Subway Subtexts

A quote I found recently seems to reflect nicely the aesthetic of this blog:

"A smile, a face in the subway, the sight of a small flower growing in the crack of a cement pavement, the fall of rich cloth in a shop window, the way the sun lights up flower pots on a window sill. Offer up every joy, be awake at all moments." Sogyal Rinpoche.

Speaking of the 'subway' (by which I mean the pedestrian underpass interpretation), there is a subway that I often pass through on my ramblings. It seems to be a battleground between graffiti artists and the nearby council. Like the ebb and flow of battle lines, the amount of graffiti waxes and wanes as it gets sprayed or removed in an endless tussle. Winter seems to promote more of the sprayed tags, as if the perpretators come down there to shelter from the cold.

As I pass through the myriad of different sprayed-on colours, I note a very limited number of tags, just the same people spraying their presence over and over again. It's as if they have nothing else to say except to endlessly repeat their presence in a kind of repetitiously nihilistic 'cogito'. "I was here". I find it a great shame that they have nothing to announce; no political commentary or slogans, none of the ritualistic symbolism found in the first cave paintings. Graffiti in this instance is not a sign of urban decay, it's a sign of cultural decay.

Perhaps I could start adding my own graffiti to those subway walls? Some extracts from my blogged observations, or a quote from Sogyal Rinpoche, perhaps?