Speaker 1: Tuesday mornings, if you asked me six months ago, were
Speaker 1: meant for card games at the Senior Center, or perhaps
Speaker 1: a stroll to the bakery across from my apartment block.
Speaker 1: I didn't expect to find myself pacing for softly lit galleries,
Speaker 1: counting the click of my shoes against col missake tiles.
Speaker 1: But retirement, as my daughter keeps reminding me, is as
Speaker 1: much about invention as it is about letting go. So
Speaker 1: here I was, second Tuesday of April, unlocking the side
Speaker 1: door door City's faded Regional Museum, te mug in hand,
Speaker 1: my breath dispersing in the hush. There's a particular sort
Speaker 1: of silence I've noticed that belongs only to museums, something
Speaker 1: attentive in it, as if every doorway abolished, glass cases, listening,
Speaker 1: waiting for the next for full or excommission. Some mornings,
Speaker 1: I tell myself this feeling is only because the building
Speaker 1: is old and a little drafty. But today, as I
Speaker 1: rounded the main corridor and stepped into the central gallery,
Speaker 1: I felt, for just a moment, as though I had
Speaker 1: walked into someone else's memory. He noticed the mural at once.
Speaker 1: The first time I entered as a volunteer Simon ever, Chip,
Speaker 1: already in the morning, told me orientation doesn't matter. Everyone
Speaker 1: oriented by the neural. That's true. It dominates the far
Speaker 1: wall ten meters from one graceful marble column to the next,
Speaker 1: encapsulating nearly the whole city shore line and downtown cranes
Speaker 1: and old warehouses, arking bridges, the relentless river bending inland
Speaker 1: like an elbow. In all my decades teaching history, I'd
Speaker 1: never tired of using that painting as a backdrop for lessons.
Speaker 1: Here you can see the city before the old bridge.
Speaker 1: H that's the square after the great fire. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about widely rebuilding brick This morning, though I stopped at
Speaker 1: the gallery threshold, something felt, I want to say, taller.
Speaker 1: The spire from the old municipal building, normally dwarfed by
Speaker 1: the post war office block, seemed to reach hire into
Speaker 1: the painted sky, nearly brushing at imagined clouds. I stood
Speaker 1: mug nearly at my lips, staring at that elegant brickwork.
Speaker 1: The small park to the left. It had always always
Speaker 1: nestled on the south bank, past the willow trees right,
Speaker 1: but now to my left he crept up the north
Speaker 1: side framed by Storferens. I couldn't recall stranger still, as
Speaker 1: I walked closer, A cluster of rowboats at the river
Speaker 1: side slip seemed to have rearranged themselves too, painted a fresh,
Speaker 1: impossible orange sword you'd never see on the regular ferry fleet.
Speaker 1: Was I mixing up details? Perhaps I'd been gone too
Speaker 1: long between shifts, but I'm not prone to misremembering places
Speaker 1: or shape's teaching history de Mand's careful eyes. After all,
Speaker 1: Miss s Ellison passed behind me with her rolling hoop back,
Speaker 1: saying to herself, as she did every morning to day,
Speaker 1: a warble bit of coal porter. She didn't pause at
Speaker 1: the mural, simply called good morning, Edith, tea in the
Speaker 1: lounge if you haven't got yours, and drifted past without
Speaker 1: a glance. At my confusion, I chalked up my UN's
Speaker 1: certainty to pus sleep. But even after I had hummed
Speaker 1: my coat and become prepping the guests within the plastic nametags,
Speaker 1: the impression of difference pressed at me. Had there always
Speaker 1: been a curving foot bath line with cherry trees above
Speaker 1: the old foundry building? Weren't those apartments supposed to be
Speaker 1: low and brown rather than six stories in Vassi. I
Speaker 1: stood in front of the mural for nearly three minutes.
Speaker 1: I suppose, long enough for mister Park, grizzled and stoke
Speaker 1: in his uniform, to sweep by and motter. You'll go
Speaker 1: cross eyed if you stay too long at the behemoth Edith,
Speaker 1: trust me, seen it a thousand times. The city never
Speaker 1: gets prettier. I nearly lost my train of thought, But
Speaker 1: as I turned to face him, another question surface about
Speaker 1: the beauty of the viewed in the simple fact of it,
Speaker 1: had I always been looking at the same painting. I
Speaker 1: began my day as usual, sifting through requests, prepping to
Speaker 1: her pamphlets for the handful of visitors expected. I tidied
Speaker 1: the reference stacks and compared dates on a few postcards
Speaker 1: near the lobby, routine comfortable tasks, but the mural stayed
Speaker 1: with me throughout the day. Each time I entered the
Speaker 1: main gallery, my eyes darted back to the spy at
Speaker 1: the curve of the river, puzzling over those orange boats.
Speaker 1: Each detail seemed both familiar in you. Was I slipping
Speaker 1: or was something else? The mural itself changing beneath our
Speaker 1: noses while we simply assumed we remembered. My memory, after all,
Speaker 1: had never failed me before. When people imagine a history teacher,
Speaker 1: I think they expect to be spectacles, perhaps a fondness
Speaker 1: for maps. I'll admit to all three. In my thirty
Speaker 1: seven years teaching at Edison Middle I became a walking
Speaker 1: resource for local trivia. My students would try to stump
Speaker 1: me with questions about all fire stations of for Gooden Maya's,
Speaker 1: and more often than not I could answer before the
Speaker 1: bell even ran. Retirement, however, is a different animal, at
Speaker 1: least for me. The plan, dads, skirts and clatter of
Speaker 1: lockers have faded. My days are parceled up with a
Speaker 1: gentle precision of habit. Morning laps around the duckbund crossward
Speaker 1: in the window at the cafe, weekly bridge game, and
Speaker 1: of course these volunteer errors at the museum. The truth
Speaker 1: is volunteering here off for small comfort. I find routine
Speaker 1: in sort and new acquisitions, and delight in the rare
Speaker 1: group of students trailing behind sim On her hands waving
Speaker 1: as she ship as than toward a painting or art fact.
Speaker 1: I appreciate missus Ellison's off key cheer in mister Park's
Speaker 1: dryosides all of us, in our way are guardians of
Speaker 1: a civic treasure, even as we bicker about proper humidity
Speaker 1: for paintings, or whose urin is to polish the glass cases.
Speaker 1: The museum itself hasn't changed much since it brought my
Speaker 1: eighth graders here two decades ago. The entrance is ring
Speaker 1: by crack stonework and lists of mural donors. The columns
Speaker 1: tonal dust catchers frame a lovulaid with misaic talents whirling
Speaker 1: blue and green. I joke with visitors that the gallery
Speaker 1: lights are calibrated to illuminate our wrinkles as finely as
Speaker 1: the artwork. Ely On, someone installed a stool just for
Speaker 1: me near the mural, with a perfect sidle line through
Speaker 1: the main gallery and in each shift of watched as staff, visitors,
Speaker 1: and students used the mural as a land market place
Speaker 1: to pause, orient regale with stories. Most days the museum
Speaker 1: is all gentle shuffles and creaking gift shop receipts, the
Speaker 1: echo of children's laughter, the whir of an ancient ventilation system.
