Abandoned shoes by a park bench

No feet in sight
London, ON
October 2014
Thematic. Messy. Here.

I came across this forlorn pair of shoes during a recent lunchtime walk through London's Victoria Park. For anyone who doesn't live here, this lovely park is a wonderfully kept icon of another era when grand public spaces seemed to matter to society more than they do today.

Scenes like this seem so out of place in a park that seems almost immune to the kind of day-to-day grind that marks Dundas Street, the sometimes-gritty-at-the-edges mostly-retail street just a few blocks south of here. London's homeless don't seem to sleep here. The white collar types who hang out at the picnic tables here seem worlds apart from the folks who struggle, virtually out of sight, barely a three-minute walk away.

Which makes this sight a fascinating one. I'm not sure who left these shoes here, or what the underlying story might have been. But I felt compelled to capture it all the same. These shoes were new and shiny once, but time has worn their soles down, scuffed up the once-pristine leather and covered it with a thin patina of dust. It's almost as if Willy Loman decided to leave his final mark before slipping once again into the shadows of history.

Whoever it is, I hope he finds peace.

Your turn: These shoes have a story. Care to take a guess what that story could be?