Live life, die dead ... and slap paint over the graffiti
Someone had spray-painted graffiti on the alley-side of my beige brick fence, 2-foot letters scrawled in turquoise.
“Live life, die dead.”
I dropped the bag of leaves I was carrying and looked up and down the alley, as if the artist still might be around. I use the term “artist” loosely since the graffiti wasn’t particularly artsy or even grammatically sound. There also was an indecipherable scribble to one side.
I know it’s not personal, but it feels that way. Why my fence? (It’s kind of a crummy fence. Not an ideal canvas.) Should I worry?
What does it even mean? I looked it up of course. I found a fanfiction story with that title by someone named @Galaxyful. (I didn’t read it because it was labeled NSFW — not safe for work — and I was at work.)
So it probably was the work of a young vandal, not a gang.
I’ve seen graffiti that I like, most of it more like art than tagging. This wasn’t that.
I hate to squash anyone’s expression, but I called the city’s graffiti hotline to report it. The woman who answered the phone said someone would be out to paint over it in the next few days. Covering graffiti supposedly discourages it.
A few days later, my son Sawyer came back from taking out the trash and reported the graffiti was gone. He was bummed because he liked the sentiment.
“What sentiment?” I demanded.
Live your life to the fullest, he said. So by the time you die, you’ve exhausted life. There’s nothing left.
Go figure. My tagger was a philosopher with a can of turquoise spray paint.
Now it’s painted over with a beige paint that kind of matches the fence, though you can see where it was, some of the turquoise in the crevices between the bricks showing through.
It’s enough of a reminder. Live life, die dead.