Speaker 1: Our artifacts are lovingly tended, but rarely famous. The mural
Speaker 1: is different. Simon twenty something, A darting blue bird among
Speaker 1: us old crows reminds us we're lucky the painting Edith.
Speaker 1: Nobody else can claim something so representative it is the city,
Speaker 1: isn't it. Even as she schemes ways to raise funds
Speaker 1: with social media campaigns, she keeps her office window angled
Speaker 1: toward the mural. Missus Ellison provides afternoon momentum. Don't let
Speaker 1: mister Park bully you about the temperature, Dear, if your
Speaker 1: teas call, my thermis is bottomless. Her memory, if ane gracious,
Speaker 1: is selective at best. She cares less for records and
Speaker 1: morph stories, turning forgotten docents into legends with a twinkle
Speaker 1: in her eye. Mister Park is a different flavor museum
Speaker 1: security since the eighties would a walk the creeks in
Speaker 1: time to the floor and a mind as a arsenal
Speaker 1: of complaints and ballprint pens. Then there is Lizzie, perhaps
Speaker 1: the only recurring visider, a U University student who lingers
Speaker 1: in our galleries every week, sketch book on her knees,
Speaker 1: eributs in. Sometimes I peek at her work, quick deft
Speaker 1: outlines of whatever corner or angel catches her mood. She
Speaker 1: is never reserved, but her focus is absolute. Once I
Speaker 1: caught her capturing the Mural's riverbank in charcoal. Asking if
Speaker 1: the willow trees had always bent like that, I answered yes,
Speaker 1: But for the first time, I now question my conviction.
Speaker 1: We have our routines, doors opened with a jangle of
Speaker 1: keys and a heavy grown as the oak batt and
Speaker 1: sye wide tea brew by ten staff conferring in the
Speaker 1: cramp pastel tu bricrim. Visitors arrive few and fleeting, and
Speaker 1: leave equally lightly. Missus Ellison and I exchange jokes about
Speaker 1: each new cloud of dust disturbed. The mural is our beacon,
Speaker 1: central ceremonious, a guide for young and old. I know
Speaker 1: it as surely as my own front steps, or so
Speaker 1: I believe. Its skyline has ankle class projects, provoked debates
Speaker 1: on city funding, and provided a gentle touched and for
Speaker 1: newcomers exploring their adopted home. It is to us as
Speaker 1: much a civic signature as the clock tower or the
Speaker 1: whistling fairies at dusk. So why on this grace keyed
Speaker 1: mourning does the city accross the Mural's painted river seen
Speaker 1: to drift, even as the marble beneath my feet remains unchanged.
Speaker 1: I was arranging pamphlets near the reception disc when the
Speaker 1: contradiction found me not just a subtle shift, but a
Speaker 1: chasm cut across memory and motivation. An older gentleman, the
Speaker 1: sword holienes on his cane, as if it alone could
Speaker 1: summon history, was counting the mural while his daughter, sensible
Speaker 1: shoes and sharp glasses flit through Arbrosure, excuse me, miss,
Speaker 1: HEAs motioning me over with a careful tip of his cane.
Speaker 1: Is this the famous blue tram? My wife told me
Speaker 1: it was always her favorite. Bit rode that line every Saturday,
Speaker 1: from Angel Street down to the Flower Market. He pointed,
Speaker 1: and I politely followed his gaze. There it was, front
Speaker 1: and center in a mural, a shining blue tram, glossy
Speaker 1: as a pluck plum, crossing the viaduct over the river.
Speaker 1: I could have sworn absolutely certain the tram had been
Speaker 1: painted red. For as long as I've worked here, I
Speaker 1: taught dozens of lessons using the detail reference in the
Speaker 1: color to distinguish the early indoor public transports from their
Speaker 1: blue uniform predecessors. My class hand outs always featured the
Speaker 1: same pale red tram. My own daughter at once traced
Speaker 1: it on a skull trip coloring, every panel shade lighter
Speaker 1: than in the mural. I tried, lightly, Are you sure
Speaker 1: it's always been blue? I remember that tram as read.
Speaker 1: Actually it was something of a historical debate, wasn't it,
Speaker 1: what with the city switching livery in the nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: The gentleman snorted, no, always blue, ask any one. He
Speaker 1: turned away, satisfied with memory or certainty, I could not tell.
Speaker 1: After he wandered off, I hurried to fetch missus Ellison
Speaker 1: from the front desk. She appeared, lilac scarf trailing, and
Speaker 1: I said, Milly, do you remember the city tram in
Speaker 1: the mural? Didn't it used to be red? She squinted it,
Speaker 1: peering over my shoulder and shook her head. Oh, Edith,
Speaker 1: you history buffs. You like to argue the tram's always
Speaker 1: been blue tradition, you know, blue trams, blue uniforms, policity's guide.
Speaker 1: That's what my father said. I bit my cheek For
Speaker 1: a moment. I wondered if I could trust my own certainty.
Speaker 1: Had I, who taught for so many years that the
Speaker 1: painting was true to our city's historical record, actually misremembered?
Speaker 1: My mind flickered back, counting tours. Lessons. Afternoon spent diagramming
Speaker 1: the city's changing transport. Why would I invent the red?
Speaker 1: I hovered there, half in the prison, half excavating old
Speaker 1: mental snap shots. The central mural, the very thing I'd
Speaker 1: prided myself on interpreting, now cast me adrift for a moment.
Speaker 1: The notion bloomed was the mural some new kind of
Speaker 1: shifting record, writing itself in subtle flourish as no one
Speaker 1: else seemed to notice. If so, why had nob been
Speaker 1: mentioned it? For? Had I simply not listened? All I
Speaker 1: knew was what I'd remembered about the painting had been contradicted,
Speaker 1: not just by a stranger, but by Millie, whose stories
Speaker 1: may wander, but whose opinion of the city cham has
Speaker 1: apparently never wavered. I could feel the need to resolve
Speaker 1: the doubt pushing up, insisting and unfamiliar. I spent my
Speaker 1: lunch shift doing something I never would have confessed aloud,
Speaker 1: scrutinizing the mural close up as if it were a
Speaker 1: crown scene. I positioned a folding chair at a dozen
Speaker 1: different angles, tip notes in my tiny blue notebook, and
Speaker 1: quietly compared every painted landmark I could recall from prior months.
