Street art skulls//speaking truth

I had started to worry there were no vandals in the country. All the exposed brick in Cheonan is untouched, original dark orange, not a canvas in function. No tags, stencils, or samples of local graffiti sprayers.

It turns out all of the artists exit into Seoul. The winding side streets of the Hongdae Hongik University district are lined with boutiques and bars and art. A lion logs offline, a blue heart hovers over couples on a weekend stroll. A filmstrip flips a stencil toward me and an umbrella mural winks at the rain.

Blue notes hide inside clear bags strung on strings, hanging wall to wall. Inside are secrets left for the public to peer into, see the written soul. Back alley black on white walls, a cat sits in a storefront window.

A nun says don’t be greedy, a Cheshire cat tells me what I’m worth. The characters all have messages to whisper in my ears. But sketched in black is the loudest of them all. On walls around the city is a phrase that could have been left by me.

So the skull drops his jaw and lets it out. The paint spills down, the letters read: thing are not what they used to be. Say to self, no. No, they are not.