Graffiti & Gratitude

When I take the Castle Hill route, I have to walk under the train tracks, through a little tunnel, and up a set of stairs.

This morning, with the light and my mood, the coolness in the air (54 degrees and the first day of July!), I spent a little time with the graffiti in the tunnel. It's a mix of once polished mural and gritty Great Barrington teen scrawl (despite what some may think about Great Barrington, it does have grit...it just takes a minute to see it):






This one is a good directive for this new life of mine that includes walks:


(In gold spray paint on a rusted-out banister: free your inner [couch] potato. Easier to listen to this way, an affirmation with edge.)

This one, tho, is my absolute favorite. I think it's brilliant. I love most the little monster-alien's left chicken-scratch hand:




Then I came up and out of the tunnel and found this:



And this:



And this one I took special for you, my favorite big old tree:



On today's stroll, I also ran into a friend who stopped and talked with me, while her car idled. While we were talking a big-ass utility truck slowed near us, looking for a downed power line. I knew just the one he meant (I thought) and pointed him in the right (wrong) direction. He eventually found his sister truck just up the block from where my friend and I were having our spontaneous morning meet-up.

Once my friend drove away, I got to walk past the utility mania and interact with the burly dude from National Grid. I apologized for leading him astray. He said it was okay. He smiled. And was chewing gum. And adjusted his hard hat. He said they needed to know about that other one too (at the bottom of Castle Street, at the top of the stairs that lead back down to the tunnel). It's outside of a house that no one seems to inhabit. It's been there for weeks: a big branch pinning down a gather of wires and cables.

I am now delighting (that word again) in the fact that I live in a place where I can run into someone I know, who stops their car to say good morning. And talk to a friendly and appropriately macho telephone worker man.

I've lived other places like this. But not for a very long time.