imagine this, or that

While driving today, I listened to "Imagine" on the John Lennon "Wonsaponatime" LP. It's a secular hymn, an ode. When I was young, I thought the lyrics were simplistic, almost trivial. Now that I am oldish, I seem to embrace the lyrics ever more. It's haunting. A lament. I wanted to pull over and weep. Why? for me? Or the planet. But I didn't. My eyes welled up, but I lumbered onward into the brilliant and lustrous day.

Yesterday, I noticed on a sidewalk the graffito "FAS." Was the writer so hurried that he or she could not complete "FAST"? Or tragically halted? Graffitus interruptus. Or was it the tag of Flemington Angus Smithson, WASP scion?

Imagine that.

the meat of the matter

A CSX train sat parked on the tracks. Some of the long freight train (may we / can we have a short freight train?) temporarily (of course it is "temporary"; if it were permanent, it would be a museum; a museum of what? industry? transportation? iron? or graphic arts?) resided on the rail overpass atop West Genesee Street, in Syracuse, just before Rosie's ("Gateway to Tipperary Hill") and the former residence of Denny's (how is it that a Denny's can't make it in that spot? presumably, too many post-bar-closing fracases, but it could also be mismanagement, lousy food, high prices, ennui). A black car, a tanker, sported white graffiti:

PORK   HAM   BACON

Each of the synonymous words was adorned with the same avatar, if you will, or icon, or branding: a pig's head (well done: simple, almost amusing, easily understood). (As I was driving by, and could not stop to take notes, though I suppose I could've pulled over on Erie Boulevard West [I do not remember my degree of manufactured hurriedness or perceived harriedness], I tried to remember the sequence of the three words. It might have been HAM PORK BACON, or any other three-card monte shift of those words you might want to entertain. Maybe, just maybe, the word PIG was posted, but I doubt it. That would not make sense and would spoil the poetic elegance and philosophical inquiry of our graffiti artist.)

I'm reeling (that's a tad overwrought) from the implications and questions posed by our anonymous poster, our unnamed herald, our silent partner or co-conspirator. Namely, are you telling me that it's all the same shit, the same stuff -- no matter the word, no matter how it is "branded," you anarchic quasi-commie? (I apologize if that is unwarranted; I admit "commie" is going to grow in harshness, what with the return of the Cold War, or the advent of the Chilly War.) Do you celebrate meat? Is meat a triumph of will and protean power and rugged foodist individualism? Or is this some sort of freighted (I can't help it, can I?) vegan diatribe, railing (there I go again) against meat and the purveyors of slaughter (with perhaps the added editorial on toxicity, because the tank car was carrying God knows what; not just air, right?).

Finally, where did you go? Was this a one-off you spray-painted by hand in Gary, Indiana, down the road from the home of be-LOVE-d Robert Indiana, and his eight-cent stamp of approval? Or is it part of your brand, repeated, exactly alike or as variations on a theme, in train yards from Oakland (California) to Newark (New Jersey)?

LIFE, continued

I've told you before of the graffito LIFE in Burnet Park, once there, then gone, scrubbed, scoured, painted over.

I saw LIFE again yesterday.

LIFE moved (to at least two places) over on Hiawatha Boulevard, Syracuse, not far from the imagined world of Destiny USA. Emblazoned in uppercase letters amid industrial detritus, debris, and abandonment.

I was grateful to see some LIFE yesterday. It gave me some hope.

Today I imagine LIFE was there, a little elusive, shrouded in twilight, but I did not see it directly.

I was cast into twilight. I am bathed in twilight.

I am living in a zone of twilight.

But LIFE awaits. . . as a statement, a fact, not merely posed as a question.

Lights Alive

Entering Burnet Park, at the top of Syracuse's Tipperary Hill, I noticed the presence of absence.

Missing were the strings of festive amberish-whitish lights draping several mature trees. More accurately, on closer inspection, many of these strings of lights remained on the trees but were unplugged, unlit. To paraphrase Hemingway, a clean, unlighted place. Darker, moodier in the night wind.

Higher up the winding drive, gone was the banner of lights, high up between two tall trees, announcing HAPPY HOLIDAYS, demurely (or cowardly) declining to declare exactly which holidays, as if the secular gods would gripe about the explicit nomenclature of the God-incarnate In Nomine Patris feast.

Some lights still shone.

Within the gates of the pool, an image of a toy train illuminated the space between two lifeguard stations, tall seats, sentinels overlooking a white and snowless empty pool, bereft of the excited jeering and obscenity and glee (mostly in Spanish) of its frolicking residents.

Back near the zoo, some trees or streetlights had, what?, snowmen or holly or candy canes brightly shining.

Sirens in the distance got the coyotes or wolves stirred up at the zoo, singing their own eerie siren songs.

In the distance, downtown, the Niagara Mohawk building (I'll never call it the NationalGrid building) and M&T Bank were wrapped in lights of green.

Spotting a skateboarder, with shorts on, passing me, I circled back to monitor him, wondering if that was a spray can in his hand.

Did he paint the now-gone LIFE graffito?

The echoes of his skateboard antics forced me to conclude, no, for now, he was too busy just skating along, skimming the surface, riding the landward wave.

Life, The Serial

On my misty, coolish dogwalk tonight, I noticed that the graffito of LIFE with the "i" dotted with an "x," on a small electrical utility shed, was gone.

LIFE, vanished, without a trace.

As if LIFE were but a dream.

I miss LIFE.

Where'd it go, now that its resident surface is scrubbed clean, freshly painted, pristine?

Can LIFE even exist on such a pristine surface anyway?

LIFE, I was just getting to know you. I was on the cusp of what you wanted to tell me, who put you there, and why.

Now, it's like starting over.