There is dogshit everywhere on these stony sidewalks: some still in fresh mounds and heaps, some flattened with the imprint of a shoe sole, some ground deep into crevasses between one stone and another, some just a faint brown tint to a particular patch, and some, I'm sure, must be stuck to the bottom of my boots. People walk around in shoes that cost more than my airfare to get here and they walk through dogshit. Because even if that sole imprint does not belong to my shoe, that foot took another step after that filthy and disheartening one, and one after that, and so on, leaving remants on the places one might assume are safe. To my readers with gentiler ears and eyes, I apologize for this crudeness, but such is the nature of the urban place--urbanity produces waste. For readers who have been the foot in that unfortunate shoe, I am sorry for your sole.
As for the pink fuzzy slippers, my host handed them to me the day I arrived. " You can wear these around the house always, there are so many dogs outside." As Alessandro, the director of my program, often says in his lovely sing-song way, "Such are the dichotomies of Europe."
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so i read this article in chinese how in france its lucky to step in dogshit with your left food. unfortunately, you are not in france.
ReplyDeleteand by food i mean foot.
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