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Entry tags:
The Dream
She was walking home when she saw the wall and stopped to look it over. It was a fine smooth stretch of concrete, completely bare and smooth and bright in the afternoon sun. Brand new, she thought, swinging her keychain so it chinked.
It was calling her, all bare and new like that. Like an untouched canvass. She wasn’t supposed to do this, but who would be hurt? Who would know it was her? There was even a little breeze to keep the fumes down, and no one would miss her if she spent time here. No one would miss her at all.
Frankly, her life was old tapes. It wasn’t worth getting upset about. Better to erase them for something new.
She smiled to herself, a little bitterly, and took off her backpack. This would be fun.
She broke out and uncapped both big cannons, her German Fat Cap and the Magnum 44 black, and started the fill, blackening as much of the surface as she could cover, then finding a trash can, upending it, and standing on it to reach higher. She was barely a teenager and short for her age, and she hated that blank space above what she could reach on her own. It told everyone that the tagger was just a kid.
The fumes swirled around her. She covered as much as she could, coughing once or twice, and backed up to survey it. Much of the wall was now a black going from glossy to matte as it dried, with some paint dribbling down and an edge of pale unmarked concrete above and to both sides of the whole.
She put the big ones away, raked her lank black hair back with one hand, and started in with her Monstercolors, the vivid ones made overseas just for tagging. Ultramarine and Atlantis Blue, Flesh 4 and Saturn Red, and all the others.
There was nothing in all the world better than doing this, the thrill of putting her mark out on something, of doing something she knew was illegal and could be caught doing. But she wouldn’t be. She never was. Being truly anonymous, not having to worry about what anyone thought, or anything but the paint… She was happy.
She sang quietly to herself as she worked, her voice hardly louder than the hiss of the spray.
“Little wing, broken wing, fly in your heart, soar in your soul, believe that all things are possible, and you will be made whole…”
Eventually she pulled back again and surveyed her work. Went up again to correct a little detail here or there. All in all – she liked it. It was a real burner. Something that would catch the eye from clear across the street, maybe further. It seemed to stand out from the wall.
It was abstract, of course, an interwoven tangle of illegible shapes which might have started life as words or a repeated phrase. Most of it was red and black and blue, but there were little jags of other colors to make it interesting. Something about the shape of the whole thing managed to suggest something winged, with a long neck or tail. Maybe a bird. Maybe just an umbrella or a gingko leaf.
Not bad. There was just one thing left to do. She capped all of her spray cans and brought her key chain out of her jeans pocket, glancing in passing at the steel wolf’s head of the key ring. Then, before the top layer of paint was truly dry, she leaned in and carved her tag in the corner. Not her name. She wasn’t stupid.
Her tag. It was a little like an arrow pointing up, a little like something winged. Flicking the paint off of the key she’d used, she backed up one final time and looked at the piece.
Funny, she hadn’t thought of it like that before. Not when she’d been painting it, not when she’d pulled back to see the whole thing at once. There was a bit of an illusion of movement to it. But it was almost like the vague bird shape wasn’t flying so much as falling towards her, or she towards it.
It was calling her, all bare and new like that. Like an untouched canvass. She wasn’t supposed to do this, but who would be hurt? Who would know it was her? There was even a little breeze to keep the fumes down, and no one would miss her if she spent time here. No one would miss her at all.
Frankly, her life was old tapes. It wasn’t worth getting upset about. Better to erase them for something new.
She smiled to herself, a little bitterly, and took off her backpack. This would be fun.
She broke out and uncapped both big cannons, her German Fat Cap and the Magnum 44 black, and started the fill, blackening as much of the surface as she could cover, then finding a trash can, upending it, and standing on it to reach higher. She was barely a teenager and short for her age, and she hated that blank space above what she could reach on her own. It told everyone that the tagger was just a kid.
The fumes swirled around her. She covered as much as she could, coughing once or twice, and backed up to survey it. Much of the wall was now a black going from glossy to matte as it dried, with some paint dribbling down and an edge of pale unmarked concrete above and to both sides of the whole.
She put the big ones away, raked her lank black hair back with one hand, and started in with her Monstercolors, the vivid ones made overseas just for tagging. Ultramarine and Atlantis Blue, Flesh 4 and Saturn Red, and all the others.
There was nothing in all the world better than doing this, the thrill of putting her mark out on something, of doing something she knew was illegal and could be caught doing. But she wouldn’t be. She never was. Being truly anonymous, not having to worry about what anyone thought, or anything but the paint… She was happy.
She sang quietly to herself as she worked, her voice hardly louder than the hiss of the spray.
“Little wing, broken wing, fly in your heart, soar in your soul, believe that all things are possible, and you will be made whole…”
Eventually she pulled back again and surveyed her work. Went up again to correct a little detail here or there. All in all – she liked it. It was a real burner. Something that would catch the eye from clear across the street, maybe further. It seemed to stand out from the wall.
It was abstract, of course, an interwoven tangle of illegible shapes which might have started life as words or a repeated phrase. Most of it was red and black and blue, but there were little jags of other colors to make it interesting. Something about the shape of the whole thing managed to suggest something winged, with a long neck or tail. Maybe a bird. Maybe just an umbrella or a gingko leaf.
Not bad. There was just one thing left to do. She capped all of her spray cans and brought her key chain out of her jeans pocket, glancing in passing at the steel wolf’s head of the key ring. Then, before the top layer of paint was truly dry, she leaned in and carved her tag in the corner. Not her name. She wasn’t stupid.
Her tag. It was a little like an arrow pointing up, a little like something winged. Flicking the paint off of the key she’d used, she backed up one final time and looked at the piece.
Funny, she hadn’t thought of it like that before. Not when she’d been painting it, not when she’d pulled back to see the whole thing at once. There was a bit of an illusion of movement to it. But it was almost like the vague bird shape wasn’t flying so much as falling towards her, or she towards it.