Walking With Presence: What the Walls Remember

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There was more noise than usual downtown today. Or maybe I was just more sensitive to it.

The city has a way of crowding in sometimes—its sounds, its movements, its pressure. But I kept walking. I turned into the alleys like I always do, feeling for something quieter underneath it all.

The alley was empty again.

The police must’ve just been through. Lately, it doesn’t seem to matter what day I go or what time. Every time I walk through this part of the city, they’re either in the alley clearing people out, or they’ve just been there. The timing doesn’t feel random. It feels like a rhythm—a loop that’s grown predictable. Cleaned. Scrubbed.

But presence doesn’t always need people. Sometimes it just needs space. Stillness. I had the chance today to notice the walls more deeply.

In amongst the graffiti tags and scrawled swear words, I found tenderness. Messages to loved ones. Remembrance of fallen friends. Hopeful offerings. I even saw a résumé written across a BC Hydro power box—evidence of a life still trying to contribute, even at the edges.

And then, in bright blue ink:

“Life is beautiful.”

It was written neatly, almost carefully, on a cement retaining wall beneath smeared black paint and a discarded garbage bag. The contrast was hard to miss. Like someone had carved a moment of light into a place the world keeps trying to forget.

I also noticed what was missing.

A message I used to pass often had been painted over—

“Chris – come find me before end of days.”

Fresh paint covered it completely. I looked around and saw the same thing on other walls. Scrubbed. Replaced. Erased.

Like the messages were inconvenient truths the city wanted to forget.

But some things keep coming back. Just around the corner from one freshly painted wall, I saw another message:

“Mama I’m coming home.”

And then, just a few minutes later, I heard Ozzy Osborne’s voice pouring out of a speaker. A group of unhoused folks were sitting on the sidewalk, singing along in unison. “Mama, I’m coming home…” It made me smile. I said hello as I passed, and a woman caught my eye and kept singing as she smiled back at me.

It felt like something was echoing. A line repeated. A message reaching across time and space.

A lyric, yes. But also something more. Something collective. Archetypal.

Could it be that, after centuries of exile—from nature, from the body, from tenderness—we're beginning to remember? To slowly find our way back home, ache by ache and breath by breath? Could something within us be stirring?

I kept walking. I passed more alleys. Circled more blocks.

And I noticed the police doing the same thing—patrolling, watching, searching for activity to clear out again.

We may have been sharing the same space.

But our presence meant very different things.

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