
PodCastle 582: Life in Stone, Glass, and Plastic
Show Notes
Rated: PG-13, for harsh memories not one’s own.
Life in Stone, Glass, and Plastic
by José Pablo Iriarte
Cleaning up graffiti was an everyday job for Sergio, pero esto . . . Could you even call this graffiti? Graffiti normally was spray-painted. Wait — that wasn’t true. Indoor graffiti typically was done in permanent marker. Or gouged into wooden surfaces with pocket knives or keys, so the only way to remove some gang symbol or racist slur or throbbing penis was by sanding it down.
Come to think of it, if anybody was an expert, he was.
And he’d never heard of mosaic graffiti.
But there it was, on the side of the Westchester Building. Marbles, reading glasses, fichas de Monopolio, a key, all cemented onto the crumbling old plaster, maybe eight feet across. Only when he took a step back could he see it formed the shape of a woman and her two kids, carrying suitcases away from a house while a grim police officer stood by with his arms crossed. Probably not the image the tenant behind that wall — AAAfordable Lending, Inc. — would want to be associated with. (Continue Reading…)