Against The Law

Rewind.

In a quiet neighborhood with houses built around little alleys and up a unique staircase leading to an old monastery, three young men are quietly painting a wall. They are working in silence, absorbed in their art. With sprays in white, black and yellow they are renewing the picture on the wall; transforming it rather, into something new. I stop and sit on the pavement opposite them and watch. I am silent with the silence of the intruder who pauses to observe. I take a picture even though I’m not sure that they will like this. They don’t mind. They don’t pay attention to me anyway. Each one is working on one third of the wall. One is up a ladder, the other is kneeling and checking whether a bottle of white paint is empty, cigarette in one hand, bottle in the other; the third is taking a little break and looks at the correction he’s just finished. The time is four in the afternoon, the sun is high in the sky…

“Energy cannot be created or destroyed – it merely changes form”

Fast Forward.

All over town, on almost every public wall, black paint has been used to make a furious fight known. A fact used to annoy, a reply, a curse, hatred. No one has seen them writing. The unknown writers, probably young men, are nowhere and everywhere. Their writings seem to multiply like cancerous cells. Yes. Metastasis. That’s what it is. I can almost see them, late at night, drunkenly stopping their car next to a school wall. Engine still on, they quickly scribble the next insult before they manically drive away. Adrenaline fuelled, they feed on the thrill of anger. I can almost see them, with the silence of someone whose space has been invaded. The time is four in the morning, the moon is hiding in the sky…

My mind goes back to the physics I once learned at school. Whoever said energy cannot be destroyed, has just been disproved…

~ by chaoticmine on November 27, 2006.