At a certain point, we became aware that we couldn’t help but read.
We were small, in the backseat of the car, maybe on a highway headed into or out of the city and saw a billboard high up announcing something to do with BREAKFAST. The formerly effortful activity of piecing words together out of single letters or conjoined sounds was now effortless. Words just arrived at our eyes. More striking than our sudden ability to process words all at once was our inability to stop this process from happening. We were incapable of not reading. Whatever the world presented was forced into our head. CLOTHES, FURNITURE, MOVIES, CARS, POLITICIANS, RADIO STATIONS. Whether we cared about DEEP DISCOUNTS ON SELECT ITEMS or anything else thrown up on signs was immaterial. We may not have understood what rendered discounts deep or items select - but we got the words regardless.
Eventually we learned to ignore most of the words everywhere. The majority of them didn’t seem directed at us in the first place. We - a child - had no disposable income or real autonomy regarding where we went no matter how deep the discounts. Now - not a child - we have both disposable income (well, sort of) and real autonomy over where we go (why not), but we still mostly disregard all the words. They are now mostly directed at us, but we’d prefer they weren’t so act as if they aren’t.
Occasional, on a good day, we still happen across words and phrases that we can’t help but read. They prompt us to stop thinking what we were thinking or going where we were going. The words that tend to seize us in a certain way aren’t meant to be where they are. They aren’t sanctioned or requested by anyone. They often serve no practical purpose and/or make little actual sense. They’re simply there. Written on a wall or doorjamb or poster or garbage can, we notice these words and - yesterday - decided to photograph them for you so that you might notice them too.
We genuinely stopped for this one because we misread it while passing by. We thought it said “CREED IS POWER” and were struck by the unlikelihood that some vandal was rocking out to Scott Stapp wailing “What if I avenge what if eye for an eye” in this century. It was only when we read that “PEOPLE [A]R[E] GRE[E]DY” that we corrected our mistake - but then didn’t quite understand the message. If greed is power and people are greedy, then people are powerful. Is that bad? Is all power vicious like greed? But maybe we’re wrong to correct what seem like typos. Greed is power, but people r gredy. To b gredy is, maybe, unlike being greedy. The gredy, notably, don’t need more than one “e.” This is maybe a sign of a kind of asceticism or thrift that distinguishes them from the greedy. They, likewise, R rather than “are.” Toys ‘R Us famously made a similar ontological argument by truncating the spelling of that verb. These slight and easy to overlook linguistic decisions might denote that the gredy r easily mistaken for or misrecognized as the greedy. They have forsaken greed and the power that accompanies it, but are doomed to be seen as greedy anyways. How tragic! Maybe the gredy will inherit the earth. We should try to b gredy or at the very least try to c the gredy as they r in themselves, we thought, and we resumed walking.
This was more challenging than the gredy. It might be modernizing and playing with Lao Tzu’s remarks on the paradoxical nature of the Tao, how “the greatest square has no corners” and the greatest wisdom resembles foolishness and so on. We liked this reading, but there’s a Machiavellian edge to all this talk of fools that isn’t typically part of taoist thought. Maybe it’s an elaboration of Sun Tzu’s advice to deceive by inversion. If wise, appear foolish etc. Hiding advice on the art of war on a random door near the village seems questionable, though. At a certain point, we’d stood there for long enough that we started to wonder if this message about fools was maybe meant to lure fools into reading it at length so that foolish fools reading about fooling fools might be relieved of their valuables - so we snapped the pic and got going.
In English, this reads: “It’s time for your first to become your last.” We tried to sort through how a first could become a last, but came up dry. As with the earlier messages, there was something metaphysical or deep afoot here - but we couldn’t grasp it. Weren’t firsts and lasts outside our control? Aren’t beginnings or ends largely circumstantial affairs? Maybe it’s a guerilla ad for Health Canada who adopted “Your First Could Be Your Last” as a tagline to warn kids off fentanyl overdoses? That can’t be right because this is suggesting that one make their first their last. Has Health Canada gone rogue? Has their drug policy shifted from malign indifference to outright malevolence? Did this maybe have nothing to do with Health Canada? Was this simply self-referential? Was the author writing for themselves alone, that is, announcing that this was their first bit of public graffiti and would also be their last? What a shame if so! We like the strong, declarative tone even if we don’t at all understand what it’s strongly declaring.
