songs are like tattoos.

the good thing about working is expanding spaces: being allowed in the back rooms, the grey and the cardboard and the computer and telephone, the lizard brain and the bowels of buildings. i went looting at whole foods, dumpster diving in the paper recycling bin for boxes with which to pack away everything i own. i went through the back ways, because i wanted to be somewhat discreet about crushed and empty boxes, a horror customers should never be allowed to see, and because i still could. because, although it isn't true (unless i should be lucky enough to meet some despicable end between the summer and now) i feel as if i shall never see it again, or that it will at least be different the next time i do, the stickers and the notes and the graffiti gone.

i feel the same way about the walk between the store and here. i'll miss this city's tattoos. i first fell in love with the red balloons, but then i met this neighborhood with so many invisible boys i almost know. zask, soviet, 421, juicy, and sars, the little dead chicken that is on absolutely everything. and there are the sticker and poster memes, something that doesn't happen much in philadelphia, the ray guns and the girl in glasses always saying something new, the masked mexican wrestlers, the medieval memorabilia, and so many arguments with and petitions to america, to bush. someone drew a little cartoon bat on the railroad bridge under the words, "i &hearts sars". it made me feel like a part of something bigger. painting over names and tearing down walls feels like burning books. they've been doing it a lot, lately. i'm afraid i won't know any of these people i don't know when i come back.

when i was young enough to be able to read but not particularly well, i asked my parents about the writing on buildings. i couldn't understand most of it. my parents told me that it was written by people who didn't really know how to write english, people who hadn't gone to school. i was at the age during which my mother was still bribing me by telling me that if i was good, i could start going to school sooner. education has always been something that i've desired. but at that moment, i felt as if it were a terrible sacrifice: that i'd only learn our books. that there was this entire underground language, a secret english, floating just under the surface of my own. one that i'd have to choose never to be allowed to understand.

to moonesque
this is my art
but you are my love
2003

i'm glad you're my roommate.

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