This is what I saw when we biked to J.J. Hill yesterday. I had parked and was talking to other parents and to the art-makers, wandering among mosaics and children's paintings when Mr. Phil said hello. Philando Castile, to the life. I felt like bawling. And celebrating. Sad and joyful at the same time. And I also felt a sense of awe--that misused word that means the gasp of astonished, skin-crawling emotion that can be either terror and bliss, that moment when everything stops and everything in it is connected, in one great thing. When someone from our school posted a day of healing through art on our website, I pooh-poohed the idea. We need to organize, I thought. We need to make real change. We need to contact our legislature. And the national legislature. We need to heal our city, our children. We need to support Phil's mother, his family, his girlfriend, her daughter. We don't have time to sit around making art.
How wrong I was. Art transforms. Art translates. Art can almost transubstantiate--for a moment, Phil was here. With us. His own self.
As we are all here, in this mural, currently hanging from our school's wall.
Thank you, then, GoodSpace Murals, to Mosaic on a Stick, and to the organizers of National Day of Action Through Art.
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