The scrawl of Lucas

A note on graffiti. I'm particualrly disgusted with a zealous tagger named Lucas. We are unused to the notion of graffiti in L.A. We see it on the freeways and think it to be a part of some counterculture, some perversion of expression. In Rome it is both disturbing and pervasive. It adorns everything from trains to monuments. It says everything from Kill America to Rome is #1. And how can you argue with any of it? Where else do they have to express their contempt at being overrun by tourists, being overwhelmed by history, being expected to accell at all arts and sciences, at the notion of technology usurping the gravitas of their past? I hate it, and yet after a while, begin to not see it. A week has passed now and I have become mostly immune. While in L.A. we make attempts to cover it up, in Rome they layer it until it becomes a palimpsest of color and message. Rome would be truly beautiful without it, and yet has never existed without its presence. Even Pompei had forms of it, as we saw when we visited recently, with handprints left in dust along a commercial wall. Romans MUST leave a mark it seems, no matter how ugly.