Marilyn Monroe RV

I rode my bicycle past a battered RV with a makeshift plywood roof and doors. Most of the windows, including the windshield, were covered by pieces of plywood. How can you drive an RV with a plywood windshield? Someone did because the rig wasn't where it was a week ago.

One side of the RV was lettered with yellow spray paint. The lettering read: “I don't sell drugs. I use.”

I thought about that declaration. I liked the crisp sentences. I liked that the writer didn't use a comma or semi colon, just a good old full stop in between. Periods eliminate nuance. There was no need for nuance in that spray paint declaration. There was no doubt.

What was in doubt? In the only window not boarded up, the one over the cab, was a color photograph of Marilyn Monroe taped to the glass from the inside. Only people looking at the RV from the outside would ever see it.

Why would someone would decorate a RV like that? Why turn it to the outside? That meant the occupant wanted people passing by to see it. Is this a kind of artistic display. You see art displayed all the time in the encampments, some of it quite extraordinary.

It would seem there is something deep to explore in the Marilyn Monroe display. And why specifically Marilyn? It seemed so old fashioned for these troubled times.