Where is The Point?

I was walking through Trafalgar Square, listening to a little Billy Shears. It was a mild day. The sun blasted me with radiation and I felt the tinge on my skin. After a long winter, it was nice to feel something on my face other than a hollowing chill. Stunted cars passed along the periphery and occasionally squawked back and forth to each other in their abrupt shrieks as they drifted on. I walked in the opposite direction, silent, high. I was thinking about what I usually do: the past.

Out ahead, I noticed some chalk graffiti. The crude calligraphy acted like a type of timestamp. Not in world-time, but human. The curves and dashes of the individual letters were larger than necessary and left too much space between. The fast and loose execution implied hesitation, lack of assurance and practice. I thought of a child. A little boy with his pink/red chalk crouched over and writing these words and symbols. Just two words over and over again: “The Point” and above it was an arrow pointing in the direction I walked, north.

What was the child trying to tell me? I wondered. The Point was just ahead. As I continued on and the cars passed I came upon another message. It was The Point again, but it was upside-down and the arrow suggested the other direction. Had I passed it? Had I, indeed, missed The Point?

I continued on and was soon greeted by another sign. This time I was informed The Point was actually across the street, or perhaps was the street itself. Are you trying to kill me? I asked the imaginary kid in my head. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders and I kept going on my way.

Then the messages grew more cryptic, frantic, irrational. Arrows large and small, pointing in all different directions, The Point appeared everywhere, ending with a large bullseye with “THE POINT” at the center. Was this The True Point?

I was reminded of the games I used to play as a child. We used to gain such pleasure out of our absurdist forms of play. Children are quite good at it. Even if they cannot provide an entire conceptual apparatus, their little brains do make note of the irrationalisms around them and the frantic effect this perceived nature carries out. It is quite silly, isn’t it?

After a little while longer the graffiti failed to reappear and I was alone again with my thoughts. I realized I hadn’t seen any of these drawings when I walked south only a few minutes earlier. Or at least I didn’t remember them. How could I have missed it? What would have been my interpretation of The Point had I come across the bullseye first? What if I had witnessed the boy? Was it even a boy? Was it a child? What made me think of it as such? Who will know any of this once these rain clouds overhead unleash their payload and wash away any record of the intellectual footprint?

I suppose my word is the best we’ll have to go with then. But it was there. Just over there. The Point.