Written on the walls

Cartoon drawing in the Paris Metro, which is again on strike today.

The Arabic version of graffiti: information and phone numbers scrawled on a wall in Aqaba, Jordan.

 

A public bulletin board of sorts in the seaside resort town of Aqaba, on the Red Sea.

 

Information about a mosque under construction outside Amman is written on the wall.

From Robert Frost:

Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it
And spills the upper boulder in the sun,
And make gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there,
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
"Stay where you are until our backs are turned!"
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of outdoor game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There were it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, "Good fences make good neighbors."
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
"Why do they make good neighbors? Isn't it
Where there are cows? But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I'd ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn't love a wall,
That wants it down." I could say "Elves" to him,
But it's not elves exactly, and I'd rather
He said it for himself. I see him there,
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me,
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father's saying,
And he likes having though of it so well
He says again, "Good fences make good neighbors."

Comments

[Patty]

That little cartoon is adorable!

[Colette]

Graffitti knows no borders!!!

[Marilyn]

I am fascinated by walls and graffiti. Great post and thoughts on "good fences make good neighbors".

[gillian wants to visit Paris before Tara moves!]

You mean the bill? THE bill? On Capital Hill? :)
Yay!

Great poem! And that graffiti wall was indeed beautiful in Aqaba...wasn't it? Actually, there were quite a few of them! We wondered why...no post it notes handy? No bulletin boards?
English and Arabic numbers together! Strange, yet as I said, beautiful. Aqaba was great, did I ever feel like a stranger in a strange land! Especially at the Red Sea, they looked at us like we were indeed alien.

Tink! To healthcare reform! You are worth it! xoxo

[Yoli]

Loving this post and the fact that I just saw our president sign that bill.