| Our improbable support, erected on the osseous architecture of the calcaneus, talus, cuboid, navicular, cuneiforms, metatarsals, phalanges, a plethora of hinges, all strung together by gliding tendons, covered by the pearly plantar fascia, then fat-padded to form the sole, humble surface of our contact with the earth. Here the body's broadest tendon anchors the heel's fleshy base, the finely wrinkled skin stretches forward across the capillaried arch, to the ball, a balance point. A wide web of flexor tendons and branched veins maps the dorsum, fades into the stub-laden bone splay, the stuffed sausage sacks of toes, each with a tuft of proximal hairs to introduce the distal nail, whose useless curve remembers an ancestor, the vanished creature's wild and necessary claw. --The Foot. By Alice Jones |