Bump: the Redemption of Hope

An Afternoon Musing on a Slipper It's an afternoon. Sunlight squeezed in through the cracks in the window, like a not-serious snake, lying lazily on the wooden floor. I looked at that ray of sunshine for a long time, maybe three minutes, or four minutes, or maybe only thirty seconds. My perception of time has never been accurate, just like I can never tell whether the dog owned by the family downstairs is a golden retriever or a Labrador. But that's not the point. The point is that slipper. The slippers are blue. I can't tell exactly what kind of blue it is. It's not the blue of the sky, nor the blue of the ocean, but closer to—how to put it—the blue of slippers. It lies quietly next to the coffee table, with the toe of the shoe facing the sofa and the heel of the shoe facing the TV cabinet. Does this orientation have any profound meaning? I don't know and I don't intend to know. It has stayed like this, from the time I woke up in the morning to now, about six or seven hours, without moving. Of course, slippers don't move unless someone puts them on or kicks them. No one puts it on and no one kicks it. So it stayed there, in the same pose, like a blue slipper version of the Meditator. I try to imagine the life of this slipper. It is produced from the factory, paired with another, put into a plastic bag, stuffed into a carton, and shipped to a wholesale market.