this morning, a friday, i mapped out my day. i would swim, i would pick up some groceries, i would return home for breakfast, i would get some papers together and take them to uni.
this week i've devoted all spare time to nutting out my (thesis) methodological issues. i need to firm this up, so that everything i write from now on fits a certain structure. otherwise i'll go on building this thesis - this house without foundations - forever. which, in some ways, is enjoyable. because when one room collapses, i just take residence in another. i rebuild something different. something more interesting, for now. an ongoing process. but the thesis isn't. maybe the ideas are, but the thesis has to finish. and i think i'm ready to mix some cement.
it's a little late, and perhaps a little crazy, to add laclau and mouffe's 'discourse theory' as one of the foundations. but i think i can. besides, they're into bricolage. and bricklaying too (see paragraph 8).
anyway, i swim and i emerge clear-headed and ready to push on with this day. i shower and dress and then... "where are my shoes?" i left them in the change room, as always, but they were gone. i have to explain my searching behaviour to a very elderly man getting changed and he tells me to go to lost property. with an outstretched arm he offers me his flip-flops. i decline, but i pause to enjoy this moment. he seems around 90, is bent over, with small feet and a japanese accent.
i speak to the blonde staff member, who is my favourite. a few weeks ago she convinced me to buy a monthly pass: "it's getting warm!" i explain my shoelessness. she apologises and says that this hasn't happened before. "were they new shoes?" "no, they were old".
so my plan changes, and now i walk home, in bare feet - "do you have far to go?" "no, just down the road". i've never walked barefoot on these streets before. a new feeling. the path holds the warmth of a nice spring morning. i remember that one of my favourite pair of socks are inside the shoes. my shoes, with soles wearing thin. but they probably had another 6 months in them.
the woman at the pool is shaking her head. "why would someone take them?" she answers her question: "i guess there are some weirdos around". she takes my number. she's going to keep an eye out and watch people as they're leaving, to check that they're not wearing them.
Laclau and Mouffe tell us that any 'thing' has multiple forms of 'discursive articulation' - "whether this stone is a projectile, or a hammer, or an object of aesthetic contemplation depends on its relations with me—it depends, therefore, on precise forms of discursive articulation" (1987).
and so, my shoes come to be missing shoes, or stolen shoes. "black and blue", i write on the piece of paper. the missing shoes generate various encounters, exchanges of words, sympathies, and comparisons - "i had a pair of flip-flops stolen from a pool once, on a really hot day", she tells me. we share moments of confusion. and here's me, talking to her, talking to the lifeguard, finding out which secret wall holds the 'lost and found' collection. here's me, furthering my relationship with my local pool, its people and its spaces. i write my name and number on the piece of paper. i belong here, more local than ever. i walk home in bare feet, more local than ever.
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