-^-for posterity-^-

there’s no need to throw out old tennis shoes. everything’s reusable.

my old shoes were in desperate need of repair. the humidity and ho chi minh city basketball had taken a toll on them. small holes had turned into larger holes. you could tell if my socks were dirty or clean. you could almost smell them simply by looking at them.

my friend, tri, told me that he could have them repaired in saigon. for a dollar thirty i have new shoes. well, relatively new. fixing a sneaker is a delicate process. one must take the soul from another shoe and place it on the old shoe. one must glue this soul in place and sew it around the edges. the old soul is thrown away and must wait for junkyard judgment day.

the holes were never fixed but the bottoms are nice. they squeak when i walk and i’m proud to be in my hybrid shoe with a new soul. if only it were that simple to purge our own souls. take them to the big city and have them replaced with a new, squeaky model. we could simply discard the old one and wipe away all the blemishes. i still suspect that it would only be cosmetic.