Ruby Slippers and the Magic of Transformation

Last semester, in my Contemporary American Essay class, we read Ross Gay’s Inciting Joy. A core component of the class was keeping a dedicated journal, a space where we spent time riffing on, dialoguing with, responding to, and writing back to the authors we read. When we read Gay’s book, my students and I wrote a week of daily joy entries:  “ _____________ incites my joy.”

Finding and buying a $35 pair of red, glittered sneakers online incites my joy, I wrote.

Once I began my entries, I noted, with some chagrin, that what often brought me regular joy was the power to summon material goods to my doorstep with a few clicks on my phone (usually on the Amazon app.) I have easily gotten caught in the trap of equating my joy with material goods, and that is failure of my own imagination.

The fact that I feel guilty about the way Amazon harms its workers, harms the environment, harms the publishing industry, and harms small businesses, but that I still find myself unable to resist its allure also says something about how most of the systems at work in this country do harm too, and the problem seems so big and so powerful that it leads to disenfranchisement.

“We are living such that the most mundane and daily actions—turning on the water, putting gas in the car, getting beans for the soup, flipping on the ceiling fan, teaching our classes or doing our homework, writing these sentences to you on this computer—require profound, alienated, daily violence and brutality,” Gay writes in “Dispatch from the Ruins,” one of the essays collected in Inciting Joy. “Nearly everything we do, it turns out, causes harm to what and who we cannot conceive (the concealment of which the inconceivability of which is by design).”

This is nothing new under the sun. Exploitation of many (poorly paid, overworked Amazon warehouse employees), to make the few (Jeff Bezos) very rich, while providing me (a common consumer) cheap goods is an old story. Ancient even.

I only did joy journals for a week, which wasn’t long enough to dig deeply into joy. Instead, I plucked at the low-hanging fruit of joy. Consumer good that gave me a hit of dopamine when I clicked “buy” and another hit when they arrived on my front porch. I was imbibing joy in its most easily digestible form, in the way I’ve been taught by my late-stage Capitalistic society. Despite their plasticky, made-in-China, origins, these shoes make me happy. Seven months later, I am still glad I bought them. They still, surprisingly, incite joy.

The red glitter shoes started as a Halloween costume (Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, of course) because my six-year-old, Stanley, wanted to be the Tin Woodman. When he announced his decision, I was thrilled. We’d recently read the book, one of our first bedtime chapter books. The Wizard of Oz endures as a classic because the characters are powerful archetypes. What joy to see my son identify with a character who longs for a good heart, who is kind, compassionate, and loving. The Woodman is so emotionally sensitive he often rusts himself out with his own tears. He is clueless about his true power (disenfranchised even?). The big reveal once the Tin Man, Scarecrow, and Lion make it to the counsel of Oz is that they possessed the traits they longed for along. They just needed someone to notice. 

I began my internet shopping spree. I bought a lot: Spirit Halloween Brand Costume Kit of the Woodman: complete with funnel hat, heart clock with daisy chain, and plastic ax. Non-toxic, cruelty-free silver face paint. Silver spray paint (to transform a pair of Stanley’s old sneakers into “tin”). A life-sized, stuffed terrier Toto that looked so real people asked to pet it. A blue and white gingham dress. A 6 x 12 foot, plastic yellow-brick road. Rainbow streamers. Faux clouds. A small picnic basket, which I filled with Andes chocolates (for their emerald-city green wrappers). A pair of red, glittered sneakers, my very own Ruby Slippers.

Our Halloween was a success. I skewed the algorithm of my Spotify account by streaming the Wizard of Oz soundtrack for hours while we passed out candy, which was another reminder that everything I do on my cellphone is monitored with the goal of monetization and target marketing.

In the original text of The Wizard of Oz, Glenda the Good Witch tells Dorothy that the slippers “contain a charm,” and that she’s “never to let them off her feet.” The true power of the slippers isn’t revealed until the end—with enough belief—all Dorothy had to do was click the heels of her magic slippers together to send herself home. Just like for Dorothy, the real power of my ruby slippers didn’t reveal itself until after the main event. After a week of torrential downpours, it dawned on me that my ruby slippers are the only waterproof footwear I own.

They are perfect gardening clogs. I keep them by the backdoor that leads to my kitchen garden. They slip on hands-free for a quick trip to dump vegetable scraps into the compost or to water the kale. I love that what, at first, could have been a single-use, disposable purchase has found a new, long-term use. That’s of course, what imbues objects with meaning, with joy even. They become repositories of memories, but they also live alongside us, accompanying us through our simple daily routines, like the regular care and tending of the herbs and vegetables I grow.

Ruby Slippers, Rainbow Chard, and Dinosaur Kale

Just like Dorothy, my ruby slippers have turned out to have transformative powers. Or at least they’ve become a symbol of transformation. By backyard garden is its own Oz for me. (Fun fact: The Wizard of Oz film was set in Kansas during the dust bowl, so much of Oz’s magic is the lush, verdant, Emerald greenness. When I slip on my ruby gardening clogs, to step into the teeming aliveness of my garden, I feel as magically transported as Dorothy. I may find ladybugs dancing on the brussels sprouts and eating aphids. I may encounter bright, white and purple turnips shouldering their way above the soil. I may see a bee sipping from a tomato blossom. I may notice the compost needs turning, or that the pile of grass clippings my husband set aside from mowing is ready to use as mulch. In the garden, I understand, everything has its usefulness.

It pleases me that I keep finding usefulness for the other items of our past Halloween outfitting. Toto has joined Stanley’s stuffed animal collection as a treasured member of imaginary games. I’ve filled the small wicker picnic basket with stickers, which are another thing I’ve found gives joy. No matter how old you are, a really cool sticker insights joy (a joy prolifically spread from 1000-sticker bulk lots bought from Amazon, of course). I loop the basket’s handle on my arm when I set off down the hall to class, expecting to be in yet another space where transformation happens.

I hope that my students start really noticing the world around them, start asking hard and thorny questions, start using writing as a tool for thinking. Later on in his essay, Gay talks about his teaching methodology.

“When class is not a site of evaluation, but one of mutual bewilderment, encouragement, support, and witness—i.e. unabashed being with; unabashed care—we learn better.” -Ross Gay

We figure out how to be curious. Many of them don’t think they possess these powers at first. They need me to notice it in them.

“That’s a good insight,” I say and pass the sticker basket. “You made an interesting connection there. Pick a sticker.”

“Those are fantastic annotations on the reading. Here’s a sticker.”

The ordinary ritual of it becomes a vessel for acknowledgement, for noticing the power we all possess to make the world better. I didn’t think all that could come from a box with an arrow bent in a smile on it that landed on my doorstep, but it did, and I’m so glad I noticed how it gives me great joy.