They are my favorite pair of shoes. If not ever, then damn close. They are just eye-catching enough without being too over the top (granted I am, admittedly, a generous grader in that realm): a pop of color in what is generally a very trinary (navies, grays, and whites) wardrobe.

They are red – but not a Jordan red or Ferrari red. Something classier and less ostentatious. A slightly deeper, highly oxygenated blood red, with some patina that adds richness and character, and subtracts what might otherwise be a feather or two too peacocky for my tastes. They have a gold horsebit. They are one of maybe 6 pairs of non-brown/cordovan/oxblood/caramel shoes in my arsenal. They are rare. They are vintage. They are Gucci. They are, if I may say so, dope.

And like many other favorite elements of my wardrobe, at the moment they are painfully idle. Borderline useless. Exalted items, which also hold several special memories, and thus transcend their item value and hold instead greater personal appeal, caught in the netherworld – neitherworld, really – of The Great Reset, as I’ve come to call it. But perhaps because of their favored status, and because they also happen to be with me here in Florida (more on that in a bit), their limbo hits me that much harder.

To say they are transcendent is certainly a bridge too far. But they definitely carry weight. And they are a favorite beyond their look. They are every bit New York, proof in the multiple compliments and longing looks I get whenever I wear them. They are the ultimate travel shoe – Gucci horsebits are literally always appropriate, and can be dressed up and dressed down to beat the band.

Despite being decidedly un-Boston, they also subtly remind me of my wife’s and my time in my hometown prior to moving to New York more than a dozen years ago. Our upstairs neighbor in our South End condo, in addition to being one half of an abhorrently loud and unrepentantly expressive love-making duo alongside his shrill, heavy-footed hen of a wifey, fancied himself a lot more stylish than he was,m. He had a pair himself (albeit suede) that I semi-sweated, but that he truly could not pull off and had no business trying to rock.

Which of course made me want to rob him. And made me want them shoes even more. If there is one thing that really raises my sartorial ire (well, there are more than a few), it’s dudes who either have dope shit that they either don’t value or don’t realize they should, or, worse, somehow, shitty dudes with no flavor who own stuff that’s way out of their realm and they can’t pull off, yet they try and push it anyway. This was more the latter. I’d search for them occasionally, but rarely were the available options anything other than far too rococo/Italianate for me to pull off (over the years I’ve learned well my limitations). I silently seethed.

Until that fateful day some three years ago when during another generally listless evening apart from my (then pregnant) wife – I lived the workweeks of 2017 in a small town called Cleveland, Tennessee, semi-successfully re-building and re-launching a 137 year old Made in America tailored clothing brand (now, tragically, defunct) called Hardwick Clothes – I came across them in another eBay search of slightly odd syntax and thusly misguided pricing. A well-placed offer to buy, in order to get them off the market before someone else noticed the errors, a minor shipping snafu, and a couple weeks later they were mine.

As a result, they also remind me of those challenging 11 months apart as our first child developed apace within my wife’s far-away womb (I only included that because I know how much she hates the term ‘womb’). Literally everyone whose taste I admire ends up admiring them. These shoes are special – and like so many special people, places, and things at the moment, they are out of work.

Staring at them now, the full force of the absurdity of our current situation truly comes to bear. They, like so many elements of my overall wardrobe, but certainly the stuff I packed with me to bring down to sunny (thank God) Delray Beach, Florida, (where we’ve been, shacked up with my in-laws now for the past 32 days), and like myself on any given afternoon, just sit there. Pretty, and without purpose. I can’t think of a scenario in which I’ll wear them again, and will remain unable to do so for who knows how much longer. They exist in this unsettling vacuum in which we all, dress clothes especially, reside.

And in that sense they are the perfect microcosm of what has happened to my world in the past 4 weeks. My family’s home effectively abandoned. My job lost. My favorite shoes, ones valued for their stylishness, versatility, craftsmanship, and panache – an item I pack nearly every trip I take, whether a long weekend or full-blown holiday – that are one of my 5 favorite items in my entire closet, relegated to obsolescence.

Add one utterly helpless narcissist of a President, a true shithead symphony of poor decision-makers and underqualified yes-men in his cabinet, and an obsession with not only tearing down the eminently prepared and thoughtful, if ultimately imperfect legacy of his predecessor and keeping the Federal government from functioning as anything more than a clearninghouse for 1%er profit and disaster capitalist revenue streams, and the entire country, save the odd grocery run, screeches to a standstill.

