There's a hole in my shoe.

There is a hole in my shoe. A little speck of nothing, really. Just a small window to my toe, a couple millimeters across. But one must stop and reflect upon the appearance of a hole in a shoe. What does it mean? Why has this happened only to my right shoe? Is the left the better shoe? What portent does this hole hold?

I could make simple jokes about having a hole in my soul and trying to patch it, but that's silly. That is silly and there is nothing silly about having a vacuous space in the lining of my shoe.

I cannot recall ever developing a literal air-breathing hole in a shoe before. While I do not doubt that my toe, the big toe, appreciates its new vantage point and looks eagerly forward to viewing the world, I really must consider the ramifications of the hole.

I have never developed a shoe hole because I have always replaced my shoes on a regular, unwritten basis. As a child, your shoes are replaced by your caregivers as your feet grow. Kid feet grow like sunflowers under California skies, by which I mean to say, they grow at a significant rate. I've planted sunflowers before, and I've grown feet before, so I consider myself an expert on both subjects. Of course, little feet cease to be little and cease to grow, stabilizing at a solid 8.5 shoe size. They are not expansive feet, but they are good feet. They have carried me well.

I've been wearing the same sized shoes for years, of course. But I don't I had noticed that I’d stopped growing until I realized that I had been wearing the same shoes for a while, and found a hole. I guess I'm done growing. Stick a fork in me. I know, my feet have their unique personalities, and these personalities never cease their growth at any point in life. You bet.

I hear Kevin's reflective voice from the 'Wonder Years' as I write this. That was a good show.

That would be a good stopping point, but I simply must mention the additional possibility that I am a trendsetter, and that hobo chic will be a fashion trend which we will all soon embrace. We will carry bundles on long sticks like the rail-riding hobos of yore. We will wear numerous winter coats in the blistering sun. Prada will manufacture designer platinum shopping karts and the highest socialites will be seen wearing strapless burlap sacks. You will see, you shall see.

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Mister Flannel McNewspaper

Who are you, Mister Flannel McNewspaper?

Your bald head shines under the weak spotlight. You’re enjoying the Stanford Daily, as we all should, with regularity. Like fiber in a diet. World events come alive when written by an undeclared sophomore. They do, they do. The crucial issues of the day, of the campus, of the quad. No bikes there and no GERs there. Tangled reverberations of choppy news on floppy paper! Of IHUM and Nobel! Polisci children will save the world in a hundred words! And the temptress Sudoku! Oh! If only I understood the cruel number game. Cross words! Weave your vocabulary!

Oh Flannel man with windshield glasses, you read the sports section! Footballs and running! Mascots! Not the bird, not the bird, but the color! There was a time when they were Indians, my friend, big chiefs on the plains. Tomahawk chop, they don’t mind, they make the money with lucky sevens. But someone did mind!

How did they learn to eat the acorns? The poison acorns! So much work. I wonder at it.

Oh! No! Mister Flannel McNewspaper! You leave, you left. You’re off to see the world. To Tressex! Or a Jamba delight! Turbo boosts in your banana berry smoothie. An extra boost for you, my friend. To Subway! Long bread and meats, and the smell with it! Subway sandwiches, the most consistent odor, around the world. Sandwich artists! Draw me a meal! Paint me a coke! Mr. Flannel, are you commissioning an artist? Pop art with pickles!

You are no student! No TA or prof! Are you an alum? A straggling alum? Leave! The good days, the old days, when you were young and covered in less flannel, when the golf karts had horses and the burros roamed free, when the net caught only fish, when Father Serra founded Old Union, when you saw them building of stucco and steel, are gone, and you with them, but in another five the tents will go up and the wine will pour again.

More of That Damn Fountain

These Times Are Hard Time

Ah, to be an over-educated unskilled individual on career day. It’s bleak out there, folks, bleak. I study English, you know that? Books and stories and poems. Poems! A poem! A poem! My undergraduate career for a poem. It’s a good major, it is. I write papers about how I feel. I write my opinion. This was a good story. The author did this to accomplish that and reiterate the other. The punctuation was superb. The cover of the book was evocative and the binding was solid.

Maybe that’s not quite how it goes, but there is a drift, and you get the drift. The English major is one in which you participate in much nebulous thinking. Like I said, it’s pretty great, if that’s your thing. Some people are really smart with that stuff, you bet. Analyzing the written form of human expression. Of course, the creative writing focus is even better than straight literature. You make stuff up and get credit for it. Turns out it really isn’t that easy to make things up if you want to produce something decent, and most people aren’t too great at it. Even so, you can’t beat that.

I went up to a guy from Pixar and asked him what sort of opportunities they had for a liberal arts major. He just sort of moved his head slowly back and forth to communicate his disinterest in my profound abilities. I think if I stayed any longer he would have euthanized me. Besides, all they had were free stickers. Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to get free stickers, well, whatever.

But I have no regrets. No real anecdotes, and no regrets. Actually I have an immense number of regrets, but not the English thing. This above all: to thine ownself be true.

Three Shakespeare quotes and a Charles Dickens reference! Sigh.

Sunday Afternoon On the Island of Stanford

I thought I’d make a brief elucidative statement. I’m always writing about the coffee shop. Why am I always writing about the coffee shop? The coffee shop, or coffee house, or whatever, refers to a few different places where I go to work. ‘Work’ means a few different things as an English major, but it’s never very serious work. Anyway, I work, and work, and stuff, and I get bored and take a break by writing to you, right here. So I watch the people and complain about them, and then try to work again. It’s the circle of life.