San Miguel de Allende, Mexico
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Shopping for
Shoes
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I need a pair of shoes. The ones I have hurt my feet. I stand on one foot
trying on sneakers until a boy brings me a plastic chair. A carpet sample to keep my
stocking feet off the dust, and we have the Tuesday market equivalent of the Nordstrom
shoe department. Two men start bring me shoes. Every shoe is either too small or too
large. Just when I think I have puzzled out the size labelling, it changes. At least three
regimes seem to be in use, but it doesn’t really matter. The numbers bear only an
approximate relationship to the actual dimension of the shoe. Finally, a
"bueno," this one is good. I feel sharply that I am a demanding gringo who cares
to have a shoe that fits. In this crowded market, I am on the verge of overwhelm and shutdown. I stop moving, try and ground myself in the moment. Two vendors are calling out, to no one and to everyone in the manner of market vendors everywhere. Harsh, baritone male voice, loud tenor female, back and forth. It is an unmodulated, single note call, not the melodious sing-song you’d hear in the Dublin street markets. A parallel sound comes from deeper under the blue tarps, two competing Mexican pop songs on separate boom boxes. A man walks by carrying a stack of 50 wide brimmed hats, with three more on his head, another man with a thick stack of dishtowels on his shoulder. A old, shrunken indio woman sits on the stairs with sparse bags of avocados. Shoppers have to step around her as she stretches out her arm, like a beggar. I am in the moment, but I am also in the future remembering this moment, a curious state of self-awareness that a memory is being made. The details sharpen, they crowd out my discomfort with the hot sun and the noise. It is like the state of concentration that will become a photograph, but this one includes all the sight and sound and smell and heat, of which the photograph is a mere shadow. |
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