This is the fourth exactly-same-model of hiking boot I’ve worn over the last 10 or so years. A pair lasts two or three years — hundreds of trail and sidewalk miles. Then wears through, or the bottom sole begins to delaminate. Noticed today, as I purchased another pair, that the current pair is worn through on the heel’s outer side. So I roll my foot outward, or push outward, as I walk. The rubber nubby layer has been completely worn away and the basal layer below that is beginning to wear through. The previous pair was in tatters, with the soles almost flapping off, when replaced a couple of years ago.
Why am I bothering to write about this? Well, I’d like to encourage you to walk, or run, or whatever, until you also wear out your shoes. I put in about 10k (mostly in the city) every Saturday and the same on Sunday. It keeps me energetic. Clears the head. Musses up the hair. Makes me thirsty. Is actually relaxing. Feels really great.
My latest composition Beings of Light and Darkness is meant to suggest the conflicting information, processes and feelings of being diagnosed with cancer, going through chemo therapy and surgery, and recovering functionality. “Light” and “Dark” are used figuratively in describing events and feelings.
This recovery is a slow road. I thought I’d come out of surgery, have a few weeks with catheter as a pal, then I’d kind of teleport directly into health. Well that was “close,” but not exact. It’s a process of approximation. The important things get better, then something goes wrong (big bacterial infections, let’s say, like three times in four weeks, with high fever and inability to think clearly), then we clear that, then things get better. I’m in my 12th post-surgical week now. Then some other lesser thing pops up and cries for attention. 
Someone pointed out to me that at our core, each of us humans is a big tube, with a bunch of other systems hanging on the outside. Cake and apples and beer go in one end of the digestive system on a regular basis, and unsightly debris comes out the other on an irregular basis. There are other systems, of course, including nervous, circulatory, urinary, and respiratory systems (among others). But without nutrition, we don’t survive.
Starting to get some hair growing back this week. Lost 90% when going through that second round of chemotherapy. Today I shot this selfie which reminds me of the brutalist term as used in architecture.