An angel’s halo, a devil’s arrowhead tail: we know these playful opposites, Francisco’s trademark paradox. Francisco is something of both: an angelic devil—human, elf, and something in between. He is something else, as well: it is impossible to define. He writes upon the city: on the face of the city, behind its glimmering mask. No one sees what he writes. It hides in plain sight. We don’t know the full story. Some of us say that we spoke to Francisco, and that we heard him say: “I’m going on sabbatical. I’m going to write a book.” Others among us remember that night clearly: we remember the spiced rum, the passionate sweat of summer, and Francisco on the beach, walking barefoot through sand-crashing waves. “I’m going away for a while,” we remember him saying. “I’m going to talk to Borghes.” He has been gone for more than a year now. None of us has seen him. None of us has heard from him. On occasion, we may find new scrawls on the city’s hidden face—the part behind its mask. And on those occasions, we see his angel’s halo and devil’s arrowhead-tail. We recognize his tags, his existential questions. We recognize Francisco Liñan, and know—deep down inside—that many of us will never see him again, even as (like his graffiti) he lives among us in plain sight. * * * I took this photograph last Saturday, as I wandered (as usual) with Corey. He had an errand to run, and so I went with him: for the company, for the chance to take new photographs of the city, for the chance to simply get out and see something. I saw lots of graffiti on that day: aspects of Chicago beginning to reassert itself after long, sterilized dormancy. I can't say that I like all graffiti, or see value in all of it...but there's a certain, compelling quality to the manner in which it records the more subjective elements of humanity, and that's the draw...for me at least. * * * In terms of the fictional text up above, I have no idea who this Francisco Liñan guy is, but I’m sure he’ll pop up again…perhaps in the writer’s gallery, as this fragment of his tale seems to bear a lot in common with the kind of subject matter routinely covered by Jorge-Luis Borghes…heck, Francisco even mentioned talking to Borghes. Like Franz Kafka, Jorge-Luis Borghes is one of my touchstone writers: like Kafka, he wrote fairly complex tales often blurring reality with something else: we’d call it “magical realism” today, but in the case of what Borghes wrote, the “magical” elements of his sometimes pedantic realism had less to do with the “lighter” or “happier” forms of magic, and a lot more to do with perception, intellect, and a particular sort of literary curiosity. What’s not to like about that? His works also seem to embody what Federico Garcia Lorca talked about in his 1933 lecture: Play and Theory of the Duende. Duende happens to be the hardest word to translate from Spanish to English, and it seems to embody zillions of different elements. Literally it’s a reference to a woodland creature, an “elf.” And yet, it embodies something else as well. Garcia Lorca described the duende as a kind of tension, a struggle, a quality of blood passion, though intellect plays some part in understanding it. I thought of that as I thought of graffiti, and a graffiti artist in a fictional realm, who’d decided one night, to write a book and to have a long, heartfelt conversation with Jorge Luis Borghes. I have no idea where any of this is going, but I’m sure that the picture included with this text is the very start of it. There will, of course, be more to come…I’m sure of that. As always, thank you for viewing, reading, and commenting, and I hope you’re all having a great, creative, and overall fun week.