  Insofar as we too can discern this “little old woman who lived in the shoe” (as we could call this figure Heidegger seems to have seen), then we can be certain (pace Derrida) that Schapiro did in fact correctly identify the precise painting Heidegger was discussing: “A Pair of Shoes” (1886). But this also means that Heidegger is not using Van Gogh’s painting as a jumping off point for his own free-associations (as Schapiro assumes); instead, Heidegger is drawing directly on his own phenomenological encounter with the painting when he describes “what is there” (IM 37–8/GA40 38) in the work’s inconspicuous earth/world  struggle.[97] This would also explain what Heidegger means when he says (immediately following the quotation Schapiro throws back at him):