There is a concrete wall at the entrance to our street, and we’ve used it as our personal billboard ever since we moved here, often to announce literary events, or birthday parties or the like. PARTY THIS WAY with a big arrow is a common sight. Normally it’s done in sidewalk chalk, and sometimes, after a June birthday, it can remain visible for half a year, until it rains.
A few months ago, my older girl and her peace-loving friends decided to paint a mural on the wall. I thought they did a really beautiful job. It made me happy every time I drove into or out of our street. And then one day I drove in and the whole wall was … gray. The entire wall had been painted over an industrial gray. Even the leaves that hung down had not escaped. It was the saddest thing I ever saw.
And I wondered: who reported it? One of our neighbors? There are only four houses on our street. The idea that somebody complained about a peace mural just upsets me. Was it the City who came and painted over with the gray paint, or individuals?
It reminds me of when we used to visit Nicaragua, shortly after the Sandinista Revolution. There were amazing, beautiful murals everywhere, it seemed, on the side of every building, on every street, depicting the hope of the new country. One mural in particular, in downtown Managua, stretched for several blocks. It gave me goose bumps: brilliant depictions of people getting healthcare and education for the first time in their lives.
A few years ago, on our way to Guatemala, there was some sort of weather problem and we had to make an emergency landing in Nicaragua, and stay overnight. Our little van passed the long wall where that beautiful mural once was. Now: stripes, blue and red, like a long candy cane. It made me sick to see.
I used to feel really friendly about our neighbors but now I feel suspicious and annoyed at all of them. I can’t help wondering who it was. Who was so disturbed by peace?
January 9, 2008 at 2:55 am
You guys look like you are having so much fun here. Peace.
January 9, 2008 at 9:34 am
Yeah Susan!!!
In these troubled times it is so delightful to have young people expressing their intent to make this world a better place.
How sad that this beautiful, heartfelt, optimistic attitude got painted over with institutional gray, the shade of gray used to paint battle ships and other military equipment.
I say “Paint it again kids!!!”
Don’t ever stop pushing for peace!!!
The future of the world depends on you!!!
I’m so proud of you all.
Love,
Doug
January 9, 2008 at 10:34 am
[...] Somebody didn’t like it. They painted over the entire wall gray, including some innocent leaves that got in the way. It’s sad to think that somebody didn’t like the looks of a peace symbol. See the whole story, including the mural, here. [...]
January 9, 2008 at 3:13 pm
I saw your leaf photo on your photo page and thought it was kind of pretty. Now, seeing the other photos — of kids excited and inspired by peace — and reading the story behind the gray leaf, the other photo makes me sad.
January 9, 2008 at 5:08 pm
aw. that makes me sad. but because you wrote it so beautifully, i leave with a smile on my face.
January 10, 2008 at 5:30 am
It is sad, but I was completely struck by the beauty of those girls.
January 10, 2008 at 9:19 am
This interesting story–really grabbed my attention; the story of your wall and the paintings/ ideas/ murals/ use of public space…The anonymous objector. Seems perhaps unfinished (the story, not as a story, but as a real life story). I’m musing. If it were me I’m asking myself could I work through enough of the bad feelings to just ask the neighbors gently and straight up without accusation if they painted the wall or know who did? How they felt about the wall? Offer to listen?
I don’t know if I could do it– I know I’m not offering up an easy thing to do, but I wonder what would happen if you pushed for more dialogue, rather than leaving the upset and mistrust in place. I wish I were your neighbor so we could figure out if we had the nerve to do it together…and how. I struggle with trying to be more hopeful in my own relationships– not giving up– so as to model something for my daughter that I often have a hard time doing for myself. I don’t know I could pull it off, but I bet it would be great for the young girls to see another woman push to keep the communication going. Or I like the idea of painting the wall again– maybe leaving a space for those whomever objects to write why!
January 10, 2008 at 9:19 am
oops and good luck and don’t despair– whatever you do or don’t do!
January 10, 2008 at 9:33 am
Laura, I have to say I have considered dropping a note into the mailboxes of neighbors, with photos of the original mural, and asking them what they thought of it. I’m kind of chicken, though, and I am also afraid of my own feelings of anger. It does make me feel a kind of despair – who ARE these people?! Where are we living? Also, I am not sure I want to “out” the girls in case they could get fined or charged re “defacing” public property. It’s all pretty complicated, isn’t it? Maybe I should just let them re-do it on our garage door.
January 10, 2008 at 10:33 am
You could call the city to learn if they were the ones who painted over the wall.
As delightful as the drawings are, though, there might be a few other things to consider. I know I wouldn’t welcome such a colorful and unusual — and quasi-permanent — fixture in my own neighborhood, especially if there were only four houses on the block. We live privately and anonymously and wouldn’t welcome a landmark like this, however charming.
And although I think the world of you, Susan, I’m not sure I understand your anger. Maybe the best approach would have been to go round, pro-actively, to the neighbors before appropriating the wall, just to make sure their feelings were respected.
I see why you’re upset, as this has been such a nice thing for you and your girls, but I’m not sure I get why you feel so completely that the wall is yours to use as you think best, or why having it restored to its original condition is so anger-provoking.
