The Blythe Archives:
The Emperor X Online Journal

|20100613
||New Century Bus Station Bathroom

Chinatown in Philadelphia is partly covered by the SEPTA Market East transfer station and an attached shopping mall. It's dark on 11th St. no matter the time of day. On my way to tonight's concert in Charlottesville I found myself in the New Century bus station bathroom, staring blankly above the urinal I was using. Scrawled over a dense web of gang signs and crude comic drawings on one of the filthiest walls I've ever seen, I saw this:

"What are you waiting for to give up?"

Graffiti with a serious tone really, really sobers me up, and it doesn't get much more serious than that. When someone with intelligence chooses to communicate through barbarism, they trigger a specific and very powerful emotional reaction. That's why Osama bin Laden terrifies the Western world so much: he's one of us, trained in our schools, raised in privilege.

I don't know who the person was who wrote that note or why he wanted to encourage me and anyone else who needed to piss in that urinal to give up, but I'm imagining an affluent, 40-something off-the-grid dropout genius with a messiah complex, clean and bearded with piercing eyes and a wild grin. I don't think he and I would be friends. But I do respect the gesture. Sort of. If only it hadn't brought me down so hard...

I went next door to get some badly-needed Chinese comfort food. The girls behind the counter were unusually kind, held unusually long eye contact, and smiled with genuine warmth. Their gazes and their steamed spicy tofu and vegetables over rice made me feel human again.

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