About five years ago when I was unemployed and smelling the roses (and noticing street graffiti too) for the first time in many years, I started seeing on one of my many long leisurely walks between coffee shops that someone was drawing these large hearts all over the sidewalk in my neighborhood. They were about the size of a hand, drawn in bright pink and red and yellow an blue shades of chalk and would appear one morning in front of a neighbor's door, one day in front of mine, another day on the next street over. It was clear the message was not intended for me personally (I wished) and yet it touched me personally, I guess for the simple reason that someone was deliberately doing this with the intent of touching me and a lot of other random strangers in Cole Valley. That is, assuming it was not a graduate student thesis on public art.
Seriously though. You don't see this sort of thing on the streets of New York or Washington DC, or even groovy L.A. And yet, they are always appearing somewhere in San Francisco, which leads me to conclude that it is not just one, or even a handful of people doing these anonymous cheery deeds. A couple years back, all over the streets of the Mission you would see these love messages -- things like "you are the one I've been waiting for" stamped on the streets. Again, too widespread to be intended for any one individual. More recently, I've noticed stickers around Duboce Park that say simply "Parallel Universe." Who knows what they mean, but just the new-agey suggestion that there is another reality out there, maybe closer than we think, comforts and lifts me in the morning as I'm walking to get my coffee.
And now, this. Walking back from the Safeway in Castro the other day, I noticed that someone had scrawled "Look Up" on the sidewalk on Church Street. When I looked up, I was rewarded with this sublime view of graceful sun soaked trees, which I wouldn't have otherwise taken the time to appreciate from down on the gritty ground, as I dodged homeless people and juggled some heavy grocery bags on the back of my daughter's stroller.
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