I love burlap. I guess it's from reading so many stories of little brown girls & women wearing burlap sacks & graduating to burlap dresses in tales of our laborious past. It would seem that the opposite would occur, that I wouldn't have any appreciation for the rough, scratchy fabric that was adopted to make clothing for those of us treated as less than human, worse than livestock. I've never claimed to make sense.
Through all of that reading burlap has come to be symbolic to me. It's a symbol of make-do culture, much the way the soul food diet is. We've always taken what we have & made the best of it, whatever it is. Burlap represents toil but also exultation. It's the ability to rise above the mayhem & build shelter strong enough not to burn when licked at by hell fires. Chasing hell back is a full time job.
Burlap, much like denim, has been repurposed; put up a couple dollars for a good PR person & changed its image. Burlap is now about being sturdy (like it once was for holding potatoes, etc) & resilient. Something else I can relate to. In this shoe in particular, it's also about being a part of a movement, a purpose. I speak a lot in this space about identifying your purpose, leading a purpose driven Life. As I continue to move forward in purpose, recognizing when it's time to allow the fires of hell to burn my shelter down & start anew, I'm going to move symbolically in burlap toward my next best self. My wings are almost ready to spread...& they will spread in dyed burlap, ready to meet the day.
If you still have yet to do so...identify your purpose & walk, head high, in it.
Watch me move.
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