You'll miss connections just like shots
Take the time in the moment you have it
I started speeding out a reply to (link below), and… just couldn’t stop at a reasonable length for a Note. So, here we are with a Post (barely edited from my stream-of-consciousness). A reflection on an opportunity missed. A tribute to someone I wish I’d reached out to when I had the chance…
→ Check out: Nikki the Nocturnal Narrator's Restack that prompted me! ←
Ours here was a lady… A painter. An activist in a hostile small town.
I do believe she passed away last year - she had to be in her late 80s.
I’d never met her, though now that I’ve learned more of the full story, I sure wish I had!
In HS I assumed it was a crazy old white man - turns out it was a wise old black woman!
Let me explain (abridged version): Back then, when things weren’t, well, gestures around vaguely this…there was a house on a "main street” in our town that had just a bit more lawn than most (sandwiched between commercial blocks), and the hapazardly hand-painted marquee outside would change from time to time. In the beginning, the subtext was subtle, and, me being a teenager just learning the real ugly truths of the world, I couldn’t fully grasp the nuance of most of them.
❗ But you'd best bet I did recognize the condescension. My stock and trade. The defiance dripping from those words emblazoned for all who had to drive by day after day, daring to dart pointed jabs at the status quo.
Back then, I’d asked a few kids about it, and at first it seemed like a mystery, like a haunted house featuring a Banksy-esque ghost.
In later years, the beautiful old Victorian-styled house began sporting fresh coats of increasingly bright colors - the whole exterior, mind you. And, the sign’s print became smaller because the messages were getting longer, more detailed - more specific.
~ By then, I’d finally found someone who filled me in how wrong I’d been about the identity of the painter across decades of me moving away and coming back, but I’d grown to look forward to seeing what’s new on the sign when I was back in town (when I lived here I avoided that street for other reasons)…
🟪 In this most recent decade’s dawn, the house debuted its most audacious roof-to-porch steps splash of color yet - a gorgeous medium pastel purple! Drenched as if someone had tipped an enormous bucket of paint over top of the whole house.
And the sign, which in the decade prior people had petitioned the county to force the owner to take down, and then some even took to painting over it to try and silence the Painter - the sign had been rebuilt, even BIGGER this time - and the messages weren’t cryptic at all anymore.
The last one I had the privilege of reading named some names!
🤘 Good for her. I miss her & her artistry - her voice… I did also find out thru the grapevine that she did know she had local fans cheering her on!
Plug: If you’d like to see me pump out more of this type of content, please consider a paid subscription 50% discount $15 for the WHOLE year! You’ll GET even more by gaining access to private discord channels, 1:1 whatever writing-related you want chats, FREE tix (you & a plus1) to my paid workshops, and exclusive discounts on my SMM services (click link ⬆ to see all the deets).
FR: Any & all support means so so SO much to this Indie writer. I don’t support buymecoffee or PatreNon, but I do love me some Ko-FI (tips & commissions) because caffiene is a helluva drug 🤟
