coralsea

I remember being taken to a podiatrist when I was 9, and in her waiting room there were rows of glass cases full of shoes. All neatly labelled "Womans' Chopine" etc. The glass cases were a bit like Snow White's coffin.
There was a tiny pair of Lotus shoes accompanied by pictures of unbound feet. The real shoes have no odour, no imprint..mainly because the ones that have survived were not for everyday wear and well bound feet were tightly wrapped and not walked upon very often.
Hands fascinate me. One person I knew had a motorcycle accident when he was 14. It left him with a skinny little forearm with a big purple ripped scar down the centre like it had been filleted, the palm of his hand was knotted and the fingers badly pockmarked from gravel. It looked like the taxi drivers hand in Total Recall. The other pair of hands I like belonged to a friend in a wheelchair. His hands had an arched groove down the centre which extended from below his fingers to about halfway up his forearm. The skin was tough and yellowed (like on your feet) with rubber from his chair tyres permanently embedded in it. Years spent in the chair had shaped them.