Two Hours After Curfew on May 31, 2020, Philadelphia, Six Days after the Murder of George Floyd, and: Beauty will be convulsive

Abstract

Two Hours After Curfew on May 31, 2020, Philadelphia, Six Days after the Murder of George Floyd, and: Beauty will be convulsive Julia Alekseyeva (bio) Two Hours after Curfew on May 31, 2020, Philadelphia, Six Days after the Murder of George Floyd In the corner of my window I see red flamesappear, and disappear.I remember the concrete yesterdayas if it were tipped over ninety degrees,the faint smell of smoke,a can of white spray paint,hovering over the ground at preciselythe right moment to make the words appearas if they were there already, had always been there.It was so beautiful. The girl in black overalls and a topknotwrote Philly cops can get it.All cops are bastards, I thought.In my mind's eye it plays in slow motion:a distinctly cinematic lens flare,a wide-angle lens. The Valencia filter.It seemed within minutes the city was covered.The city. I was born in a great city. A lush, historic metropolisof three million, too big to fail, they said.I was born like I am now, standing unknownbelow a cloud of mysterious smoke.I heard the fall of my country on the radio,a small, poor thing, atop a tablecloth. [End Page 61] Gingham, seafoam green.A low angle. Pan up. My mother.When they announce the fall of America,will we hear it on the radio?Will the apps shut down?Will they play Swan Lake? In my city, like in others,there are statues of evil men.There are violent façades in a strange,particularly hateful mix ofrococo and neoclassical.Brick lanes and floral,overflowing window boxes.The city bursts at the seamslike an engorged whale; zinnias,begonias, heather cascadingon all sides like a decadentwastebasket.A ticking bomb, exploding. Catharsis.It becamean overturned car; a busin flames; the smoky air.Violence has always lived here.Words, words, words of all shapesweave around the glass panes ofanother useless retail storelike a forest vine wraps around anabandoned vehicle.I think, despite myself,of the meme:Nature is healing.We are the virus.It is like a breath,like an exhale,like relief. [End Page 62] I wish the words to alwaysstay, for the smoke and flamesto change us until we are better,for revolution to coax forthlike a bright magic toward history. Beauty will be convulsive I used to brush my hand againstthe stucco of your buildinglike women in Antonioni films.On Sundays the line dividing fleshfrom architecture disappears.I walk into a library and am drawn suddenlyto a floor I've never visited.Brooklyn has its own psychogeography. Golden hieroglyphs jeer on the doors of Eastern Parkwayand I walk six kilometers to hear an anxious manread poems about clouds and sled dogs—two things we both love.At times New York has an oddability to translate a sigh into limestone,its own secret language.The walls were flanked by two lionswith the marble noses of aristocrats. In 1968 the walls of Tokyowere covered in Malraux andMayakovsky, a collage of quotationsin which you are just a sprinkling of anidea of an idea within a woman's mind.Some years later my favorite filmmakerwould slash a Shinjuku underpass with white [End Page 63] chalk and emerge into the belly of a city:The city is an open book—write on its infinite margins! On a map of this city I draw red starsin corners where I heard your voice sayCome back, we miss youquietly in my thoughtsand repeated it gently to myself,a heavy mantra.At night I search the walls for an alleywayto be alone with my thoughts and find none. All along Bedford the walls are a museum.An artist in residency holds his spray can aloftwith the nimble lightness of a Renoir danceror a Vermeer—boy with black hoodie,girl with wheatpaste, still life with brick.I have an urge to melt into the walls and scramblethem entirely, emerge yellingart must...