Tomorrow

 

Seminar on Street Art 12: Tomorrow. Tomorrow will be when we have the conversation we always have. Who knows where it might go next. Words freely flow, stack up, bounce back and forth, gyrate and joke, like graffiti on that fence, as we drive past. Unspoken then, lulls. Rarely does it occur to us talking we traverse directions between inferno and paradiso. Or that our presence together counters illusions like the news cycle, movie nostalgia, the metaverse. Tomorrow we shall find still the names of mercy and charity, humility and poverty. Our walls meanwhile may be blazoned with anonymous extravagance, names larger than billboards and weirder than jargon. While here and there could remain small stickers of hope, a shattered psalm on a signpost, handwritten ha-ha ho-ho protests. The indecipherable hieroglyphs shape the time, shake with faith. Unspoken then, lulls. Tomorrow there may be no telling the changes in store. That which was lost inside badgers’ nondescript dwellings will be painted seven-feet tall across walls for all to witness. That which was an invisible thought will be advanced a hundredfold, signs of existence reified in every unforeseen direction. That which was secret will be a blatant blast. The illiterate will write in innumerable tongues, the speechless sign ownership of their birth city in eloquent personal calligraphy. Tomorrow will not be so bad. Yellow leaves will settle on the ground with today’s windfall. City skyline will be gleaming at every changing facet. Our voices as we enter the room will speak normal reassuring words, practical as can be. Our daily bread is stored where we can find it, thankfully. The conversation will happily contradict whatever the radio calls news. Even the weather is open to mild refutation. Unspoken then, lulls. Tomorrow won’t be quite what we imagined, bolstered as we are by ambition and desire. Trespassers will evade prosecution, maybe. If they asked for words, would they be given stony silence? Was there a thought that because they were silenced, they would not speak? Here at ground zero, all grass and daisies again, they will have staved off the evil hour by inscribing with cans and brushes their inimitable name. Their heroic moment joins the other names in a communion of the dispossessed. The streets of a hundred names blossom towards Spring. Tomorrow will be an adventure called home.