Speaker 1: The river, sometimes its cover and mural mirrored the real
Speaker 1: rivers south, would bend at other angles, seemed to be
Speaker 1: lit by an entirely different sun. The old bridges, which
Speaker 1: had swarm a twins band's painted in gently arching succession,
Speaker 1: now doubled back upon themselves, stacked in impossible proxim The
Speaker 1: skyline had acquired a clutch of unfamiliar glass wall towers,
Speaker 1: one crowned with a windmill. I could have sworn wasn't
Speaker 1: the previous week. I wasn't content to simply trust my eyes.
Speaker 1: That evening pack home, I thumbed through my oldestary lesson notes,
Speaker 1: pulling diagrams of the city's early industrial years, maps, building lists,
Speaker 1: photos from the library's digital archive. I checked my own
Speaker 1: lecture hand auts, clipping out references to the park's position,
Speaker 1: the tram routes, and the riverside warehouses. The mural of
Speaker 1: this morning aligned with none. I cross checked the directional
Speaker 1: orientation of the bridge in the mural against my best
Speaker 1: love City aerial in nineteen thirty five footoarge, used ten
Speaker 1: times in classes close but never the same. On Wednesday,
Speaker 1: I brought a fresh note padant that afternoon started sketching
Speaker 1: details before the museum closed for the day. I captured
Speaker 1: a row of shoped painted of bold awnings, bright green
Speaker 1: and gold, distinctly modern in style, across from the city's
Speaker 1: oldest plaza. Wasn't that supposed to be the sight of
Speaker 1: the wartime market stalls. Thursday, I lingered by the mule
Speaker 1: and told the crowd's thinned to try and to sketch
Speaker 1: the park's winding path, now curling north by what had
Speaker 1: yesterday been a block of red brick hotels. I didn't
Speaker 1: mention the exercise to Simon, though she peeked over my
Speaker 1: shoulder and said we should have view draw mural postcouds
Speaker 1: for the shop. That would lighten things up around here.
Speaker 1: I soon realized the contradictions ran deeper. Our regular Lizzie,
Speaker 1: perched on the steps later that week, remarked, without prompting,
Speaker 1: I like how the mural always shows what the city
Speaker 1: feels like to me, especially the way they painted a
Speaker 1: sunset district. It's exactly how I remember it. My favorite
Speaker 1: bakery that blue fenced. She trailed off, glancing up with
Speaker 1: the sort of dreamy gratitude. I nodded, smiling alarm, but
Speaker 1: I thought not for the first time. Her sunset district
Speaker 1: in mine are not the same. I don't recall any
Speaker 1: blue fence, nor that bakery so close to the canal.
Speaker 1: The following morning, as I began unlocking the side entry,
Speaker 1: I heard mister Park grumblet a group of weekend visitors
Speaker 1: that Casina has always been on the mule before they
Speaker 1: bulldozed tafted downtown to build it up. Too many memories
Speaker 1: for one patch of leveled concrete. My pulse leapt. We
Speaker 1: all know gambling was only legalized a few years ago.
Speaker 1: I remembered the uproar at the city Council debates, news
Speaker 1: crews flocking for opening day. Yet the murals, sure enough,
Speaker 1: as if the afternoon depicted alone. Neon signed Casino wedged
Speaker 1: into the southern river side, surrounded by poff cars and
Speaker 1: the faint hint of a modern plaza. Feeling a shiver
Speaker 1: of uncertainty, A called Simonova, pointing openly to the mule's
Speaker 1: mix of tram high rises, Casino an ancient market stole
Speaker 1: so clearly from separate eras Simon, doesn't it bother you
Speaker 1: that half these buildings didn't exist? Alongside each other. The
Speaker 1: painting keeps shifting. Sometimes the parks here, sometimes there. Then
Speaker 1: a new building appears, She arched an iber though it's
Speaker 1: just creative license, right. Besides, it's a historical record. Look,
Speaker 1: that's how the city looked in nineteen twenty two. She
Speaker 1: gestured a block I recognized from old photos, but her
Speaker 1: nineteen twenty two was surrounded by a sixties apartment slab
Speaker 1: beside a eakeanjuice bark, both entirely anachronistic. I've talked up
Speaker 1: that exact view on student tours for two years, she continued,
Speaker 1: tapping a clipboard. I wouldn't worry that night, and about
Speaker 1: of impatience. I rifled through old museum brouchures. Each included
Speaker 1: a crop furto of the mural used for advertising tours.
Speaker 1: I compare two editions side by side. The king was
Speaker 1: amateurian Bertha dark rectangle of the mural's river side, but
Speaker 1: more than the colors shifted. The bridge odges varied slightly.
Speaker 1: Even the path leading to the city botanical gardens changed angles.
Speaker 1: The sign over the trump stopped said botanic in want
Speaker 1: gardens in the other subtle but distinct. The mural sometimes
Speaker 1: bid in a paintoly sunlight that didn't match the city's
Speaker 1: gloom outside. Other days, when rain battered our lobby windows,
Speaker 1: the mural two seemed streak gray sky leaning heavy with clouds.
Speaker 1: I once asked out loud whether anyone thought the murals
Speaker 1: whether followed the real city or if the lighting tricks
Speaker 1: were just clever curation. Mister park dusting in the near
Speaker 1: hall scoffed, artist's prerogative. Don't let it get in your head, Edith,
Speaker 1: we all see what we expect. My curiosity now was ravenous.
Speaker 1: Was there some secret ongoing restoration? Was the mural being retouched?
Speaker 1: Was it mere prediction or part of some clever museum
Speaker 1: tricka hadn't yet uncovered? Or had my own memory, over
Speaker 1: long devoted to the city's official image, started to roade.
Speaker 1: With time, none of the theories quite fit. Each new
Speaker 1: contradiction suggested another layer. Post Cards from our own own
Speaker 1: gift shop, reordered before every major holiday, assured the mural
Speaker 1: reproduced and sub duty use. One featured the Riverside Park.
Speaker 1: Another at the same angle replaced the park with a
Speaker 1: set of glass office blocks, though both clined to be
Speaker 1: from a painting bay. L Alf Francs nineteen nineteen. A
Speaker 1: recurring question returned, could there be official records of the
Speaker 1: murals intended? Four mortist sketches, press releases, faded plants. Hiding
Speaker 1: in the museum tarcouse. Late one afternoon, I rifled through
Speaker 1: our filing cabinets, simontutting as I bent over a batted
Speaker 1: manilla envelope labeled mural materials. The contents were underwhelming copies
Speaker 1: of old opening nine invitations, fuzzy black and white photographs,
Speaker 1: a yellowed, fainly pencil floor plan. Even those images failed
Speaker 1: to agree with themselves. In one, the mural depicted the
Speaker 1: smoking chimneys of the textile quarter, then another a placid
Speaker 1: sweep of riverside already lined with trees. Whatever explanation are clontium,
Speaker 1: misremembered facts, clever lighting of verzealous restorations, none could account
Speaker 1: for every contradiction the mural had thus far revealed. By
Speaker 1: the end of my second month at the museum, had
Speaker 1: filled two entire nutputs with quick sketches and written notes
Speaker 1: comparing the mural's changing geography. One rainy Sunday face pressed
Speaker 1: close to the paneled wall at table in my sitting room,
Speaker 1: I noticed something I hadn't date to dissipate. Not a
Speaker 1: day passed without at least one major shift. The parkscof
Speaker 1: swerved between my sketches, sometimes cutting across the old tramway,
Speaker 1: sometimes looping out into the river as a peninsula that,
Speaker 1: to my knowledge, had never actually existed. On Monday, I
Speaker 1: searched the archives for photographs of the Murle over the decades.
