I promise there's a point to all the feet links
on foundations, delayed gratification, and going against conventional wisdom that doesn't work
I never understood a hallowed reverence for spring until my first one in New York: wave after wave of tulips, daffodils, irises rising in shifts for weeks, defiant color in the still-too-cold. Now, I anticipate tulip season. Midwinter’s snowdrops, which have already pushed through the soil, say soon.
There’s something sweet to me about people planting hundreds of these bulbs in the fall and the delayed gratification of a brief aesthetic payoff months later. Snowdrops aside, right now it feels like dirt season. Bare season. Preparing to flourish. Roots-like-bones season.
My latest obsession is the foot-health corner of Instagram. One of the footfluencers I follow shared the above graphic comparing the stunted form of a tree with hemmed-in roots to a human body whose toes have been crammed into too-small shoes. I’m amazed—and yet not—by how many body problems can be linked to issues with the feet: an uneven gait, lower back pain, finicky and painful ankles, knees, hips. People share before and after images of their weak-to-strengthened feet and correlate them with better posture and overall ease being upright. I want what they have.
A thousand years ago when I needed a college P.E. credit, I took a beginner-level modern dance class. Two women in my class were Real Modern Dancers. You could tell just by looking at them, especially their FEET. Partly because, instead of jazz or ballet shoes, they wore what looked like a compression bandage wrapped around the ball of the foot (I just discovered these are called footundeez, lol), some seasoned dancer shit. But mostly because their feet looked incredibly strong; something about the splay of their toes against the ground made them seem so…grounded! Their hips looked relaxed?? It was like they gathered actual stability from the ground instead of hovering above it like a floating consciousness.
Having won the bunion lottery at a young age (bunions and bunionettes, thank you), about a decade ago I consulted an orthopedic physician, who told me my only option was surgery. In the meantime, I should worship at the altar of arch support and wear “wide” shoes, “like New Balance and Clarks.” A nurse friend advised me never to have any kind of surgery unless the pain became so unbearable that it would be worth the risks of surgery, which for bunionectomy include the bunion actually getting worse or (though rare) constant burning pain forever. Hoping to stave that off, I pillowed my feet with insoles, “big” shoes, and even arch-support slippers. But everything eventually got worse; as of a few months ago, being barefoot in my home was painful, like standing on marbles.
Foot-health instagram defies all institutional knowledge about how to care for feet. In this subculture, the ideal shoe is foot-shaped, allowing the toes to spread all the way out (so, even wider than the widest Clark) and has a sole that’s “zero drop” (the heel is not raised at all), thin, and flexible enough to roll with the foot. This is not a shoe someone like me could instantly wear without hurting myself—which is why it’s advised to first re-train the feet to support themselves through a whole library of physical therapy exercises. A barefoot-shoe reviewer explains the rationale like this: “If you came to a physical therapist with a hurt shoulder, you might be prescribed a temporary brace, but you would also be advised to mobilize and strengthen the area because if you brace the shoulder forever it will stop working.” My supported arches stopped working. Only time will tell if the strengthening method can provide real relief. People spend years rehabbing their feet; full gratification is definitely not instant.
Okay, I know I’ve spent four paragraphs on feet. The foot saga is part of my bigger-picture curiosity here, which is that tons of people seem to achieve desired results here through the opposite of the general-wisdom approach. There are obviously limits to this line of thinking; I’m not condoning general skepticism of medicine or whatever. I am interested in applying this reject-the-wisdom approach to art-making.
Questions/experiments/rituals:
Do it wrong: If you find you’re hitting a wall in your creative practice, and you’re doing all the right things or following what you’ve been taught—why not completely overhaul your tactic? What if the complete opposite to the “correct approach” yields better results? What is the incorrect or amateur approach? Try it in a way that “definitely won’t work” and see what happens.
(For example, for weeks now, I’ve been flirting with the idea of a novel. “Everyone knows” that to undertake the writing in earnest means writing an outline and/or writing an opening scene and building on it from there. You work somewhat chronologically so you understand what the story actually is and how the events unfold. [And after that, you fix it.] This feels somehow both boring and intimidating to me. Instead, I’m allowing myself to jot down “some little vignettes that are probably just nothing” as iPhone notes, with no particular timeline, only when I feel like it, with no consistent POV or style.
