The Isolation Journals - Day 35

Today for some reason I didn't receive the journal prompt in my email.  I was about to jump in the shower to ward off the DTs when some kind souls in the facebook group shared the prompt with me.  I've come to rely on this morning ritual.  So here is today's prompt, from writer Bianca Bosker.

Prompt:  Draw a portrait of your right foot (or, if you prefer, the right foot of anything—a chair, a table, a pet) using whatever medium you'd like. After you finish the portrait, write a description of the foot as though it were a character you're introducing—its physical attributes, but also its personality and demeanor. Who is it? Where has it been? What does it want? What’s it like?


---

Lately I've been thinking about the passage of time (like duh, hasn't everyone?) and how certain peculiar rituals of maintaining a life escape our notice until all of a sudden it's shocking and unavoidable.  Time to pay rent again already?  Didn't I just light my paycheck on fire for that yesterday?  Why are my bangs so long?  When did I last pluck my eyebrows?  Why won't my car start?  Surely that's not still the battery that was replaced that winter in Idaho almost a decade ago.  Is it?  

And yet, my toenails seem to be preserved in amber, frozen in time.  I was reminded of a scene from a play that I was certain was Waiting for Godot, but after fruitless Googling, realized was actually Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Rosencrantz:  It's a funny thing - I cut my fingernails all the time, and every time I think to cut them, they need cutting. Now, for instance. And yet, I never, to the best of my knowledge, cut my toenails. They ought to be curled under my feet by now, but it doesn't happen. I never think about them. Perhaps I cut them absent-mindedly, when I'm thinking of something else.

 Without further ado, here's a foot:

Paint me like one of your French girls

She's dominant, assertive, no frills, a bit callused.  Broad, grounded, and well traveled.  Prone to wandering.  

She's walked naked down the Ben Franklin Parkway and up the Art Museum steps to stand beside Rocky at midnight.  She's been alternately supported and blistered by an ill-fitting boot in the Green Mountains of Vermont and the Canyonlands of Utah.

She's a solid foundation on a yoga mat, loves a good massage, but she's practical.  Groomed but unadorned.  Don't put her on a pedestal.  She's humble, has a fear of heights.  Catch her in a worn-in pair of Docs, warm her sole with a pair of whimsical socks, let her breathe free in a sandal as late as the season allows.