Walking home from the neighborhood spot where I always get lunch, holding the sandwich I always buy, following the route I always take, there was a disturbance in the force. My eyes sensed a change before really seeing what was different. Normally that happens when I wander around my neighborhood and find that another row home has been replaced, seemingly overnight, by a cubist pseudo-modern apartment building. Boxy. Bland. Ubiquitous. McUrbanism. These buildings look, to me, like a stack of square-shaped Mike Wazowskis—each window a gaping eye, begging to be poked. Standing in their shadows, I get the sense that I’m being watched, even though I know no one’s home.
But not this time. This time, I stopped walking because the neighborhood had reclaimed a piece of itself. A beige brick wall that I had always known as a beige brick wall was no longer. Instead, it was saturated with plums, purples, soft pinks, and lime greens. Someone, seemingly overnight, had spray-painted a mural. And that mural was of someone spray-painting a mural. The spray-painted someone’s mural was unfinished, so I can only assume it will also depict someone spray-painting a mural of someone spray-painting a mural of someone spray-painting a mural and on and on and on these spray-painters beat like boats against the current, borne ceaselessly into the past.
Or something.
Oh! Someone also painted a turkey* in a top hat. Who knows why. Who cares. She is beautiful.
*My dad left me a voicemail to say this is a painting of a turkey vulture, not a turkey. Their beaks differ from plain old turkeys. They also are known for their scavenging. “My guess is it was meant to be some type of comment on the administration,” he told me.