Don't Tread On Me
02/25/14 22:02
I stepped into the subway car and stood, staring at my feet, and then at the slowly expanding pool radiating from the tip of my umbrella as it rested on the floor. The water shone white in the reflected fluorescent lights against the dark plastic marbled floor. Absentmindedly, I began to paint. Two humps that became eyes when I added two dots, a bump for a nose, a jawline like the state of Texas, a curlicue ear. Scratched lines of a mouth, folds at its edges, eyelids, the philtrum, three lines to suggest a head of hair. Nobody seemed to notice or care. I stepped back to look at the face I have doodled so many times. It looked bored, or sad. I'm not sure I could draw it any other way.
And then the next stop came, and the inevitable happened. A boot-print briefly turned the mouth into a whiskered mustache, before the whole thing was trod out of existence. And in that moment I felt a small piece of the way my classmate had felt when someone had written God's name on the sidewalk, offended that someone might step on it, as if it were not chalk, as if colored, powdered limestone scratched out in lines that could be interpreted as the English letters for the Hebrew name Yahweh somehow conjured and bound Him to the concrete, and so protective of his name, as if it could hurt or offend God, God the almighty, the great I Am, as if he who made the heavens and earth and looked down on us all could be so abused by someone stepping on a sidewalk pavement block in which someone had scrawled his name.
A small, small piece of this I felt as people entered the car, and walked on my drawing, instinctively thinking They're stepping on his face, as if I had not created him, as if the crude, bored, misshapen visage was real, had life, could feel their wet treads destroy him, as if he, made of water, were not already doomed to death at his inception. But I let it go, because you must let things go, and stared at my feet again. And when I finally stepped out of the car, I noted, on the drying floor, still there remained two humps for eyes, and a jawline like the state of Texas.
And then the next stop came, and the inevitable happened. A boot-print briefly turned the mouth into a whiskered mustache, before the whole thing was trod out of existence. And in that moment I felt a small piece of the way my classmate had felt when someone had written God's name on the sidewalk, offended that someone might step on it, as if it were not chalk, as if colored, powdered limestone scratched out in lines that could be interpreted as the English letters for the Hebrew name Yahweh somehow conjured and bound Him to the concrete, and so protective of his name, as if it could hurt or offend God, God the almighty, the great I Am, as if he who made the heavens and earth and looked down on us all could be so abused by someone stepping on a sidewalk pavement block in which someone had scrawled his name.
A small, small piece of this I felt as people entered the car, and walked on my drawing, instinctively thinking They're stepping on his face, as if I had not created him, as if the crude, bored, misshapen visage was real, had life, could feel their wet treads destroy him, as if he, made of water, were not already doomed to death at his inception. But I let it go, because you must let things go, and stared at my feet again. And when I finally stepped out of the car, I noted, on the drying floor, still there remained two humps for eyes, and a jawline like the state of Texas.