Speaker 1: I managed to find perhaps a dozen newspaper spreads from
Speaker 1: the opening student groups posing during tours, A faded polaroid
Speaker 1: from a seventy scala one showed the casino years before
Speaker 1: it had been built. Another taken in the Midmnice eighties,
Speaker 1: omitted the new foot bridge entirely, though the physical bridge
Speaker 1: itself was one of the city's proudest editions that year.
Speaker 1: When next I saw Lizzie cross legged at the Mule's
Speaker 1: age as a shaded chocole onto canary yellow paper, I asked, hesitatly,
Speaker 1: have you ever noticed the mule chained your bakery the
Speaker 1: blue fence. Has it always looked like that to you?
Speaker 1: She shrugged, smiling. Sometimes I sketch it and the buildings
Speaker 1: feel softer. Sometimes the park just stretches a bit, but
Speaker 1: it always looks bright, you know, like the version I'd
Speaker 1: hoped for on maybe just what the city felt like
Speaker 1: on a bright afternoon. I watched her high, considering the
Speaker 1: possibility that what felt so mutable to me might seem settled,
Speaker 1: reassurering even to others. At lunch, I made a point
Speaker 1: to ask mister Park if he'd ever spotted di scrapances
Speaker 1: between his own memories and the mural's features. He grow
Speaker 1: into Edith. Every year they re innovates something in this town.
Speaker 1: They fill in the docks, knock down a warehouse, build
Speaker 1: a stupid traffic island, and people moan about how the
Speaker 1: past was different. You stare too long at that painting,
Speaker 1: I'll start seeing anything you like, but he added, frowning,
Speaker 1: I do recall once, after my vacation back in ninety eight,
Speaker 1: the mural had grown a play ground. I didn't remember
Speaker 1: my grands and love swings, so that stuck with me,
Speaker 1: but everyone else swhore it had always been there. He
Speaker 1: shook his head, as if batting away the thought with
Speaker 1: sess Ellison, cheerful as ever, took my question as an
Speaker 1: invitation to reminisce. Oh, the mural is come for, isn't
Speaker 1: I can sit here and count every shop front I
Speaker 1: used to visit, you know, the old news agent, the
Speaker 1: tailor now a juice bar. But in the painting, they
Speaker 1: are all still there, exactly as they ought to be. Simon, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: was knee deep in planning a new round of student tours. Frankly, Edith,
Speaker 1: I wouldn't worry about those little differences. Artists always blend
Speaker 1: ears for affair. That's what makes it popular. Tourists can
Speaker 1: recognize something locals too. The mural isn't meant to be
Speaker 1: a document. Think of it like collective nostalgia. Besides, specific
Speaker 1: dates don't matter, it's the feeling it evooks. She grinned,
Speaker 1: then dashed off to wrangle a delivery of exhibit labels.
Speaker 1: Feeling a touch of exasperated amusement, I visited the gift
Speaker 1: Sharpiere again, scanning the racks of mural postcards and souvenir mugs.
Speaker 1: The merchandise produced in ways seemed less consistent each time
Speaker 1: I looked to the sky line, shifting font styles, altering,
Speaker 1: minor landmarks, vanishing and reappearing. When I pointed this out
Speaker 1: to her teenage cachet, she laughed, and said, I just
Speaker 1: think they get bored at the printing place and use
Speaker 1: whatever fotho we send them. I started to notice on
Speaker 1: rainy mornings that the mural's clouds swell gray and urgent,
Speaker 1: as if reflecting the storm's pressure. Outside. Sunday afternoons painted
Speaker 1: the city in a honeyed light, regardless of museum fixtures.
Speaker 1: One day, a cluster of red banners sprang up across
Speaker 1: the Murals city square. A week later, after a minor
Speaker 1: parade had run through the same streets. In reality, the
Speaker 1: next print runoff gift shop postcouch showed confetti drifting over
Speaker 1: the Tan Hall. I made a quiet visit to the
Speaker 1: museum'small prescivs, Morris brushure resolbjects of Pride, and minute correction
Speaker 1: among retired dirsant syndex the mural's story through the years.
Speaker 1: Yet the pamphlets themselves sometimes disputed each other, claiming opening
Speaker 1: dates before the Second Footbridge or referencing restoretured districts that
Speaker 1: I could barely recall even in childhood. The contradictions built
Speaker 1: into a saturated puzzle. I began to wonder whether the
Speaker 1: museum itself, or at least at keystone painting didn't simply
Speaker 1: drift with the city's own self image e to change
Speaker 1: a subtle echo of some conversation, memory, wish, or local debate.
Speaker 1: I began imagining features in which the mural would sprout
Speaker 1: a new building or race an old one, entirely as
Speaker 1: memory or desire dictated. Was I was in trust in
Speaker 1: my own powers of recollection, or or other people seeing
Speaker 1: only what they wanted and calling it history. If the
Speaker 1: mural danced to the tune of public wish, wasn't it
Speaker 1: less an artifact than a mirror? My world, once so
Speaker 1: firmly ordered by fact, record and day to day observation,
Speaker 1: was now bending. Either I had never truly noticed this
Speaker 1: constant flux, or the city's sense of itself was less settled,
Speaker 1: more achingly provisional than I had ever allowed myself to believe.
Speaker 1: Determined not to simply accept uncertainty, I decided one aften
Speaker 1: interdig deeper. That evening, I retrieved all my sketches from
Speaker 1: the past month, pin them up around my small parlor.
Speaker 1: The parade of images, same bridge with three different coveratures,
Speaker 1: the park shifting like a floating island, the tramp switching
Speaker 1: levery week by week spread before me felt for a
Speaker 1: moment like evidence of my own drifting attention. The next day,
Speaker 1: I dug Harsher. I searched municipal archives for official photographs
Speaker 1: of the mural, as well as old city maps. Sometimes
Speaker 1: both archave and mural aligned with my memories, sometimes inexplicably
Speaker 1: they did not. Old aeriels showed neighbor has squeezing open
Speaker 1: and then inexplicably contracting like lawns. A dozen photos of
Speaker 1: the mural from school groups dating back eres showed similar
Speaker 1: in consistencies, one with the Angel Street footbridge amisticable. The
Speaker 1: next show in the same space crisscrossed by trams no
Speaker 1: bridge at all for plex but energize. I arranged a
Speaker 1: small meeting at the Kappa and scone, the cafe two
Speaker 1: blocks from the museum that doubles as an informal othering
Speaker 1: spot for local history buffs. I invited Lucas Abadie, our
Speaker 1: respected local historian, trusting that if any one could provide
Speaker 1: facts as fixed as I wanted, it would be Lucas.