I’m suspect this isn’t at all about rejecting peace, but really about very different ideas of what makes a neighborhood nice. If the wall belongs to the city, I’ll bet it’s legally not OK to paint on it, in part just to avoid unfortunate neighborly confrontations.
Re-doing it on your garage door would restore the sense of self-expression, but probably not do too much for neighborly relations. Do you have any private place on your property where the girls can express themselves exuberantly? That way you could have the fun without the angst.
January 10, 2008 at 12:21 pm
Ajo, much food for thought. I think the point of their mural was that it would be public, and not private. And I guess my anger stems from my own deep disappointment about moving into a neighborhood where I don’t feel close to my neighbors or feel that we share the same world view. I do feel like whomever did it is a big old Scrooge, or maybe a Republican. BTW, the wall in question doesn’t face anybody’s house – nobody can see it from any of their windows or doors – it faces a big brambly wall of blackberry bushes.
It is an interesting commentary on public “art” though. Nobody else has seen fit to “use” that wall except us, although they are welcome to. There is a huge boulder a few miles from here, that people drive by often, and every few days it is painted over by a different party. Many days it says HAPPY BIRTHDAY so and so, or VOTE for Obama or PEACE NOW. But the message never stays up for more than a week. I would feel fine if our wall became a public place for expression, but it seems like the message here was simply, “Shut up.”
January 10, 2008 at 2:57 pm
It’s an interesting discussion. Maybe the message really was “shut up”, but it’s probably worth pointing out that wanting the wall blank is also a “use” of it — just different from your vision!
Maybe you have neighbors who don’t share your desire to be close (in the social sense), but it just now occurs to me that going around and polling your neighbors about their interest in the wall might have given you an entree into more social relationships with them. But of course, you still might very well have discovered that you don’t share the same world view — or that it is they, and not just the city, who prefer their walls unadorned.
I’m not either a Scrooge or a Republican, but I always feel that ending up with sympatico neighbors is a real stroke of (rare) good fortune. Which is not to say that I always agree on everything even with the ones I like a lot. We definitely don’t share a world view with our dearest neighbors, but they are very good people nonetheless.
And one last thought — if you want to do something similar, but end up having to do it in private, you’ve got a great vehicle for sharing it publicly. Though, if asked, I would have said politely “not in the neighborhood, please”, it is a treat to see the pictures here, where the geography is quite different!
January 10, 2008 at 3:41 pm
The mural is beautiful, as are the girls. What a wonderful way for them to express themselves and their message!
If it makes you feel any better at all, at least the mural reached people as long as it was up. Although someone may have snitched and forced it to be painted over, you’ll never know how many others smiled as they drove by. I’m glad you have the photo record, to, what a wonderful memory!
January 10, 2008 at 8:56 pm
It’s a beautiful wall–in our neighborhood there are plenty of walls lying fallow (old retaining walls and foundation walls on lots that were burnt out in the fire over ten years ago and have yet to have houses built on them).
There’s graffiti on them. We’re not too hot about that. Neighbors paint the graffiti over. Not with malice, but just to keep the neighborhood looking “nice.” But I wouldn’t mind art at all! What a whimsical message! And I bet you we’d all leave the peace sign alone for quite some time.
I think people who wouldn’t like such a beautiful wall, going so far as to paint it over promptly–well that says more about them than the wall itself.
What I find weirdest is that this is a “harmless” wall–Ajo, why question Susan for feeling angry for its loss? We don’t have to understand every facet of her feelings in order to accept them. I’m sure you feel angry about things I don’t understand. I don’t question your anger.
Besides: she has every right to feel angry–it’s a complex anger that isn’t just about the wall but the intention behind it, and social community surrounding it.
January 10, 2008 at 10:40 pm
Hi, jadepark — I wasn’t suggesting in any way that Susan has no right to her feelings. Of course she has the right to be angry, or to feel any other emotion. No one can govern another person’s emotions.
What I said was that I wasn’t sure that I understood her anger. That doesn’t seem at all out of line to me; after all, presumably Susan writes and publishes her blog with the intention of communicating with others. Asking for clarification doesn’t seem inappropriate.
Susan’s response to my comment was thoughtful and, again, thought-provoking. I was especially struck by her comment about how she feels about the neighborhood itself. Her response let me (and you, presumably, too) understand the complexity that you note in your own comment. That was a dimension I had not caught in the original post.
Susan writes, I assume, to to express herself, but allows comments (again, I assume) because she is interested in some kind of dialog. In the end, isn’t it a wonderful thing when people communicate back and forth, asking questions and mulling over ideas?
It’s a real compliment to Susan that I find her posts thought-provoking enough to take her writing, and her feelings, seriously. That’s why I responded thoughtfully and why I asked the question in the first place.
January 14, 2008 at 7:13 am
Beautiful pictures. I am sad the paintings are gone. But the young women carry that peace in their hearts and they will keep painting the world…
January 28, 2008 at 9:31 pm
[...] started like this. Then it turned to [...]