Some of them are high or drunk. Some are white and some are black, some are women and some are men, and some are foreign and have accents. This man—the one who sleeps in the alcove of the boarded-up building four blocks from our house—is white, has a scruffy beard, and is probably crazy.
This guy makes headpieces out of tinfoil. I find it ironic that he shows up here and now. I’ve been trying not to think about headpieces since the art club fiasco. Anyway, he’s always wearing a different one. He’s always doing something new. Right now, he’s drawing on the walkway around the fountain and not even the bike cop who hangs out here some days is asking him to leave. He’s scribbling and blending with his fingers in some sort of rhythm like there’s music playing. Maybe there’s music playing in his head. Every so often he screams out. Hell yeah! Fuck no! What are you even trying to do, son? You ain’t worth shit! He doesn’t say these things to anyone specific. They’re like the lyrics to his music. The music in his head. Sometimes he stands up and puts his arms in the air like he just hit a home run. Sometimes he jumps hard on a piece of sidewalk chalk and grinds it into the concrete. Jumps over and over again, bringing his knees all the way up to his chest. His art is a temper tantrum.
He’s an acceptable neighborhood oddity. A walking mural. Graffiti that no one ever scrubbed clean. One of those cats you feed but never touch. He’s always in a few layers of clothing, even when it’s summertime. He wears bags over whatever shoes he has. It probably keeps the rain out.
He always has art supplies. Philadelphia is an art city. Students leave supplies for him as he sleeps. They are art supply fairies.
He makes art anywhere, anytime, all day. The plywood boards on the windows of the building where he sleeps in the alcove are never the same. Each day he paints over them, just a little. The sidewalk in front of where he sleeps is always colorful. If he can’t find the right color for a piece, he digs through Dumpsters to find something that will give him the right color. Chicken bones, old pizza, the rubber from the sole of a shoe. Sometimes he burns wood and makes half-assed charcoal.
He never writes words. He rarely paints forms that people would recognize. Just abstracts. Sometimes when he draws on the sidewalk and blends the colors with his fingers, there is blood.
He is on a mission. A real mission.
I want a mission.
Not someone else’s mission, either. I want my own mission. Something I think up myself. Something I actually want to do. Something that makes me jump up and down.
? ? ?
The Social is all I cared about for the last two years. High school lives on The Social. I got an account the minute I was in eighth grade so I would be ready. Carmen and I posted our art projects and the pictures we took from when we’d walk around the city. For three weeks, we were each other’s only connections on The Social. Then we connected with black-coffee Vivian, even though she posted passive-aggressive comments all the time. And Vivian knew Leslie, who is Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner’s best friend, so we ended up connecting with her, too. And then Vicky connected with us. Slowly, the art club was born.
A few months ago, I saw a study in my Social timeline about how The Social makes people depressed. I asked myself, Am I depressed?
I am not depressed.
I’m fine.
The Social showed me I was fine every time I logged on. Everyone else groaning about their colds, their grades, their parents, their stomach flu: I’m so tired! Insomnia, why do you curse me so! Vivian and her subtext: You know who you are, you plebeian assholes! Vicky-the-grand-prizewinner: No two snowflakes are alike. Nature is the only original idea.
On The Social, there is no such thing as an original idea. Not even about original ideas.
On The Social, it’s raining bullshit.
By the time I got to high school I got this rush of adrenaline every time I posted and then I’d erase the post before anyone could see it. Carmen asked me one time, “How come you always erase your posts, man?” I said, “I don’t know.” She said, “That thing you said the other day was really funny.” Even back then, before I knew it rained bullshit, before the art club fissure, before the pear, I couldn’t tell if I was funny or not. Even back then, I knew I was sitting too still to be an artist and I doubted the whole trick. That’s what I saw. A trick. Every time I logged on I felt duped into having to be a snowflake.
The homeless man is different.
He jumps up and down. He is a snowflake.
And people must know it because he is never kicked out of Rittenhouse Square for drawing with sidewalk chalk. No one ever makes him move from his alcove while he sleeps. People care for him. He gets money because he doesn’t ask for it. He gets art supplies because he never asks for them.
He has never logged on to The Social. You can tell just by looking at him.
He is everything I want to be.
He is Spain. He is Macedonia.
Horizon Line