The Bookshop that Sells Sneakers

I read a piece of news that made me pause for a while.

There is an independent publishing house in Seremban. They publish books. They also release limited-edition sneakers. Collaborations with actors and singers from a generation I remember from childhood. The shoes have a name — Kembara Seniman Jalanan, taken from an old film.

Seventy percent have already sold.

My first reaction was doubt. For whom are these objects being made? Sneaker collectors do not read poetry. Poetry readers do not collect sneakers. The two groups, in my understanding, have never shared a table.

That question made me pause longer. Because I realised the question was coming from an old place. From a way of seeing the world as a collection of categories that cannot mix — art here, commerce there, pick one. Categories are useful for organisation. Categories become damaging when they become our way of looking at things.

Books beside sneakers are not a gimmick. They are a quiet argument. They say that literature has no reason to be embarrassed about sharing space with objects worn every day. That poetry can sit on the same shelf as objects touched with the palm of the hand. That reading does not have to be a sterile activity, performed in a quiet room, with perfect lighting.

I think about my own writing desk. I do not sell sneakers. I also do not sell books — I write for a small page that people read quietly. But the experience is the same. Whenever I write, I have to decide whether the writing is something separate from life, or something that becomes part of it.

For years I wrote as if writing were a special room. I opened the application. I chose the font. I chose the word. I pressed publish. The writing appeared on the screen as if it were separate from the rest of the day.

Tonight I think otherwise. The writing is not separate. The writing sits between the dirty coffee cup and the water- stained notebook. It sits between the bookshelf that has not been dusted for a long time and the pillow still warm from use. It is a thing that lives in the same place as other things.

It may be true — writing cannot be sold like sneakers. But writing can stop pretending to be something other than a sneaker. A sneaker is a sneaker. Writing is writing. A sneaker does not try to become a poem. Writing does not have to try to become something higher than a daily object.

I feel relieved when I think of it that way. I feel that my writing can finally sit in the same house as the hand that holds the pen.