Speaker 1: He arrived late, long scoffed, trailing, ever gregarious. Edith heard
Speaker 1: you'd retire, but not that you'd entered the world of curation.
Speaker 1: How's the collection still fighting dusks and budget cuts? I
Speaker 1: seared the conversation quickly, Lucas, I need to ask you
Speaker 1: something art the City Mural at the museum. Do you
Speaker 1: recall it ever, changing buildings, roads, even the trunk colors?
Speaker 1: He laughed at first, It's a treasure, Edith, a proper
Speaker 1: city record. They did resort sometime in the eighties after
Speaker 1: a little smoke damage, if I recall, but nothing fundamental.
Speaker 1: Why I pressed him for details about the mural's specific features,
Speaker 1: referencing landmarks i'd seen move or shift. He was patient,
Speaker 1: but as we compared notes, his memory of one particular
Speaker 1: towers or parks appeared my notes from the last month
Speaker 1: at the King clear his recollections did not match the
Speaker 1: mural as it appeared yesterday or to day. He was
Speaker 1: certain the botanical gardens had always been rendered on the
Speaker 1: mural's east quarter, yet as of this morning they sprawled
Speaker 1: lostously along the northern river bank. He frowned, tapping his
Speaker 1: spoon on the saucer. You know, I'd swear to these
Speaker 1: details for my own street, but now you mention it.
Speaker 1: I did present a lecture at once day landing in
Speaker 1: front of the mural and used the foundry as a
Speaker 1: reference that's been replaced for years. If it's back in
Speaker 1: a Pinton now, maybe the restoration brought it out again.
Speaker 1: He seemed uneasy, but not willing to contradict his own
Speaker 1: memory with force. I realized then that my pursuit of
Speaker 1: a single reliable account among students' staff, even officials, was
Speaker 1: a miroge. Not only were memories about the city's geography
Speaker 1: and landmarks inconsistent among people, A's threpencies riddled the official
Speaker 1: records and artifacts themselves. The archives sometimes matched my own
Speaker 1: memories of the mural from last week, then reverted the
Speaker 1: next month. Even city council pamphlets. I discovered a shuffled
Speaker 1: between different murals, sometimes displaying the new footbridge, sometimes leaving
Speaker 1: it conspicuously absent. The mural, as I now viewed, it
Speaker 1: was not only collective but living, reflecting, not what any
Speaker 1: one of us remember it precisely, but a kind of
Speaker 1: s o waverant of memory, longing, perhaps even argument. It
Speaker 1: seemed obscene to think of it as merely painted pigment. Rather,
Speaker 1: it was the gathering point for every local conviction and
Speaker 1: whish pulsing quietly behind our museum's walls. The mural was
Speaker 1: not only a field of memory, but sight of gentle,
Speaker 1: constant negotiation. I stared up at its painted city, feeling
Speaker 1: no fear, only a kind of humility, a fascination at
Speaker 1: how the bright confetti from last week's parade, the curve
Speaker 1: of a sidewook, the glowing blue tram could all co
Speaker 1: exist within a living ledgis spawn and visibly by all
Speaker 1: of us, Which, then, I wondered was most real the mural,
Speaker 1: my memory or neither. It was time to broaden my
Speaker 1: investigation beyond the museum's gallery, to test if the mural
Speaker 1: shifting surface was merely an echo of our cities, evolving
Speaker 1: contradictory recollections of the vanguard of something even stranger. A
Speaker 1: dull gull from the late sun slanted through the museum's
Speaker 1: old west windows, scattering fractured squares across the gallery floor
Speaker 1: and painting the mural's imagined sky line in a glow
Speaker 1: nearly as vivid as the painted one. I stood note
Speaker 1: under my armond pencil pressed idly between my knuckles, as
Speaker 1: families trickled out into the cooling eving and the Husher
Speaker 1: claimed the galleries. The mural in front of me was
Speaker 1: both utterly itself, familiar city blocks, the swelling bend of
Speaker 1: the river, the slightly too tall spir and yet now
Speaker 1: and anibly multitudinous. I tried to see it as one image,
Speaker 1: but flashes of conflicting paths and impossible overlays flickered at
Speaker 1: the edge of familiarity. I understood now, at least enough
Speaker 1: to admit that the painting was shaped by more than
Speaker 1: just a brush. Yet even as the sun in the
Speaker 1: mural seemterchase the once sinking behind the real city's rooftops,
Speaker 1: I was not unsettled by the sense of slappage. Instead,
Speaker 1: curiosity pulled me outward and forward. If the mural was
Speaker 1: alive with the city's memory, memory itself was evidently not
Speaker 1: a private ledger, but a corusan that chorus sang everywhere.
Speaker 1: I finished Mushift a few minutes late, trading half joking
Speaker 1: bobs with mister Puck about the new statue out by
Speaker 1: the tram sign. It's always been there, Edith, maybe you're
Speaker 1: just not observant enough, and carried my nopocom mind already
Speaker 1: leapy ahead. The question pressed was this phenomenon unique. Did
Speaker 1: the rest of the city reflect the same shifting tides
Speaker 1: under a steadier surface, or was the meseium alone with
Speaker 1: the trestless living painting. The next morning, I rose early
Speaker 1: and vigorated by familiar sense of Russian toward a puzzle.
Speaker 1: I packed my old map case and two city histories
Speaker 1: and caught the number five bus to the public library
Speaker 1: at Main and Chapel of Grand Limestone relic were notched,
Speaker 1: wooden tables wore the finger prints of a thousand research projects.
Speaker 1: My first aim was simple, see what recollections lean lived
Speaker 1: in the wider world. People bring their families to the library.
Speaker 1: They debate, recal, correct one another's childhoods allowed while choosing
Speaker 1: sorry books, or waiting on the elevator. I set up
Speaker 1: camp on the third floor, near municipal records and how
Speaker 1: the city was narrated around me. Soon enough I overheard
Speaker 1: two gray haired sisters reviewing the map display matha. Don't
Speaker 1: you remember the playground being by the church? It was,
Speaker 1: I'm sure, right across from the bakery. But a young
Speaker 1: mother waiting nearby corrected them gently. I grew up two
Speaker 1: blocks from here, and the playground was never on the side,
Speaker 1: it's always faced the river. Their discussion rolled on, affectionate, insistent,
Speaker 1: resolute that each memory was truth. Later in the local
Speaker 1: history Alcove, I found myself beside a group of high
Speaker 1: school students working on a heritage project. The map's fresh
Speaker 1: print house some from city Archhouse to Ferdunkey features. A
Speaker 1: camp is marked where I knew, an open field are
Speaker 1: winding sat of OLA's where the streets in my memory.
