One of the many joys of socks is the sense of being grounded completely in one’s body and felt sense of snugness or tightness that defines the foot without confining it. In no other way can one really sense the feeling of one’s feet being defined by a shape or a boundary without being confined by this boundary. What a beautiful middle path, something that Frost might even refer to as “freedom in harness”.
Unfortunately–and I am not so sure why this is the case–the sense of touch gets easily replaced by the sense of sight, and this grounding that one feels is projected onto someone else through the act of seeing. In seeing, I imagine the comfort or the groundedness that I expect someone else to feel while clad in socks. Paradoxically, I lose my own sense of grounding in the process.
There are thus two ways of looking at socks: one is to see them as an exotic experience that belongs to someone else who is “other”; the other is to come down from this exotification altogether and see with humility that the sense of touch or grounding can only come from my own feeling. By not looking to the other and imagining how they would feel, I return to my own sense of grounding with this body in this moment. But this second way requires a sacrifice, because if I go into the first “eye based” view, I end up in feelings of alienation.
boysocks318 