The wings are somewhat ambiguously placed, but thanks to the floating crowns and “All the world that was mine mine mine mine” quote we’re fairly certain this is Eve and Satan. In Paradise Lost, Satan calls Eve “Queen of this Universe” in Book 9 when he begins to tempt her with the fruit of that forbidden tree. Moreover, Milton’s Satan believes the “New World” of Earth to be rightfully or inevitably his, his, his, his (see Book 4). But, well, technically Satan’s a snake when he meets Eve and that blonde dude (?) doesn’t look at all like a snake. Maybe the artist is very bad at drawing snakes? We suppose it’s possible that these are just winged dancers who migrated to this wall after the Super Sexe sign burned down. What do you think? The literal devil and alleged mother of humankind? Nude dancers who may share a set of wings? Neither? You think neither? No, that can’t be right.
After being forced into interpretive dead-ends a couple times it was nice to encounter something straightforward and true. The trouble here is that the message is very clear - “Ghosting isn’t friendly” - but the translation is fraught. There’s no English word for “tchummey.” Technically, “tchummey” isn’t even a French word. It’s a variation on “chummey” which, likewise, isn’t exactly a word. “Chummey” and “tchummey” both signify either “bros” or “bro-like attitudes.” The word can be a noun or an adjective. A tchummey would behave very un-tchummey were they to ghost you. Does that make sense? So, not only is ghosting unfriendly, but it’s uncool more generally. We try to be tchummey, but - we confess - we have ghosted folks in the past and will likely ghost them in the future. We aren’t perfect, but - thanks to this alleyway author - we might work on being better.
Remarkable that circumstances are such that the old leftist rallying cry of “another world is possible” have been rightly turned into “another end of the world is possible.” In cursive, no less. We aren’t sure what kind of end of the world this person would prefer, but we’re curious. We, for instance, would prefer alien invasion to climate apocalypse. But we would choose climate apocalypse over WWIII. Not all ends of the world all equal in our eyes. The whole meteor crashing into the globe thing might be interesting, but it’s kind of played out. We also wouldn’t want to deal with newscasters replaying the Ben Affleck/Liv Tyler animal cracker safari scene ad nauseum as we approach our last day alive. Now that we think about it, the actual end of the world might be a blessing after the days, weeks, or months of news coverage leading up to the end of the world. Is there a word for feeling simultaneously optimistic and pessimistic? If so, can one of you spraypaint it on some walls for us?
This almost means “SWEET DREAMS” [fais de beaux rêves], but it’s singular so it actually just says “SWEET DREAM” which is a strange imperative. Just the one dream? Is the suggestion that we’ve been dreaming too much? Or is it suggesting that we focus on having one particularly sweet dream while accepting that our other dreams might turn out sour, bland, or artificially sweetened in that sickly sort of way? Ought our one dream be of a different end of the world? Or of biblical figures and/or exotic dancers? Or of the impossibility/necessity of making our first something our last something? We weren’t sure.
It was late by the time we got to this last one, our phone was down to 1%, and there was no telling when or where we might find another message written for anyone or everyone or no one in particular. We couldn’t help but wonder what else we might be forced to think by things we couldn’t help but read - but decided that to try to canvas the entire city and catalogue every instance of writing on the wall would be impossible. There’s no map for these things. There’s no programmatic way of finding them. Moreover, these messages aren’t meant to be convenient exactly. They’re haphazard and public.
To photograph them all for you and put them in an easily-opened email would, maybe, deprive you of the fun of trying find them or their cousins on other walls in other cities. To potentially hamper or quiet down your desire to randomly wander the streets searching out messages written hastily by unknown writers wouldn’t b very gredy or tchummey of us at all. Or maybe that’s only what a fool would think? In any event, at the end of the day, the world isn’t just ours ours ours ours to package up into newsletter content. So, with that, sweet dream.
[Is that last paragraph some hack shit? Or is it kind of cute? Both? Please leave a comment in paint on a wall near you.]
Both. ❤️ Jk It's cute and sweet.