Murals belong everywhere

Hungry for pizza and inspiration
London, ON
December 2019
This photo originally shared on Instagram

Unassuming pizza shops on unassuming downtown streets shouldn’t normally stop us in our tracks, especially when it’s cold, gray, and raining, and a mountain of writing awaits at the office.

But this one is different.

Someone painted a mural on its time-worn stucco-covered corner, a tiny act of defiance against the numbing sameness that seems to define this time-challenged neighborhood. So I pause my walk to the office and look around the rain-speckled block.

I see empty trees, a rust-flecked apartment building, a soaked sleeping bag abandoned in the gutter, and a blocked sewer grate at the centre of a growing not-so-mini lake of muddy water, an indescribable mess of floating garbage edging out haphazardly into the street.

There is no beauty here. At least there isn’t supposed to be any. And yet, there’s this wall. Two walls, really, as the mural that greets customers on the street also extends back into the otherwise forgettable parking lot.

None of this changes the sad reality of a sad stretch of town. But it doesn’t have to. And that’s not the point, anyway.

What really matters is that we look for these slivers of light at all, that there are those among us who would share the light with others, that we haven’t given up all hope of something better, even in a place that seems to offer none of it.

There’s always hope, especially when - and where - we least expect it. And I bet the pizza’s pretty good, too.

#ldnont #london #ontario #canada #building #mural #art #color #downtown #urban #street #photography #city #waterloo #walkabout #weather #wx #pizza #restaurant #google #pixel2 #teampixel #photooftheday #instagood #nofilter #nofilterneeded #lifeinthemargins #family #everything