The shoes you wear know everything about you. When you’re stealing, lying, or scared; when you’re happy, in a hurry, anxious; they carry you in all you do, and your secrets, too. Mexican artist Naville Obeso owns 36 pairs of sneakers, and not only does she have a relationship with each pair, she’s crafted portraits of them in their most intimate moments. In her series of graphic stories called “Shifting Kicks,” she explores the blows of young love, inevitable disappointment, crushing fear, and impending adulthood.
1 TheTwilightZone.
I remember wearing this pair one time I went camping with my best friends. Which one of them was my “first love” and other one of them also was in love with that same person too. We had friendship and jealousy in common. Can you imagine that? In the middle of the forest? Sounds fucking fun right? Well, we were young and stupid, so between laughing our asses off and thinking stupid, we were kids who didn’t knew shit about so many things, but in the end we were just kids having a good time between pines and chipmunks.
I remember how hard was to keep a filter with this situation, and I remember how our feelings went out of the border with just mentioning little words. It was like been in your period forever.
Ugh.
-“Is she your girlfriend?”
-“I’m not sure, but I think it’s kind of going somewhere…”
And the quiet sound of the forests birds and leaves said everything when you said nothing. But I was too young and pussy-whipped to figure it out. Three years later, we don’t talk anymore, we just say hi at casualty parties when I visit my hometown. You’re still there, She’s still there and I’m miles away from you, but I remember when I wear these kicks. I go to parties now, and I’m in the middle of people drinking, and I think, these people doesn’t know me like you did. And the people who used to know me, doesn’t know who I am anymore. I am now in a twilight zone.
2 SomeDaysAreBetterThanOthers.
He said “I’ve done something really bad. And I’ve got to go. I love you.”
I was playing a silly game of words while some friends were making t-shirts with a design I made. I didn’t know these guys much, but they were making a clothing line and they invited me in. It was 2008 and I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do about all the things I wanted to do in life.
It was fall and winter was coming. More people arrived to the place I was and then he called. Everything after that happened real slowly, like a sad song. I remember keeping myself away looking at nothing in the walls and in the eyes of my friends that were as lost as myself thinking, “what the fuck did just happened?” “What did all that came from?” there were thousands of questions in the air some of them asked by the police and some others by us. As your face started to show in every channel, every newspaper, our sadness started to get blurry. It was weird being at home and it was weird being friends. We at the time were 17 and 16. You were 18. We were nothing but little kids playing hard times in the street. We weren’t serious for nothing and nothing was going to get us on the adulthood bus yet. But then this happened. You happened. A gun shot. Just like that. Made us grow the fuck up.
We stopped being friends. We swallowed our secrets. He still called me from jail saying crazy things. I moved on and so did she, your ex-girlfriend and my friend. I threw up my cellphone and called it off, for good.
I still walk the street in front of his house when I’m back home and it rains on me when I walk through it. I wonder how are he and if he hates me for calling it off. I wonder if we will ever see each other again. When we are 40 and he get out of there. I wonder what would he want to do when he is free and what it’s going to be left for him at that time. I carry those thoughts with me since that day, like these shoes that I don’t wear anymore but I keep them.
3 DontGoToSleep.
I don’t want you to go to sleep, because I know you won’t feel this tomorrow. You won’t want to repeat this. Not because it wasn’t good, but because you don’t really know what you want or feel. You won’t want to look me in the eye the next day. You won’t have the guts to say that you didn’t want to go this far. This will ruin our friendship, will confuse everyone around us, and will make me sick and wasted. And it will matter to you, but not as much as it did to me.
If it makes you less sad I’ll be away but around. We live in the same city and work in the same place. I’ll be away around you. I’ll smile if you want me to and I’ll be sad if you want me to. I’ll be here seeing you crash while you will keep stepping on top of the pieces left of me on the cracked ground of my latest crashes. I’ll forget the number of pieces that remain of me while you will build up yourself with someone else. And so and so, until my heart gets tired of overthinking what makes no sense and has no solution. Until it can finally fall to sleep, wake up the next day and feel like had some rest from the best of us.
