I was heading through the parking lot on the way to my car after work. I passed this green dumpster that's always there. Today, on this dumpster, written in bright silver...I don't know what it was. When I got close, I couldn't tell if it was silver paint or silver tape. If it was tape, it sure did lay flush to the surface of that dumpster like a coat of paint. If it was paint, whatever they used to apply it sure did go on in straight, even lines like pieces of tape. But what it said was:
"WHY HATE?"
Actually, what it said was:
"<--------WHY HATE?" There was a long silver arrow pointing at nothing, to the left of the message. I stood there looking at this, pondering the undeniable truth of those words. And then I saw the deeper truth: just in front of the arrow's point, scratched into the scratched, dinged, dingy, rusted, peeling green surface of this dumpster, was a tiny swastika.
This floored me.
That someone would be so atrocious as to deface this large, inoffensive metal box with the infamous crooked cross of Nazidom seemed hard to believe. But then, that they would do it in such a tiny fashion that no one would ever be able to notice it, seemed ludicrous! But someone had noticed it. And that someone was not going to let this barbarous act pass unremarked.
What was the motive of this second, more heroic vandal? And where did he get that amazing tape paint? There's nowhere one can go to find out these things. And that is what kills us all, in the end.
3 comments:
The thing that troubled me was this...it almost seemed as though the second vandal may have ended up raising the first vandal's profile from non-entity to cause celebre. Much in the same way that a movie that may be lousy from an entertainment perspective, can turn into a 'hot ticket' if an organized protest brings controversy into play.
So what can we do then? Should we just say nothing? On that, I have nothing to say.
It's a complex issue.
I don't know - I don't think that shouting the truth from the rooftops necessarily gives undue attention to falsehood. A small slight unanswered can lead to a bigger one.
That's true. That's true. The other thing that troubled me is..."I bet the second guy is the same guy as the first guy, he's trying to turn that dumpster into a statement of conflict and ambiguity."
I put it in quotes because those were the exact words that ran through my mind, before I dismissed the idea as too cynically unworthy of me.
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