, Australia, Thailand, Vietnam. I realized that my shoe shopping habits had changed. If I needed a shoe I bought one. But never did I find another pair of shoes that I MUST have.
I would go out to the shops thinking: there is this shoe I want. I could spend hours looking, never really wanting anything. Then I realized that a great thing had happened. Finally I had found something that was worth waiting for. Finally, I knew what it felt like.
Window Dresser's Arms, Pig & Whistle 
Robyn Archer did a number ’bout maybe 80s or earlier …’I bought a red dress in NY’ is the theme … maybe ‘The Red Dress’?
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Did she shoot a man in Memphis?
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18 miles to Memphis but I’ve still got a long way to go……
Apropos of nothing, Hung.
I’m betting that the patrons de porc have a huge collection of reminiscences of publicans real, big, small screen and in print…… I’m wondering whether we have a new blog ….. publicans …. in their own write ….
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Probably
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Emmjay wrote: “One is over thirty years old, survived all my years as an Ag student and a toiler in the field and reflects every bit.”
I bet you haven’t seen it for a few weeks. Go and check your cupboards!!
I popped into the Sty for a counter lunch on Sunday, about 12:30, and granny’s meat pie definitely tasted a bit whiffy…. And al dente doesn’t do it justice at all.
I think there was a touch of thermite binding the whole thing too!
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Oh Dear, the shoes go the way of the bike. What next !
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I’m doing ‘Lehan’ , every time I see a Shoe Shop I check if they have a similar pair of boots I buried about a year ago. I had them for twenty years; black, Italian, heels the right height, not too pointy, not too square or too round, perfectly Goldy-Locky…
I replaced them with RM Williams, not the same thing…. they are not replaceable.
The head knows it, but the heart not yet…still looking…
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Yes, those RM William Boots are often the last thing I take off, struggling to get my pants past the boots. I just don’t seem to be able to part with them even when going to bed.
I sit there in my Bonds, on the spare settee in our bedroom with my boots on almost ready to go to sleep, having to force myself to finally, but reluctantly, take them off.
I noticed Lehan, that you wrote on the Dot that living in Australia used to make you feel sleepy. I often feel that too but somehow I resist it by, perhaps subconsciously, keeping my boots on, as a last resort against sleepy thing.
Life is so much more complicated than I first thought too. I would be fascinated to hear if Japan living makes you feel less sleepy, and why.
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I read and write at the level of a child who has not yet entered school, Gerard. But I have to do most things myself. So I struggle to find ways. Because I don’t easily understand things it creates a level of mystery.
Anyway the culture is enigmatic, old old beliefs and traditions poke through holes in the new culture. There are very old reasons for doing a lot of things. They seem strange to me, even 20 years doesn’t make them make sense, until I figure out what they mean. I found something interesting every day, even after years of being here, and I thought that I should leave when that didn’t happen any more. It still does. Old houses and gardens have their lifestyles and the seasons embedded in them. People still have to know what a name means, or a word means, because the characters to write them have to be understood.
I don’t mean that I only like the old culture. I like the way the new culture plays with all of that, not always understanding it, sometimes confusing it.
It became a life of distance from other people. I don’t have so many people close any more. It remains a bit uncomfortable at times, but there was a clarity there. I feel like I can hear myself, and see through some of the platitudes of life. When I go back to Australia it’s as if a radio has been switched on in the back of my brain, it’s a little bit noisy, there’s a lot of static, I’m distracted. Perhaps I could learn to keep concentrated on my shoes, like you, and be steady. It’s not that I’m unwilling to try it. The door opened once, but I had a choice to come back and I took it.
At the time that I was deciding whether to stay in Australia or return here I went to the dentist and spent some hours under anaesthetic. I was sitting happily in wawa land and realized I wanted to be in Japan. So I came back, despite knowing things would be difficult.
That was my mistake.
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I chose the hard road, that sounds dramatic but it’s accurate I think. I looked around at the people I knew and I didn’t like what was happening to them. There was stagnation, the glue that had bound us together was not holding. So I left and came back to the thing that had made me sick. I was healthier by then. I stood my ground and refused to be stagnant myself. And so I find myself now, a cleaner mind but in a small disaster of my own making. I’ve hosed off all the muck and tidied the place up, but so far I can’t make anything work.
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Yes,
Andrew Riemer who reviews books in the SMH has written several books on that same dilemma. ‘Inside-Outside’ and ‘Hapsburg cafe’ are a couple of books where he writes about his background and family from Hungary and his adoption of Australia as the new country. He struggles with both cultures and seems to hover restlessly from one to the other almost permanently.
You have answered the question very well and I understand ‘the old culture and traditions poking holes into the new’.
