I was sitting out on the porch today, taking advantage of the slightly cooler weather we were having and trying to ignore this ever-present sadness over losing my dad recently (it's been 2 months today) and not feeling at all like smiling... when a train with several cars stopped in front of the house. We live right next to the tracks and while that is a pain most days... today, I found it somewhat welcoming. The graffiti on the cars that is. I know, it surprised me too. I've never known myself to be a fan of graffiti but these were not what I expected. No vulgarity. Just cute animated drawings. Each one held a sense of something. Maybe it was pride. It makes me wonder why they don't put that talent to better use instead of said vandalism. Maybe open up an art gallery and get paid, you know?The two that really caught my attention: At the very end of one car there was an animated looking graffiti guy with a serious look on his face and beads of sweat popping out. He was either trying to push his way out or trying to push the car along. I couldn't tell which but the expression on his face was comical. I smiled and thought about that artist's sense of humor. Then there was another graffiti guy (the same character?) on the side of the car, near the bottom, that looked like he was trying to hold on, with one leg hanging off the car. How did they do that?
I found myself smiling. The sadness? Nonexistent... at least for the moment.
I would have thought train (or wall) graffiti would have died out when the 'Net' arrived, what with all the various ways of expressing oneself there... but today... I'm glad it's still around.
Just don't tell anyone I said that. :-)
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3 comments:
Nice. :-)
I find grafitti to add to the atmosphere of a place. In a way it's sort of beautiful, that is, when it isn't displaying obscenities or anatomy parts. I'm amazed it's so easy to get away with, i mean it's everywhere. I live by what used to be a major train station city, and i look at the trains sometimes and see how rusted they are, how they lost their former glory. but i don't think of the grafitti as defacing them, i think of it as embellishing them. It takes something that no one had any hope for, something that was even forgotten. and someone saw it as potential for expression, and there is nothing wrong with that to me. I love rusted trains with bright neon grafitti.
Guess that goes to show you can see beauty in most anything. Thanks for the comments. :-)
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