-
From the Feet Up
- Syracuse University Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
315 From the Feet Up Suppose you dropped a microwave on your right foot’s bare toes. I did. It broke all five. Predictably they healed askew. Since then I’ve had to wear a larger shoe by half a size with a wider toe-box. It’s given me a hitherto unknown respect for feet. The runner I used to be is gone for good. The dancer I presumed I was is not a step less wooden. After a hard hike I walk flat-footed for a week. Last night I studied my foot the way cartographers survey a map they’ve drawn apparently from space. The bones and tendons slanted snugly underskin. The veins spread faintly blue until they deepened. Everything was primed to keep upright the rest of me. But how? I asked a doctor to explain what keeps us from collapsing 316 in apparent disregard of gravity each time we stand. “I don’t know how,” he sighed, “except to say what keeps us up is life—just life.” I said that sounded hardly scientific. “The dead can’t stand,” he said with medical certainty as if that fact alone confirmed his previous assumption. And it did. ...