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That last-ditch mating and nesting drive of the late 30’s to early 40’s is ruthless. It excludes a lot of personal development that is going on before and after. My friends had been telling me for years to come back and that they would help me. But I realized even before I went back that they weren’t capable even of helping each other. I found it painful to be around them – perhaps that was a sign that I’d already taken this road? So it wasn’t too hard to do. The same level of dislocation, but on this side it was a bit more honest. People here are in cages of built-in cupboarding – it’s called ritual and social rule. People in Australia have it too, but we carry it around on our person. So I have space to expand here because the ritual and social rule often doesn’t and can’t apply to me. Leaves my cupboard a bit bare sometimes.
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(sorry for the long monologue here…) I walked into Tullamarine airport terrified. Terrified that somehow I wouldn’t be able to go, but terrified to be going. There was something really wrong that I was going back to, and I didn’t know what it was. I landed at Narita airport, and felt happy. Took the bus to Shinjuku and felt happy. Arrived back in Hakodate, that was good. Went to my house, met my animals after nine months, and the student who had been living in my house, and that was good too. Drove to the university and met the management, no problem. There wasn’t anything wrong until I met the colleagues of my department. And there it was. That was my mistake. Clear as a bell.
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But it was a mistake I had to make. How could I have ever have known? I would have been running scared. Running is good. But one should never run scared. End of story.
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Thank you for the story, Lehan. I identify with your story and very much appreciate its companionship.
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Quote:It still does. Old houses and gardens have their lifestyles and the seasons embedded in them. People still have to know what a name means, or a word means, because the characters to write them have to be understood.
I don’t mean that I only like the old culture. I like the way the new culture plays with all of that, not always understanding it, sometimes confusing it. Unquote
Yes, Lehan. That’s how it works and I think you made the right choice. Not the easiest of choices but the best.
Perhaps, the sleepiness about a culture or country can’t be accepted at times and becomes too much of a compromise.
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Lehan, the painting has a lovely depth. You have painted something you really know, to ‘your very bones’. The story and the picture together are beautiful. I feel a little sad and that’s OK too.
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Is this too prosaic?
1. Pick up old shoes
2. Take them to a shoemaker
3. Say: Make a pair like this
4. Fork over large sum of money
But they should last longer than the old ones and think of all the time you’ll save in shoe shops.
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That would have been really smart, Voice. It took a strangely long time to realize how good they were, by then I’d thrown them out. They were very cheap, and not such good shoes, and at the time I dismissed them, thinking I could easily replace them.
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Here Voice. I made a painting of them. As you can see, they’re quite unimportant looking things. A bit like the perfect apple peeler you use until it wears out, and then bemoan forever.
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Those red shoes in the painting look very nice. Are they the ones you are pining for or are those original shoes totally unobtainable now? I mean they will never come around again. They are the symbol of your past. Perhaps I am unduly complicated but I have been wearing a pair of RM Williams that I bought many yeras ago. I need a new pair but am hesitant they will somehow never feel as good as these, ever again.
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Gez, I really appreciate RM boots and clothes too. As you say, they last a lifetime if you look after them and maintain them well.
I now have four pairs of RM boots. One is over thirty years old, survived all my years as an Ag student and a toiler in the field and reflects every bit. One black pair has tramped around Northern Ireland, London, Vienna, Prague, Berlin, Paris and Frankfurt and was recently resoled, number three is a new version of number two (I wear every day to work – backup) and number 4, a lovely soft yearling leather but a bit um err poofy in a light tan, FM bought me on a whim. It was a lark, actually. She had me there just to try on a pair of crocodile skin (farmed of course) RM boots. Their ticket price was a heart-stopping $3,000. Lark indeed ! I’m sure that lark tongue boots would be cheaper.
Some RM shops target the tourist trade and I think the crocs were pointing at the vanishing band of super wealthy Americans with their increasingly soft currency. Insane price I reckon.
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Now those tan boots, Emmjay. I’m thinking they would be nice with the darkest purple leather dye on them. It should go a little darker again because the boots are mid-tone already. Then they’d look very nice.
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Purple over brown. What do you take me for ? A Fauve ?
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Yep. You’d be tempted I’m sure to go for black or dark brown. Then you wouldn’t wear them because they weren’t as familiar as the other ones. So I say purple. You could mix a little black in, make it very dark.
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No, I didn’t have any painting of them so I put in this one. But I found a picture, and I will make a painting and post it instead of that one.
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Lehan, this story has quite a strong resonance with me. Not for shoes, but for a bicycle.
When I turned 21, a broke student, my best mate and a girl who would much later become my wife got everyone they could cajole to contribute a quid and bought me a recycled road bike. It was a beautifully resprayed Speedwell frame in sapphire blue with 5 beautifully spaced gears. I rode it for seven years everywhere in the Inner West – right up until some bastard stole it from outside the Commonwealth Bank on campus. I religiously chained it up and just that time I was in a bit of a hurry. I misjudged the odds and paid the price. I did a huge on foot search, and every time I see a similar retro machine, I feel the need to check.
But of course this bike has gone to God maybe twenty or thirty years ago.
Same feeling. I found something that I cherished beyond the norm. A great bike. A much-appreciated gift.
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Oh, that was your bike was it? 🙂
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Har har har !
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Glad to be of service
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