4 TheLoner. Part 1
You can die alive sometimes. You can be death and be alive at the same time. You can walk in the sun pretending you live between the livings, but you are actually dead. Some people live desperately dead. You are born in a living scream and dead in a quick silence.
There is this quiet sound that dead makes. The sound of silence.
We carried different kinds of pain with kindness. We knew our names, what we liked and what we wanted at the time. We knew nothing and learned everything for each other. Like if knowledge was the key to stay together. Like if it was school.
They say that ignorance is a blessing and so education is a deadly weapon. There was a year that ended with a brand new pair of black long chucks, and a new year that started at meeting you. That year I was desperately dead and looking for something that could repair what had happen in my short life. I wasn’t expecting that it was love; I wasn’t looking for someone to save me, because I wasn’t raised like that. I was raised to be independent, to believe in super heroes because I could be one, but not to wait for one. I was looking for nothing. It was simply a time where everything was floating around and I was picking on things and trying not to drown in my bitter past.
I remember these pair of chucks, because I love them and because they were really hard to take off. That was funny when we had sex.
You have every right to hate me. And I know you don’t want words. You don’t need them. And so I don’t need to justify anything to you. It sounds selfish, but for the very first time in my life I needed to be. See, I knew nothing and still don’t know, but as soon as I got out of the place I was, as soon as I opened my eyes I realized the person I was and what I was giving. The person you were and what you were turning me into. I don’t blame you, you neither knew what person I was and what you were. I have so much buried inside of me that sometimes I still get surprised of what I keep to myself. That’s why I write. I’ll forever thank you for what you did for me. But I won’t ever forget what you also did to me. You got out of me some strange fear to being caged and exposed at the same time on the most vulnerable time in my life. You were hurting me. And so I got out. And it hurt because I still loved you, but I had to leave.
With all the other demons vanquished, we ourselves are our own worst enemies. And isn’t that the very least we all deserve?
5 BetweenDelightAndDiscomfort.
It was one of those dark days where pieces of me where everywhere and you were still around careless of them, I was lost in thought and pushing myself to be around you when I was completely broken about us. We were on our way to put a show in a home care place for older people* it was the first act that we would put together after breaking up, and I was shit. You forgot your stage gloves and I went back to the car for them. While looking in the car I stumbled and fell over your shirt. I smelled it and started to cry. I waited for a few minutes in the car to get my shit together and went back to you. We started warming up for the show, played a little in the gym, we were all smiles in the back, but really I was trying to hold my tears to you, So. Fucking. Hard.
Our audience was beautiful people of to 75 years older than us. With white hair, in wheel chairs, smiling with their few teeth. We didn’t know what to expect. This was the first time our audience looked like this. Usually they were kids.
They formed a circle around us, and the show started.
Kids wouldn’t be as awesome as this audience was. They were more than kids, they were the true souls of children. A beauty so pure as a newborn. Our show, or usual routine became something so clean and fluid that you could see what infinite meant in their eyes. Beauty in the eyes of wisdom meant to be a kid again and being in peace with the world and yourself. That’s what I saw performing that day with them. I looked back at you and for one moment what had happened before didn’t matter. That day I knew it wasn’t repaired, but someday it would.
Between delight and discomfort, there is a light that never goes out. There is beauty.
A note from Naville Obeso: I *looking at the ground with shame* own 36 sneakers at home. I’ve collected them since I was 17 and since then, to me kicks are gold. “Shifting Kicks” it’s basically writing project where you will meet my shoes and the story behind them. The sad ones, the happy ones and the odd ones. Hope you like it. English isn’t my native language so please, feel free to send me a message if I have an orthographic or grammar error, and feel free to ask any questions too!