An Essayist's Notebook

Every so often an essay refuses to become what you thought it was. For the last few days I have been working on a piece tentatively titled The Espadrilles. On the surface it is a simple story. A lifelong vegetarian travels into the hills east of Tardets to visit a traditional espadrille workshop in search of a pair of shoes that might sit a little more comfortably with his convictions.

I thought I understood the essay before I wrote it. I didn't.

Writing it has been unexpectedly difficult. Not because I lacked the material, but because every time I thought I understood what the piece was about, it shifted beneath me. At first I thought it was about contradiction. The contradiction is obvious enough. I have been vegetarian for fifty years. I have spent much of my life trying to align my conduct with my convictions. Yet I wear leather shoes. Every vegetarian knows the conversation. Every vegetarian knows the smile. Every vegetarian knows the moment someone points triumphantly at a belt, a wallet or a pair of shoes and says, “That's a bit contradictory.” They're right. It is.

But as I wrote, the essay moved elsewhere. The workshop itself began to take on a life of its own. The hemp. The rope. The old machinery. The smell of oil and dust. The stories of migration and craft. Most importantly, the artisan who welcomed me into his world and revealed his values through the way he handled materials, tools and traditions.

Gradually I realised I was no longer writing about shoes. I was writing about recognition. About finding myself in the presence of a way of life that seemed to embody many of the things I value: care, craftsmanship, hospitality, continuity, attention and pride in work. Then came the moment that gave the essay its tension. After hours spent discussing hemp, rope and traditional manufacture, the artisan unveiled what he regarded as the finest expression of his craft. Leather. Beautiful leather. Locally produced leather. Some of Navarre's finest leather. The obvious reading is contradiction. The vegetarian encounters leather.

But that wasn't what stopped me. What stopped me was the sudden recognition that the artisan and I shared many of the same values, yet arrived at different conclusions about what those values demanded. For him, the leather was not compromise. It was excellence. It was an act of generosity. It was hospitality. The finest thing he knew how to offer another person whom he believed genuinely appreciated his craft.

That realisation opened a much larger question than the one with which I began. For years I have been interested in the relationship between values, politics, participation, community and consensus. Like many people, I suspect, I carried an unexamined assumption that sufficiently good people, sharing sufficiently good values, would naturally tend towards agreement. The workshop revealed a crack in that assumption.

Two people may share values and still arrive at different conclusions about what those values demand. Goodness does not automatically generate consensus. I am still trying to understand what follows from that observation. The essay is therefore unfinished. Not abandoned. Simply unfinished.

I now know where it wishes to go, but I also know that rushing it would do it a disservice. The workshop, the artisan, the swallows, the coffee and the leather have revealed something I did not see when I began. For now, that is enough.

The draft remains on my phone. I suspect I will revisit it many times over the coming months. Not because I need to finish the story, but because I want to understand more clearly what the story has already revealed.

Sometimes an essay's first duty is not to reveal something to its readers. But, to teach its author. For the moment, The Espadrilles has done precisely that. David Marshall Skerries