Making a Mark and Dealing with Death

Graffiti, it's been around for as long as we have. It can range from a way of telling a story, making a statement, or just a way of getting the world to remember you. It's this last form of graffiti that I'd like to think about for a bit, since the reasons for the other two seem more obvious. I suppose this reason is clear too though, we know that our existence is fleeting and we're trying to do whatever we can to make it more permanent. The typical format is this: Name and Year, it's the Cliffnotes version of you. Some observations: the style has changed over the years, if you look at graffiti that's three hundred years old it's carefully etched out - like Roman script. Well this is a silly question, but why has our handwriting gotten worse? Is it because more people know how to write and thus we have to write more frequently, leading inevitably to less careful, poorer looking script? Also, what sort of feelings should seeing that graffiti inspire? I trace my fingers along it trying to picture the person who was laughing to himself as he etched away at the stone. Could he have pictured me? I'll admit that I'm always compelled to leave my mark as well. It was a thrilling to finally be around graffiti that was hundreds of years old, to include myself in that history book!

I'm crazed about the passage of time. First time is ridiculous, for some reason I have a lot of trouble understanding it in any academic capacity. The theory of relativity is about as far as I go, I've only dabbled in string theory. It's just that time is so human. It makes it hard to understand how could it operate outsidhe of ourselves, honestly I'm not sure if it even does. But anyway, my fascination isn't just limited to the past (as was discussed in a prior post), but to the future as well. Actually, it's mainly directed at the future because it scares me. Martin Heidegger discussed this anxiety at great length, he said it was part of "our-being-towards-death" or rather at what is always never [because you cannot experience death itself.] He reasoned that one becomes an "authentic" human when she accepts her mortality and inevitably that she will never realize a totalized self. But Heidegger, how?! How. How. How. That's the tricky part. When I feel anxious I'm enveloped by it, I could live with the knowledge that none of my projects may be accomplished, but is this any sort of life? There may be a sense of quietude involved in it, but I'm sorry Heidegger, it seems completely un-human. Sure ontology suggests that we are in the way he described, but what about our experience? We graffiti because we don't want it to end, we won't accept it (I think even tombstones might represent "immortality"). The human spirit chooses ignorance.

Some graffiti I saw in Oxford, UK

Random Observation:

I tend to dress with a bit more of a vintage style I suppose, which people never usually notice really, but whenever I'm on my relatively old bike the elderly stare. I like to think that I seem like a time traveler from their childhood or something to them, which I know is a really strange thought. Today on my way to class I bike passed a group of older folks heading into a museum and old man just looked at me with the biggest smile on his face! Then a student told me that I looked like I wasn't from this century. Well golly gee wiz, thanks!

The outfit