Saturday, September 22, 2018

Worth a thousand words







I have for a long time been a creature of the river, weaving my life back and forth around the Mississippi. I was down on its banks this morning. In the twin cities this river is a weird wilderness of sparkling, civilized and massively built paths that disappear into rugged nothingness, logs snagged up like dead bodies, glorious herons rising heavily as they're flushed from the shore,  washed up garbage, pristine urban joggers, circling eagles, and the remains of night camps and fires from people sleeping in hasty rough camps set up deep in the dark. Coming out of some rich and lovely late summer rain soaked foliage to the underside of a river bridge, I found myself faced with a piece of graffiti so striking I straight out gasped.

The colors were rich, deep, and wonderfully controlled, umbers and glowing rubies and golds, with subtle shading effects and curling frills in a script suggesting Olde English and the swirling of giant calligraphy pens. The graffiti itself read something like "SoA" or possibly "SoiA". Underneath it said something about magic, like "Magic happens here" only I'm pretty sure it wasn't that, and I forgot to note it down. It was nicely, but more plainly written in the bottom of the piece, and it fit, but I was not sure if it was part of the piece itself, or the work of another commentator.

But look at me going on about this lovely piece. Why not just show it? I have long since omitted imagery from this blog in an act of religious dedication and sheer hostility towards the Internet and the cheap proclivities of its denizens. But this was a beautiful little wild piece of art so I will include a small representation of it.

It sort of looked like this:


So!A 



Oh. Only much, much, much, much nicer.











2 comments:

  1. The river and the trails sound wonderful. Can you possibly load an image of the graffiti? I mean, your representation is spot-on, but, well, you know, it would be wonderful to see.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. For you I would be willing to smuggle some sort of image along but, alas, I don't really have a camera.

      Delete

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