Can a sneaker shoe die? Normally you would say that shoes get worn out and both more or less at the same time. But when you inadvertently slip one foot into the foamy bank of the Dead Sea you can witness how such a shoe comes slowly to a finish. You can make great efforts to clean it and wash it, cream it and polish it, in the hope that the shoe will come back to normal; with every passing day, though, the shoe becomes harder and tighter, the leather rises up, as if in revolt, against the shape which holds the foot in comfort. The situation takes on a dramatic note because the other shoe, which was not immersed in the Dead Sea, is as soft and supple as before. Day by day the pair of shoes begins to look more and more akin to a couple of which one half is dead – something that makes the surviving one appear all the more energetic and hungry for life.
Things turn drastic: what the hell can you do with just one shoe? In the case of socks you can, to a certain degree under the cover of the shoe, combine a good old sock with another good old sock to create a new pair – but, what do you do in the case of shoes?
As the owner you feel responsible for your belongings: even if less for the dead shoe than for the surviving one. But when you give up one then you ruin the other. That reminds you of cultures in which perfectly healthy wives allow themselves to be dragged along with their dead husbands into the other side, the “beyond”: a barbaric act. You begin to hate the half-dead shoe because it leads to inhuman treatment. The shoe that has been deformed by salt suddenly appears to be an alien and inimical element that has turned against us – as a consequence of which this “us” gets locked up together with the healthy shoe. We feel as though we’ve suffered a blow on the feet that makes life more difficult for us with every step we take – particularly as the decay of the sea-soaked shoe transmits itself over time into the wounded foot, whose toes are pressed together in a vice and are becoming steadily more crooked because of the shrinking leather and are well on their way to becoming swollen. At some point during this miserable process our feet become unequal in weight and size – and all of a sudden we are no longer sure whether it was the shoe that started the misery, or if it was the foot.
First Publication: 8-1-2012
Modifications: 22-6-2013