The perfect, biting irony of them, especially now, resides in the commentary I most often receive when wearing them, which is, depending on one’s pop culture reference points, either Bowie or Wizard of Oz-related: “Put on your red shoes, and dance the blues”, or, more frequently, “There’s no place like home.”

Were I able do to anything more right now than stare at them in the closet, despite plenty of blues, I’d have very little inclination to dance. And as we reside, fortunately, admittedly, given the utterly horrific scenes coming out of our New York City home these days, in otherwise warm and lovely Delray Beach, I’m not sure what “home” is at the moment. Nor what was “home” is even like anymore. Or from a philosophical standpoint, can the concept of “home” – a place that is one’s anchor, a safe haven, versus any other unforgiving, dangerous, or otherwise unsettled locale – when “home” is quite literally all there is? There’s no place like home. But can that be true if home is the only place we experience?

I suppose this shuffling merely adds to the considerable perspective The Great Reset has, albeit forcibly, lent us: how tenuous this whole set up is, how fleeting our institutions are (especially when put under the purvey of a party whose sole aim over the past 40 years has been their methodical dismantling), how much we take things like a drink at a bar, or a safe subway ride, or a fucking hug, for granted. The list is nearly endless.

But I resist the notion that the perspective gained in this is how little things like a favorite pair of shoes, or an expansive wardrobe, etc. actually mean in the grand scheme. Valuing objects isn’t bad, nor empty, nor pointless. Because their value to us doesn’t reside in what they mean, but what they represent. And in that sense, these shoes actually “mean” even more – their origin story, the compliments they garner, the memories of friends’ birthday parties and dinners out on the town (both of which seem like distant bygone eras ago at this point) I have experienced in them, actually mean more in retrospect.

The perspective of what that joy translates to versus far more important, inevitably simpler, things, especially when reduced to a possession, of course has changed. But that joy, and so many other small daily joys – returning home from work, sharing lunch with a co-worker, absorbing the energy of New York City on your daily commute, lifting weights, being a part of a crowd – that remain beyond our reach, feels more important than ever.

Given the swirling carnage, the very real devastation wrought by this horrible pandemic, and the seeming endlessness of it, there is certainly much more to lament in life than not being able to wear one’s favorite pair of Gucci loafers. And in no way am I tuning the fiddle to cry for myself. If The Great Reset has taught me nothing else (which is actually true, since I have a two year old and a wife who is a teacher, so I am full-bore parenting at the moment, with little time for external enrichment), it is the value of thoughtful reflection, of taking stock, of grounding myself in the moment – of figuring out which moments in which to soak entirely, and which to allow to pass by without a second thought.

The former: every single second with my daughter. Hunting for lizards during our morning walks, our daily swims, the expansion of her vocabulary and the fervor with which she delivers it, sharing a bedroom with her as she transitions to a big girl bed, coming out the kinks in her flaxen blonde hair before getting her into her pajamas, noting each day how much longer the ponytail grows, and how much more like a little girl she looks once it’s set. Every moment she’s asleep in my arms before I put her to bed for the night.

Every bite of every incredible meal my wife prepares every afternoon and evening. Cooking is her passion, and she is incredible without being insufferable about it – like an Italian mom but without the forcefeeding – check her out at @cookeworm (her name is Lauren Cooke and she’s a cookbook bookworm).

Every sip of what are admittedly far too many bottles of wine we are consuming as a family. Every whiff of ocean air and deep breath of it between thumps of my feet on the pavement during my morning runs. Every bit of vitamin D I am able to absorb and melanin I’m able to generate from the rays of this generous Florida sun. Every morning I wake.

The latter: who fucking cares?

I’m sure once this is all behind us (Sidebar: this is why I don’t think what seems to be the accepted title for this – ‘The Great Pause’ – suits what is happening. A pause insinuates that we pick up where we left off. That virus-laden ghost ship has long-since sailed. We have seen behind the curtain, and there is literally zero possibility things just pick up and go back to normal. Perhaps ever. This is a Reset.), and I’m able to wear my red loafers in public again (to a karaoke bar, with about 30 friends, and tons of booze, and gummies, and hugs, and, in all likelihood, tears), I’ll get back to finding shit to bitch about. Once I can again put on my red shoes, I’ll worry about dancing the blues.

But for now, as long as it’s gym clothes or swimsuits, running shoes or sun-bleached Vans Slip-Ons, literally a rotation of the same 7 outfits I either keep or packed to bring down here, every day, why even bother? The longer this quarantine goes, the shorter life gets. And to rob a line from the young people: as long as I’m breathing, the rest is Gucci.

Truly.