YOUR STORIES 3 - English Reading Club - Bookworms

FEET by Fabiola Mecías Pumar.


I see my feet, they are there at the bottom or at the beginning of my body, it depends on how one builds the idea of the body. I could look at them, they are here with me, they are part of me, but I am seeing them in my mind, thinking about them, what relation have I with them?
My feet are one of my favourite parts of my body. They are little and they have sinuous lines. And I like lines, sinuous lines specially. I am particularly sensible to lines, curved lines cause me a sort of pleasure (it is not by accident that I have decided to be a painter).A convexity, then concavity, then convexity again. These curves give contour to their profiles. They are little and now some wrinkles have appeared.
They are free feet. I have never liked the sensation on them of being packed tight. Seeing some feet coming out of their shoes overwhelmed, distorted, deformed, displeases me so much it seems they have been prisoners to footwear. I can remember myself being a six-year-old child, in bed, before sleep, giving a massage to my feet, wanting them to expand at the end of the day. I kept doing that naturally and spontaneously. Then in my twenties theatre lessons came along and dance lessons, and here to massage the feet became part of the training. Once one of my theatre teachers ( I am really grateful to her, I have really learnt from her) told us: " A bird can fly high because it has good clutches to grip". It is true, they need them to properly seize a branch at landing. Land is the base. Feet. A bird knows that if air provides great pleasures, freedom, a wide perspective and light and delightful support (who has not dreaming of flying or, who has not flying on dreaming?), land nourishes and gives rest. So, feet if you are confident at a good landing, then you feel able to fly to remote worlds so you can create in reality.
One can also see the body as a tree, so feet are one's roots and if one is well-rooted, well planted, one can develop well.
And I love dancing, and walking and running, and travelling. By saying that, a sentence comes to my mind, it is written on a book which is my treasure, my mother began to write it when I was born to register my first days and filled it with photos. One of the sentences is written in first person as if it was me talking after having just started to walk. The phrase is: "I could not believe that it would be so great to walk and to run!"
Feet, then a world






THE SINK by Pili Ortega

The sink is the place where, at nights, I look for the most hidden secrets of my neighbours. There, next to the sink, while they are not watching me, I bring together my eye to the waste pipe and then I can see that small wedding ring which the blonde of the sixth floor has thrown away through the sink, after she found out that her husband had forgotten their anniversary again, although for sure he is not in love with any other woman. I can also hint the disappointed expression of her face, the sadness, the frustration, and later on, I also discover her husband’s wide eye through my sink, his enormous dark eye behind a short-sighted pane of glass which stares at the ring rolling down and reminds himself of the very day he bought it. How happy he smiled! How much love he should have felt just to invest his whole savings in that rolling ring. How stupid he had behaved!! And then, at this real moment, I can also find out through my sink, through his short-sighted eye all the anger, all the rage while he thinks again and again, obsessively, about the nice pair of shoes that this year he had hidden behind the coach just to surprise his blonde in their anniversary day