Monday

Monday was an installation written in chalk on the sidewalk of the 1800 block of Market Street, one piece per week, for five months, from September of 1996 to February of 1997.

It was a serial story, with each chapter chronicling a different part of a cross-country trip that took place in June of 1996.

Each piece was in a subsequent square of the sidewalk, so the piece itself “traveled” as the story walked down the street.

SELECTED EXCERPTS:

II – I had expected nothing, and everything was opening in front of me like a fan.  

III – It’s dangerous when life sends you a gift. Not because it’s cruel and will pull it out from under you, but because good things threaten with expectations and pride.  

IV – We all carry our own personal hell with us. Part of being in it is forgetting you can get out; part of being out is not noticing when you’re falling in.  

VI – You know how sometimes in the middle of all the craziness of this world, not even knowing why we’re alive, you suddenly get this feeling bigger than feeling – it’s a knowing – that everything is okay? Walking through the empty streets of that city in the middle of our country, in the middle of the night, it seemed as though the world had stepped back to let us take the stage.  

VIII – Nights are for dreams, and mornings are for truths. What would this morning tell me? 

XI – Face that anything is possible. And face the responsibility of that.  

XII – Who can say what will happen, but I go carrying something new that I have learned, earned in these long months. The people you love are the means, not the end. In a way, they are just an excuse to do what you love, be as much as you can, conquer your fear. They don’t make you greater, they make you want to be.