Speaker 1: Straight and decisively, I asked as politely as I could
Speaker 1: about their map's discrepancies. The student shrugged with a generational ease.
Speaker 1: Maps online are a mess, one laughed, But Mike Grand says,
Speaker 1: there used to be a market where that park is,
Speaker 1: so may be it switched. The theme repeated itself wherever
Speaker 1: I looked. I browsed the library's stacks for books about
Speaker 1: the city's changing neighborhoods. Even the published histories, carefully footnoted,
Speaker 1: full of footographs and oral records, sometimes disagreed about street namees,
Speaker 1: skull openings. With the sight of certain parades, I checked
Speaker 1: illustration plates, finding that the same park entrance sometimes fasties
Speaker 1: sometimes south. Even in document published just a decade apart,
Speaker 1: each author, it seemed had committed to print the version
Speaker 1: of history most deeply embedded in a particular weave of memories.
Speaker 1: Outside Again, no but thickening was scribbled observations. I strolled
Speaker 1: to the city's main square, where the council had installed
Speaker 1: a row of commemorative plaques, say Walk of Memories stamped
Speaker 1: into the pavement. I followed the trail from first to last,
Speaker 1: noticing at once that the names and dates on the
Speaker 1: plaques did not form a tidy time line. One board
Speaker 1: the inscription Friedman's Park nineteen thirty one, though I recalled
Speaker 1: it as a liberty green from my own school days,
Speaker 1: and the date didn't match any parks founding in the
Speaker 1: rerecords i'd taught from. I was pondering this, absolutely thumbing
Speaker 1: the rough metal, when an older couple with matching sun
Speaker 1: hats stepped up. The man pointed, murmuring, remember May the
Speaker 1: old bands and over there we watched your cousin's wedding
Speaker 1: there before they moved the gazebop near the art center.
Speaker 1: May's mild eyes distant, replying here mixing things up, Darling,
Speaker 1: The wedding was at the original gardens, before this was
Speaker 1: even a park. Intrigued, I wandered up toward the Arts
Speaker 1: center on the hill and newer complex coated by public sculptures.
Speaker 1: At the edge of the garden sat an installation a
Speaker 1: steel arch we hung with colored glass, its plaque reading
Speaker 1: in honor of the Eastboro Jeebileie Market eighteen nineteen nine,
Speaker 1: nineteen eighty four. But my own lesson plans saved from
Speaker 1: the year the market closed, referenced the South Quarter Market e. S. D.
Speaker 1: Nineteen twenty three. I jotted both on a spare receipt
Speaker 1: and wondered which, if any, was true in any durable sense.
Speaker 1: It seemed, as the day wore on that the city
Speaker 1: was a tangle of gently conflicting histories, even inscribed in
Speaker 1: metal and stone. I tried to recall, Was it always
Speaker 1: like this? A stew of in consistent accounts? Alo was
Speaker 1: my new awareness, simply making me notice every fissure, every
Speaker 1: contradiction I had previously glossed over. By midafternoon, my rut
Speaker 1: led me past a chill drine scapark worry on parents
Speaker 1: gathered chatting across the bright batter fencing. I approached them
Speaker 1: with the simple question I'd rehearsed all morning. Have you
Speaker 1: always remembered the park looking like this as before. The
Speaker 1: response is diverged gently. There used to be more trees,
Speaker 1: said one father. Surely not, this was all concrete, countered
Speaker 1: another scape. Pox knew anyway, eight ten years maybe the
Speaker 1: no longer. My older brother learned tricks here when I
Speaker 1: was in preschool. After a chorus of laughs, the group
Speaker 1: moved on. I lingered, reflecting on the accumulation. The mural
Speaker 1: shifting city escape was not an outlier, nor a solitary
Speaker 1: enchantment of paint, but reflected abroda living inconsistency, humming For
Speaker 1: every recounting, every plaque, every timeline, the city itself through
Speaker 1: its signs, echoes, even the memories shared in real time,
Speaker 1: was both fixed and perpetually reforming. With the rest of
Speaker 1: the afternoon light, I had eeter to the river side,
Speaker 1: where a row of Papa Pats stalls had sprung up
Speaker 1: for the weekend. I followed the line, admiring water colors
Speaker 1: and oils depicting the city from every ankle. I paused
Speaker 1: at a young artist's stand, struck by the bold dream
Speaker 1: accuse of his suit escapes in one canvas. The high
Speaker 1: rise tech campus occupied land. I knew as community gardens.
Speaker 1: In another, the casino was absent, as if it had
Speaker 1: never troubled the sky line. The artist caught my gaze
Speaker 1: and grinned, I paint what feels truest. You know, the
Speaker 1: city changes every year. My dad shows me old street
Speaker 1: photos sometimes, and it feels like half of its imaginary anyway.
Speaker 1: Further alarm, an old woman in hoign Rens Spectacles painted
Speaker 1: the old videoct as a children's garden, overflowing with cherry trees.
Speaker 1: She hummed softly, stopping to chat as I admired her scene.
Speaker 1: Cherry trees, I asked, were they truly so many? She
Speaker 1: shook her head, amused, I remember them growing wild. My
Speaker 1: sister thinks there were only two. We argue about it
Speaker 1: still over every Sunday lunch. As the evening drew on
Speaker 1: across to the city's north side, aiming for a park
Speaker 1: where renovations had lately caused fierce public debate. The new
Speaker 1: sculpture in the pond, an abstract coil much discust, was
Speaker 1: only half finished. Its tasted metal glint and blue in
Speaker 1: the dusk. Yet two children examining the installation with their
Speaker 1: grandmother insisted it had been theer forever, that their classes
Speaker 1: came every spring to draw it, their grandmother smiled, and
Speaker 1: all saying nothing to correct them. I sat at the
Speaker 1: edge of the grass and watched dusk flow in purple
Speaker 1: shadows across the city. My mind drifted, rising to new questions.
Speaker 1: If artifacts, documents, paintings, memories, even stone markers were not
Speaker 1: as fixed as I'd imagined, How did a city ever
Speaker 1: settle its own story, fit any one version, one mural,
Speaker 1: one map claimed to be true for everyone at any moment.
Speaker 1: I returned, at last to the central question that originally
Speaker 1: haunted me. Was the mural unreliable? Or was it built
Speaker 1: as a kind of open diary, integrating each citizen's wishes,
Speaker 1: corrections and longing. Back at the museum the next afternoon,
Speaker 1: I poured myself into the flow of regular, routine sign ins,
Speaker 1: folding leaflets and packings, s Ellison's thermos and biscuits. Yet
Speaker 1: I found myself watching the murals sidle on at to now,
Speaker 1: not only to its pinted features, but to how visitors responded.
