Look down at your feet. What's between the soles of your feet and the earth?

How much lies between them?

socks, powder, nylon, rubber, more rubber, leather.

carpet, floor, subflooring.

space, stories... how many stories?

basement, concrete, rebar, steel.

dug down scarred, deep excavations

fatigue.

We humans are such funny creatures. We are afraid to be alone and yet afraid of each other. We are afraid of the dark and yet afraid of the sun. We keep ourselves infinitely distracted. Endless noise, endless talking, endless flashing lights. Even in our sleep, the LEDs blink, the phone vibrates, the furnace blows, the clock ticks.

But we are animals too, as wild as any out there.

Why do we keep ourselves caged? And in a hundred-thousand ways: boxes upon boxes of rooms, walls, roofs, steel automobile boxes, cubicles. Jobs, names, clubs, teams. Our bodies wrapped in polyester, hard rubber encases our feet, dark plastic warding off the very sun in our eyes. Our minds must always be gainfully employed, our feelings kept in check, our hair combed, our animal odors doused.

Your toes.

They long for the sand and mud. They remember the soil, the field, the rock, the river. But they were given a job to do instead. So busy balancing you, a long career of tension, constriction, and aching. Sealed up in their shoe-tombs. Aren't your feet a part of you?

You are made of the very same molecules that are in the earth. Not like those molecules. The same molecules. And they long to sing back to the stars they came from. Your breath, your voice, your sight, your senses. They are meant to be.

Wiggle your toes. Remember them.