Cracked Window

I posted last week about the Rapture after finding a man’s suit abandoned on church steps in downtown Portland. Today, I stumbled upon this portentous scene on the edge of a lush Willamette Valley wheat field south of Portland:

I had stopped to photograph a long train hauling fresh-cut logs (the tracks are in the background). When I finished, I looked up and saw the three baby shoes on a manhole cover. Clearly they weren’t a failed installation of shoefiti — no wires overhead.

Now I’m rethinking the irreverence of my earlier Rapture comments. Two stark sightings in five days add up to more than coincidence. Not exactly prophecy. But what?

Portland being Portland, it’s not unusual to see pairs of shoes dangling from overhead wires. I imagine the fun some jokers had flinging footwear in the air until one of them got lucky. Somewhere in Northeast, where I live, I once saw high-heels similarly perched above the middle of a street, string looped around the heels.

Dangling shoes probably represent a secret code that I’m not hip to. . . an anarchist cabal’s communiques or a notice that on this block the really cool people reside.

Thinking about this prompted me to Google the expression “shoes dangling from wires.” I guess I shouldn’t be surprised a global shoe-dangling fixation appears to be spreading. Theories abound, as do of photos showing the creativity of this “art.” My favorite pictures are here and here. And, naturally, there’s a buzz word – shoefiti – and a web site by that name, featuring everything anyone would possibly want to know about the practice. 

But what’s the meaning of a pair of black Converse All-Stars abandoned on a sidewalk along busy Northeast Broadway? A few days ago the shoes were positioned on either side of a metal pole, as if the wearer had been hugging it.

When I came back with my camera, the shoes were gone.