An old sock for an old shoe
LeftCoastKenny
In everything that can be called art there is a quality of redemption.
It may seem odd to quote Raymond Chandler when discussing a photograph of an old red sock. But down these mean streets a man must go, with or without socks. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of one red sock — by instinct, by inevitability, without thought of it, and certainly without saying it. He must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man — only an unusual man would willingly abandon one red sock while going down mean streets. He is a relatively poor man, or his sockless state would matter little.
He talks as the man of his age talks — that is, with rude wit, a lively sense of the grotesque, a disgust for sham, and a contempt for those who denigrate the unsocked. He has a range of awareness that startles you, but it belongs to him by right, because it belongs to the world he lives in — a world dominated by the fully-socked, a world in which the oppressed sockless seek a champion.
Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. He is such a man — l’homme avec une chaussette rouge — the man of one red sock.
Blog photograph copyrighted to the photographer and used with permission by utata.org. All photographs used on utata.org are stored on flickr.com and are obtained via the flickr API. Text is copyrighted to the author, greg fallis and is used with permission by utata.org. Please see Show and Share Your Work
