Underground Annotations
Halloween this year was less about the costume—my everyday wardrobe already suited an evil minion well enough, which is a bit anticlimactic when universal downfall is the theme—and more about the setting. The haunted dorm tour at Evans and Nourse was impressive, with volunteers clearly pouring serious effort (and ketchup) into converting the spaces. But the lasting image wasn't the zombies or the blood stains.
What stayed with me were the old tunnels beneath, covered in layers of graffiti. Poems, drawings, satanic scribbles, promises to loved ones, traces of furtive exploration and drunken victories, sports logos in white and blue spray paint, scenes from Where the Wild Things Are, lyric fragments, and bits of descriptive prose—all preserved in a musty corridor, unseen by those passing overhead. These were endlessly annotated passageways, each mark a record of someone's brief presence. Photographs can't quite capture the experience of reading through them; one could easily lose hours moving from one inscription to the next.
It's a private archive of transient lives, and I hope circumstances allow me to revisit it someday.
