Aimless and orange...

Shoe dreams are getting fewer and more far between nowadays. I blame the internet, of course. How? I am not sure, but I know it is the root cause of my lack of focus. In any case...

I would have forgotten this dream immediately if my boyfriend hadn't said something uncannily reminiscent when we woke up. In a flash like a shard of mirror catching light from behind, I remembered.

The dress in this drawing is not accurate. It actually fit about 100x too large, so it wore like a bell around the body. Too hard to draw.

Of course, the shoes had something of the '70s about them. Ugly, bound to crack and peel, they were functional and their decorative aspect was not in tune with their form. They looked like vinyl dinette chairs.

I found them in this weird hole-in-the-wall general store in the semi-country, like the ones you find in the Niagara region when you're going for an aimless drive.

What is with the way I'm writing today? It's terrible.

Mudflaps

Yesterday evening, in real life, I participated in the Ride of Silence, a slow, silent bike ride to Toronto City Hall, in memory of cyclists who have died on our streets. I was in a tender, pensive mood when I got home. I'm not at all surprised that last night, I dreamt about my recent and semi-recent travels, as if scrolling back through an album of photographs to relive being elsewhere. The scenes I imagined in my dreams were Argentinas and New Yorks I'd never actually visited.

In my false New York, I made a friend, and we walked together through all sorts of landscapes, until we paused to talk about our shoes. I was wearing serviceable Dansko clogs--identical to the pair I'd actually bought, in New York, in real life, only two weeks ago. She was wearing clogs of a different sort. They had high heels made of wood that were oddly shaped, sort of like chisels. They were made of leather the colour of the soil in P.E.I., and they featured strange mudflap on the outer side. She let me put them on and they were uber-comfortable.

After the shoe episode, we went to a cafe for pastries. And why not!

That is all.

Walking On The Moon...

Last night I dreamt that I was a space traveller, and visiting many far-away places, in different galaxies. I had a ship, and apparently I had friends in many distant locales. Of course, dangers did abound and I had to overcome lots of challenges, such as making it down the double-wound staircase I've tried to draw in this sketch. Not only was this staircase shaped like an S, but the treads were extremely narrow, and the staircase was nearly vertical. For the record, I chose to slide down the bannister rather than risk falling on the stairs.

There's no need to analyze this vigorously; it's obviously about my house, my newly inherited car, job stress and active social life. Ho-hum!

What were not so ho-hum were the shoes, which played a leading role in the staircase scene. As I was daintily making my way down the first and second sawtoothed stairs, I was looking at my feet. I noticed that I was wearing boots--moon boots, of course! One was bright orange and the other was bright pink. However by the time I made it (with help of the bannister) to the marble floor of the landing below, a layer not unlike Saran Wrap had peeled off in places on each boot. Blast. I had ripped boots and no time to save them, because there were giant airships, that looked like fantasy cargo boats, parading through the sky.

Was this a choice between beauty and utility? It's a choice I feel I need to make every day...

Found!

Who Needs Dreams?

The shoes in the photo above were made for a girl by Chicco Ruiz, in Buenos Aires, Argentina. They bear tiny pennants in metallic fabric. This photo was taken late at night as my boyfriend and I were wandering the streets Palermo, a neighbourhood there.

I haven't been having any shoe dreams lately; this could be because life is sort of like a dream. Vacation was like a dream. And the shoes I encountered in Bs As were accordingly dreamlike. Now I can only think of real shoes, living on in a place where I am no longer!

Chicco Ruiz's shop (Thames 1780) was but one example of the simple gorgeousness that seems to be part of daily life in Buenos Aires. A living wall replete with plants on one side and decked out with antiques on the other, it was like a chic, enchanted cabin. The window display was of children's shoes--including the smallest pair of brown leather sandals the world has seen--in bird cages, set on top of aluminum that reflected all the lights outside...dim streetlamps and headlights of cars whooshing past. Drivers in Bs As aren't so much assertive (as we say here) as courageous and in a hurry.

On another street in the same barrio was Mishka. Here were the shoes I needed on my feet. Peeking into the window at night, I decided to return the next day and buy at least two pairs. I did, and brought them home in pink flocked shoe boxes. I've never seen shoes like these before: inventive, unusual, practical and pretty all at once. (This happy customer knows what I'm talking about.) Viva Industria Argentina!

In total I bought four pairs of shoes, if you don't count the slippers. The other two pairs are amazing: electric blue oxfords with a woven toe-box, and golden flats with a sparkly, crackled finish. These I got at Bottana, which is on a beautiful street parallel to the zoo in Palermo, or near Recoleta. Honestly, I wasn't quite sure where I was for 10 days. Right now, I can't find Bottana's website, but I can tell you that I just got lost again gazing for 10 minutes at a Google map of Buenos Aires.

Since I got back I've just been retracing my footsteps. Before you get the wrong idea, shoes were but a tiny fraction of everything that is charming there, and were certainly not a big priority for me. But, it is shoe central.

And for one million reasons, I now have a tiny, gleaming pennant waving in my heart from being there.

A Patent Heaven...

Yesterday I awoke before my alarm from a dream wherein a co-worker was showing me the most amazing shoes, at a store in an underground mall. There had been mirrors on all of the walls. Almost everything was in patent leather. The colours were sublime. Strangest of all were two pairs of patent leather boots, almost without definition, just blobby and puffy and shiny and yet wrinkled--like moon boots out of slick, mid-brown patent.

The colours! Out of this world. I hope to colour this image for you sometime soonish.

When a Pair is Not a Pair

Here are two pairs of shoes--one good-looking and one ugly, in my point of view--that I could barely scribble before I forgot them. The blue blotch represents the only image I can otherwise remember from what I know was a vivid shoe dream, which vanished right when I woke up.