Speaker 1: Is they took it in? Did they lean in searching
Speaker 1: for affirmation or recoil sensing absence? That day, the mural's
Speaker 1: river scenes swelled and gold flecked, as though someone had
Speaker 1: asked for the sunlight of a remembered perfect autumn. The
Speaker 1: bluetan gleaned at the mippont half vanished in dapple shadow
Speaker 1: above the buildings. A painted banner in red Mock's solidarity date,
Speaker 1: a detail from a historic strike, but too crisply contemporary
Speaker 1: in its rendering, as if the event were as close
Speaker 1: as next week. I let go of taking new sketches. Instead,
Speaker 1: I began to note the comments, the mutterings, the contradictory
Speaker 1: certainties that drifted in from staff and public alike. A
Speaker 1: small girl climbing onto a bench told her mother Grant
Speaker 1: had says that boat by the park is named after him.
Speaker 1: See his names painted there. I followed her fingers. Sure enough,
Speaker 1: a squaw fishing boat bore painted Eyle nineteen seventy six,
Speaker 1: A detail so minor and yet I realized, for that family,
Speaker 1: perhaps as unchanging as the sun. In my growing notebook,
Speaker 1: I began to map not the city, but memories perimeter.
Speaker 1: I noted when visitors corrected each other, when staff gave
Speaker 1: competing stories and tours, when our own pamphots crept toward
Speaker 1: the language of According to some, it began to feel
Speaker 1: pointless to try to pin the mural of the city
Speaker 1: to single of the rotative sequence of change. I'd found
Speaker 1: instead a dense pattern of multiplicity and mingling. That week,
Speaker 1: the museum hosted a guest lecture panel with a visiting
Speaker 1: Ervan sociologist, Simon Eager for attention from downtown arrange seats
Speaker 1: in the gallery, I took myself in the back as
Speaker 1: the audience drifted end The chair is ringed by a
Speaker 1: cousin an dissipation. The lecturer, a Professor Menard, began, we
Speaker 1: draw city boundaries on maps and four plans, but none
Speaker 1: of us, none live in a single shared city. We
Speaker 1: live in the place's memory makes for us a corner
Speaker 1: store that closed, the skill that's now block of flats,
Speaker 1: the long vanished for bridget father describes with longing cities
Speaker 1: aunt really places, so much as ongoing narratives folded and
Speaker 1: contradictory replayed every time we tell a story or correct
Speaker 1: an anecdote. She continued, inviting responses from the crowd. A
Speaker 1: retired councilman raised a trembling hand, hard enough to build
Speaker 1: practical things when no one can recall what came before. Memory.
Speaker 1: Isn't democracy, it mayhem laughter just about the room easier
Speaker 1: knowing a young student may be Lizzie's friend piped up?
Speaker 1: Isn't that why we have museums? Though, to decide on
Speaker 1: an official story, Professor Menard only smiled. A museum is
Speaker 1: a theater for memory, not of alt. The moment you
Speaker 1: try to fix the story, someone finds the draft that
Speaker 1: tells it another way. Afterward, I slipped quietly to the
Speaker 1: front way my turn to speak. Professor Menor considered me
Speaker 1: with the warm, patient curiosity as I described the mural
Speaker 1: as shifting features and the conversations it provoked. Instead of
Speaker 1: offering explanation or skepticism, she said it remarkable. Actually, most
Speaker 1: public art meant to settle arguments, to make kisory scene fixed.
Speaker 1: Your mural maybe is honest enough to admit that history
Speaker 1: and memory are always in flux. The city that should
Speaker 1: have been co exists with the city that was, and
Speaker 1: even the city that's wished for to day. That phrase
Speaker 1: ricoschet through meet the city that should have been. I
Speaker 1: remembered the old woman at the art fair, the children
Speaker 1: in the park, the retired councilmen, the countless small, unloving
Speaker 1: disputes about what belonged were in men. The mural was
Speaker 1: not a mistake, nor of failing. It was a kind
Speaker 1: of open wound, or perhaps an open hand, inviting anyone's
Speaker 1: story to shape it. In the days that followed, I
Speaker 1: retraced my steps, not to catch the mural out in
Speaker 1: another change, but to listen more closely. I sought out
Speaker 1: people who had little use for history, traders at the market,
Speaker 1: the owner of the corner barber shop, a street performer
Speaker 1: who played outside the station, and let them crate their
Speaker 1: own city to me. Across all these perspectives, commonalities surfaced
Speaker 1: places where her poor regrettic, particularly strong blocks where people
Speaker 1: felt absent, bedevoled by forgotten shops or lost playgrounds, And
Speaker 1: the mural, in its ever shifting aspect, seemed to reflect
Speaker 1: those places most keenly. One evening, as since it pulled
Speaker 1: gold along the gallery floor, I asked a solitary visitor,
Speaker 1: an elderly man who introduced himself as Albert, what he
Speaker 1: thought of the mural's changes. He hesitated, then said, sometimes
Speaker 1: and night I tell myself that painting is the city
Speaker 1: that should have been. All the things I regret losing
Speaker 1: the ones I may be just dreamed up. It's not
Speaker 1: a record so much as a wish made visible his
Speaker 1: honest to move me. It struck a new part of
Speaker 1: my understanding, open, not merely that the mural absorb collective memory,
Speaker 1: but that it harmonized longing loss and even imagin futures.
Speaker 1: I felt a strange sense of peace wash over me.
Speaker 1: The next morning, as I unlocked the museum, the key
Speaker 1: grinding in its old brass lock. I had stopped fearing
Speaker 1: what I could not reconcile. Instead, I saw every inconsistency
Speaker 1: as a new inflection, the mural more vivid for being unresolved.
Speaker 1: Yet the question remained lodged near the core of my chest.
Speaker 1: If the mural, and perhaps the city itself, was a
Speaker 1: mirror for feeling in memory rather than fact, what was
Speaker 1: the purpose? What did it mean emotionally socially to live
Speaker 1: within a place whose own sense of self ebb and
Speaker 1: flowed with every retelling. That afternoon, with these questions humming
Speaker 1: in my bones, I gathered my sketches, my notes, and
Speaker 1: my courage, and rapped gently at the director's office door.
Speaker 1: Missus Kinkaid, a woman of gentle composure and surprisingly dry
Speaker 1: Wit welcomed me in, motioning me to an over stuff
Speaker 1: chair beside her desk. I didn't bother with small talk.
Speaker 1: I need to ask about the mural. I know you
Speaker 1: know I've seen it. We've all argued about it. But
Speaker 1: the changes I think I hesitated. I think it reflects
Speaker 1: not just history, but our feelings, everyone's wishes, corrections, comfort,
Speaker 1: sometimes even was missing? Am I wrong? To my surprise,
Speaker 1: misses Kinkid let out a sound bordering on laughter. She
Speaker 1: pulled open a desk drawer, produced a battered box of
Speaker 1: index cards, and slid it toward me. You sure you
Speaker 1: want the long answer? When I nodded, she began, You're
Speaker 1: not the first to notice, maybe not even the hundred
Speaker 1: for this mural has been fussed over since it was
Speaker 1: near The painter al Al Franks was eccentric but generous.