Poems often manifest this way for me; I make a bunch of scraps and let them teach me whether and how they relate to each other. The novel idea is beginning to take shape across many notes like an enormous poem; I tinker only when the mood strikes; I have given myself no deadlines, no word counts to hit. I suspect that to most writers—and editors!—this sounds like an absolute nightmare. But for me, I need to trick myself or else never do the thing at all. If I’m doing it completely wrong from the get-go, I have less anxiety about it being “good” or “real” or even “going to happen.” Which means maybe someday it will.)
Toe yoga: Try this beginner exercise for strengthening your feet: stand with both feet on the floor, beginning with toes in a relaxed state. Then, raise only the big toe of one foot, leaving the remaining toes on the floor. Lower it back to the starting position. Repeat on the other side. Now raise the rest of the toes on one foot, leaving the big toe flat on the floor. Lower them back down. Repeat on the other side. (Here’s a video where you can see this, plus related exercises, in action.) I started doing this a few weeks ago and I really had to concentrate and couldn’t move the toes much. Now I can do both feet at the same time—a new brain-body connection. This has become a morning ritual for me, and I hope helps you find stability and connection with the ground!
Reading/watching/listening
Books: I’m currently reading Judas Goat, the debut full-length poetry collection by Gabrielle Bates. It is so good!! It will fuck you up, it might make you cry, you may feel upset about imbalanced power dynamics and tender about the possibility of opening to love and perhaps allowing yourself to be seen by another. You can listen to the always-amazing David Naimon discuss it with Gabrielle on the Between the Covers podcast.
Films: My husband spent ten months making this animated short, about childhood, a mysterious and inspirational next-door neighbor, and an island you’ve never heard of. It’s fully animated, with an original score and everything. (I am biased but) it is lovely! (There are also several loose prequel videos in a motion-comic style, if you want to see some of the separate threads that came together in episode 10.)
Theater: If you live in the city and are going to shows, I highly recommend Kimberly Akimbo. I’m not always keen on contemporary musicals. This one is so funny and painful and sad, with music by Jeanine Tesori, who did the music for Fun Home (which was also great). I went into this knowing almost nothing about it, which was just right. (And I’ve had good luck with discount tickets on TodayTix.)
Publications/projects
At the very end of 2022—after my last newsletter of the year—The Rumpus published my review of Elaine Hsieh Chou’s novel Disorientation, one of the best books I read all year.
Taylor Byas’s I Done Clicked My Heels Three Times, a poetry collection I edited for Soft Skull, is now available for preorder! You are not ready for how good it is, but if you follow Taylor’s twitter and/or have ever been destroyed by one of her poems, you get it.
Candice Wuehle’s headtrip of a Y2K psyop novel, MONARCH, will be released in paperback on March 7th. Do you like Yellowjackets? Dark academia? Bunny by Mona Awad? Trauma psychology? Lore? Have you ever been to a Tupperware party (or did your mom fall for a different MLM scheme)? Preorder the paperback (or scoop up a hardcover, while you can) here!
Misc.
With so many still reeling from the Lunar New Year shooting in Monterey Park, here’s a list of ways to support the families affected by this violence, on what should have been a day of celebration.
Anti-Racism Daily discusses data showing increased numbers of civilians killed by police in 2022 and suggests specific community-first response services (which are equipped to respond appropriately to mental health crises) to support, along with links to fundraisers supporting the families of recent victims of police brutality.
HarperCollins workers have been striking since November. They are asking HC to raise the base salary from $45,000 to $50,000, in New York City, one of the most expensive places to live in the country (at a workplace that allegedly doesn’t allow fully remote work), amidst record-breaking profits and six- and seven-figure book deals with the likes of Ron DeSantis, who is otherwise busy banning books from schools. Since this 1/23/23 article about the strike (and more deets at NPR) HarperCollins finally announced they would enter into mediation…and then, four days after that, announced a planned 5% company-wide layoff, obviously intended to intimidate striking workers and foment tensions between them and their colleagues. Note that while the strike started 85 days ago, workers have been trying to negotiate their now-expired contract for well over a year.
You can donate to the strikers’ fund here. Other ways to support are noted here (click through the slides) including not reviewing or blurbing HarperCollins books, not sending them any books on submission, and not taking on any freelance work from them.
That’s what I have for you this month. See you again at tulip time!
the foot stuff is legit fascinating!