14/05/2024
“I have nothing to offer but the soles of my feet, dreams covered in dust.”
The words were sprawled across a blue monotone painting of what appeared to be a frail African woman, wrapped in a thin gauzy fabric that barely covered her withered features.
The simple — yet bizarre — painting hung tall in the grand assembly hall. It was the only painting in the whole school and that was what it read. Our student body was made up of children whose ages fell somewhere in the range of 6–13, so it was an odd choice for a painting as its significance would be lost on our undeveloped minds. Most people didn’t even notice it; not the teachers, or the general staff… NEVER the students.
But I did.
I noticed it every single day for the 3 years I attended that school and it always bothered me. I’ve thought about it many times in the years since I finished primary school, but I have never understood it. Or at least I didn’t think I did, not the deeper meaning anyway. What was the artist saying? What were they thinking? Why were the woman’s dreams covered in dust? And how would the soles of her feet help anyone?
I remember joking to a friend — who only noticed the piece of art when I pointed it out — that the woman in the painting truly had nothing to offer if all she had were her own foot soles. She didn’t even have a proper dress, yet there she was offering her soles to the world. What made it worse was that the painting was a portrait, so you couldn't see her feet, much less her soles. It drove me mad.
I’ve ransacked the internet for the painting and its meaning, but it exists nowhere else on the planet but on that wall. My questions have remained unanswered for over a decade now, and the only thing I’ve ever known about the painting - that I have known since I first laid my eyes on it - was this: I would do whatever I could to never become that woman.
(Continue reading "The Words" by OJWolfe on Medium)
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