Speaker 1: Said he wanted a city always honest about itself. He'd
Speaker 1: listen all day at cafes, in markets, even at council meetings.
Speaker 1: He sketched from memory after every conversation. A local reporter
Speaker 1: once tried to interview him about the mural found him
Speaker 1: down by the river repainting half a bridge. After talking
Speaker 1: to an old ferry operator. She sordered through the cars,
Speaker 1: producing several with frank sleeping handwriting Cochinish sketches brief notes.
Speaker 1: These were gifted to the museum after Frank's died. Only
Speaker 1: a few of us keep them now. Most are about
Speaker 1: little things, moving a chimney, changing a puck's name. But
Speaker 1: this one, she slipped me a current marked and smudged
Speaker 1: urgent ridwall whisby true to the city's heart. If the
Speaker 1: people change, let the city change with them. I sat
Speaker 1: reading and reading those words. Missus Kinkid went on, there
Speaker 1: is a story never published. You understand that during the
Speaker 1: General Strike of nineteen thirty seven, the Mural's city Square
Speaker 1: painted itself with flags and banners that match the real
Speaker 1: demonstration outside. Some say Frank's touched it up every night.
Speaker 1: Others say it just happened the same way city mythsdu
Speaker 1: I took in the stacks of sketchbooks shelves above her desk,
Speaker 1: So the mural it listens, She smiled, not with certainty,
Speaker 1: but with warmth. I like to say the mural listens
Speaker 1: more than it speaks. During times of celebration, festivals, parade,
Speaker 1: small details blown across it when something's lost, a playground,
Speaker 1: an old ca fay. Sometimes it fades away from the
Speaker 1: painting lawn before the city notices. But every one he
Speaker 1: visit sees the city or their longing reflected, that's the
Speaker 1: only rule we've ever kept. She handed me a battered planner.
Speaker 1: The museum's original log from the Murals veiling, full of
Speaker 1: Frank's stream of consciousness notes. One entry caught my eye.
Speaker 1: If a single map tells the whole story through it,
Speaker 1: at let the painting be a conversation. I tried to
Speaker 1: keep the secret for years, Miss sess Kinkid said, out
Speaker 1: of duty, I suppose. But secrets like this aren't hidden
Speaker 1: for protection. They're hidden because, well, the meaning grows the
Speaker 1: more it shared. Your teacher, Edith, ye, share memory every
Speaker 1: time you tell a story, don't you. For a long moment,
Speaker 1: I sat breathing in the dust and polish and old ink.
Speaker 1: I dit of my students of Lizzie with her ever
Speaker 1: shifting sketches, Simon, who had seen three different city plants
Speaker 1: in her first month as a curator. I remembered lucasaid
Speaker 1: the cafe, chasing and then retreating from certainty. Missus Ellison's
Speaker 1: confident nostalgia, Lizzie's right feeling for the bakery. The mural's
Speaker 1: contradiction was not a floy. It was the point. It held,
Speaker 1: a living, participatory record of what the city was, should
Speaker 1: have been, might yet be a manifestation of memory, impression,
Speaker 1: and collective wish. The artist notes the director's admission, my
Speaker 1: own web sketches and observations. They didn't close the mystery
Speaker 1: so much as reveal its enormous, ordinary generosity. The mural
Speaker 1: had become what we needed, painting and repainting itself as
Speaker 1: a true city mast. I left the director's office lighter,
Speaker 1: my mind buoid by understanding and a startling sense of satisfaction.
Speaker 1: My note but closed gently in my lap. In a
Speaker 1: week that followed, I found myself reflecting, not in the
Speaker 1: fatigue sense of trying to solve a stubborn riddle, but
Speaker 1: in the newly urgent way one does after realizing something
Speaker 1: quietly immense. I thought of all the lessons I taught,
Speaker 1: all the walking towers led past the mural, all my
Speaker 1: fragmentary explanations, each inevitably partial. How much I wondered, had
Speaker 1: my telling the emphasis of a bridge here, a bakery
Speaker 1: there twined itself into the painting. Did Miss ass Ellison's
Speaker 1: repeated nostal to keep the bickery open and paint longer
Speaker 1: than most would recall? Did mister Park's complain ship which
Speaker 1: corners appeared, run down? Which polished? I realized, teaching, guiding,
Speaker 1: even just remembering were acts of quite civic creation. Whether
Speaker 1: an ink, conversation or pigment, memory was nothing fixed to current.
Speaker 1: We poured ourselves into, not a harbor to come home to,
Speaker 1: I asked myself quietly, who among us did not, in
Speaker 1: some tiny act of storytelling, helped shape the way the
Speaker 1: city looked, not in stone and steel, but in its
Speaker 1: living surface of memory. Every argument at a plaque, every
Speaker 1: child's claim about a playground, every knee brochure with its
Speaker 1: careful photo crop. They were aucts of image making, non
Speaker 1: truer than others, none untrue. It brought me an aught,
Speaker 1: quiet joy. If the museum's mural was forever unfinished, a
Speaker 1: surface for long error, nostalgia, and hope, then soul was
Speaker 1: the city. Rather than cataloging change is error. I vowed
Speaker 1: to keep collecting stories, rather than seeking the real city
Speaker 1: as a settled fact. I'd welcome all its possible versions
Speaker 1: as partial, precious, fleetingly true. The following Tuesday, as the
Speaker 1: last Vizital left in the marble floorce cooled beneath the
Speaker 1: soft gallery lights, I stood one more time before the mural.
Speaker 1: I set down my notebook. I watched the city across
Speaker 1: the river cast its fresh painted shadows. My shift over
Speaker 1: a shugged on my cot and stepped out into the
Speaker 1: Nadim Street. I stood a long moment and let my
Speaker 1: gaze drift up to the city's real skyline. The evening's
Speaker 1: ordinary city was spattered with scaffolding, shrouded in memory, and
Speaker 1: alive in a hundred small private at its cranes, wather domes,
Speaker 1: Streetland's flickering gold, and the old spys sighing upward through
Speaker 1: the desk. Looking out, I realized that no one, not
Speaker 1: even I, would ever see exactly the mule of the
Speaker 1: city that any other saw. Yet each version, every story,
Speaker 1: ate to be loved, remembered, were told on, every one
Speaker 1: would in time become part of the pattern, maybe amused
Speaker 1: as a dog barked in the alley and the trans
Speaker 1: bell rang. It was not only that we remember the city,
Speaker 1: shaping it a little more with every argument, sketch and affection,
Speaker 1: but that the city itself, not just the painting, remembered
Speaker 1: us back, holding each version loosely in its many layered heart,
Speaker 1: waiting on next story. And that is the end. Thank
Speaker 1: you for listening, and I will see you in the
Speaker 1: next one.