Heaps of old jackets, skirts, shirts and dresses that I no longer wear
are sitting in the back of my wardrobe. All of them are bargains and
out-of-date. Even though it’s said fashion recurs in a cycle, they are
too old and worn to be put on again. And yet, I can’t throw them away.
In
addition to a memory that each one of them holds, I feel guilty to
throw away what is still somehow usable by keeping its original form.
That sort of my own rule applies not only to clothes but to everything,
from food to a cardboard box. I just can’t waste anything. Recently, I
have often seen a notice on the table in a restaurant, which says ‘Clear
your plate for the earth.’ or ‘Remember again the old don’t-waste-food
spirit.’ As a person who is too cheap to leave food on a plate, I always
wonder since when Japanese people stopped clearing their plates and
forgot the don’t-waste spirit. I’ve practiced it all my life as a habit.
A bus person might mistake my finished plates and cups for clean ones
because not a bit or a drop remains there when I leave the table.
I
attribute it to my grandfather’s DNA. I lived with my grandparents when I
was a child and I used to go out with my grandfather. His black leather
shoes were totally worn-out. They were not as bad as Chaplin’s but a
tip of the shoe had a hole. No matter how often my grandmother asked if
he should get a new pair, he was adamant that he could still walk in his
shoes. For him, it didn’t matter how he looked in them but whether they
were usable or not. Since he kept putting on those shoes with a hole,
my grandmother had no choice but to polish them for him. As a result, a
weird item as shiny worn-out shoes came into existence. My grandfather
would take me to a department store in the city in those shoes and
strolled around grandly. Even as a small child, I was embarrassed by his
shoes and hated to go out with him.
It wasn’t about money. He had
enough money to buy new shoes. On the contrary, he was a rich man who
had quite a few properties. That meant his shiny worn-out shoes weren’t
necessity. Whether wearing them was his hobby or his principle is still a
mystery.
It’s more than a decade since my grandfather passed away. I
wonder how the world would be like if people around the world put on
worn-out shoes as a common practice. Goods wouldn’t be consumed so much,
the number of factories would be less, and more forests would remain.
There would be less CO2 emissions, climate change would be delayed, and
wildfire and a new virus would be sporadic. All it takes is us wearing
worn-out shoes. The problems are solved.
Regrettably, I don’t have
the courage to do so. I’m too self-conscious about how I look to others.
I don’t want to be looked down on by my looks. Even if my actions led
to the destruction of the world, I would like to stroll about a tinseled
city and show off by dieting and dressing myself in fashionable
clothing. Am I a senseless person? I wonder how my grandfather feels
looking at me from above.
Friday, September 17, 2021
Shiny Worn-out Shoes hr646
Labels:
climate change,
clothes,
CO2 emissions,
department store,
diet,
DNA,
earth,
fashion,
forest,
grandfather,
grandparents,
Japan,
Japanese,
new virus,
restaurant,
shoes,
virus,
waste,
wildfire,
world
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