The Haunting Shoe Rack

I want to be able to say that Sundays are for reading. I wish the afternoon sun would dim just a little bit so that the air can become cooler and the day a little bit more soothing. I like unhurried days. I wish I can have more of them. But time is not and has never been in my control. So I take what I can and leave the rest to the Clock Maker.

I do my usual internet morning routine. While intermittently reading Redeemed. I'm hoping to finish it soon but by the looks of my schedule, I'm doubting I can have quiet lazy days like this. Anyway, I ran into a very interesting picture of a moment in Hungary's history. Pardon my ignorance but I never was into history during college. Perhaps it was how my professor then just taught us to focus on the dates and the names without really giving us the reason and the significance of such events and why it should matter to us in the present day. Despite that, I suppose time catches up on you and the haunting of the past sort of overtakes you and reminds you that you are part of a collective whole.

I saw this picture from my friend Jen Grabarcyzk's Facebook. She took it when she was touring Hungary sometime last year for an art residency course. The picture was of the Shoe Memorial by the Blue Danube river. I quickly looked it up in Wikipedia and found out that these shoes were real shoes of Jews that were killed in WW2 by the Arrow Cross Militiamen. These shoes were left behind when they fell into the river.




I was taken aback by the sight of real worn out shoes that are still there after having crossed decades and how these shoes were the last remaining proof of human lives living on this earth. Lined up so haunting and melancholy like a hidden shoe rack. It makes me wonder about what other journeys these shoes have walked on. Or did the feet that carried them know they were going to walk to their death?