Following Tracks Tina Vivian
There had been a tiny pair of footprints, those of a young child and I wondered if he or she had been bundled up, a scarf wound round and a hat pulled down over the ears. By nightfall the snow had covered them again leaving no evidence of a child in the world walking in the cold. Things come into your head sometimes when you’re walking, things you forgot to do or things you want to do as soon as you get wherever you are going. I often forget those things the minute I take my hat off as though that precious information has flown right out of the top of my head once the hat wasn’t there to hold them in. All of those important phone calls, the unanswered e-mails, a fine description or the first line of a poem, rise like fog to burn off in the atmosphere. Our footsteps are a constant problem for Steve, the one that polishes the floors. He is constantly pushing something down the halls, something that cleans or sweeps or polishes. I walk right by smiling my apologies, leaving fresh slush where he had just cleaned. When a spider’s web is destroyed over and over it gradually becomes more and more distorted. Steve’s floors show no evidence of any mental disturbance. Even the corners are swept clean and he doesn’t complain or even scowl. Mom would have made us all stay outside until she was done and the waxed surface was completely dry. Maybe we should all take our shoes off at the door. The squirrels leave sets of tracks in the snow. I followed one down the sidewalk the other day. He kept turning around to see if I was still coming. We just happened to be going in the same direction, but he probably thought he was being stalked, his poor little squirrel heart pounding. He took the first tree on the left clinging to the far side of the trunk, watching until I had passed. A guy in a motorized wheel chair came out of the 7-11. He had a case of beer between his feet as he navigated through the snow and slush. At the corner he plowed through the rising water with his beer safely guarded. There are more and more people on motorized wheelchairs in our neighEmbodied Effigies | 117