Were you reading my mind, Alberta Street stenciler, or my graffiti post from last week?

I practically hopped in excitement: a surreally non sequitur graffito, stenciled in an original location, and — in an admirable display of restraint — just the one.

And did I mention: “squid on a crosswalk“?!?

Squidney (as I have dubbed him) is even biodegradable … or just degradable … whatever.

Point is, after a few months of bicycles and bio-diesel fueled Subarus grinding over him, there won’t be anything left but a faintly tentacled memory.

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A friend and I wandered through Golden Gate Park one idyllic afternoon. The tree-shaded, tunnel-like paths were the perfect complement to our mildly altered states (this was many years ago), and we ambled along in companionable silence.

The path opened abruptly into a small clearing, and there, perched on a stump and bathed in a shaft of golden sunlight, was Kermit the Frog.

It was him all right, in all his life-sized green-felted glory. Legs dangling, lumpy head cocked to one side, ping-pong eyeballs gazing calmly back at us … we stopped in our tracks, eyes wide, mouths agape, and stared silently at the smiling apparition.

After a few moments, my friend and I caught each other’s eyes and exploded with laughter. It took a few minutes to recover, and then we went smiling on our way — but first I patted Kermit carefully on the head, silently thanking the person who’d set this little scene up for us.

In a nutty way, it was one of the most extraordinary moments of my life. For a split second the shock and delight of seeing a Muppet come to life in a forest glade was overwhelming … and similar moments of surprise and delight have come to be something I especially treasure.

When you find a tiny plastic action-figure doing a handstand on a fire hydrant mirror, I’m the one who picked her out of the gutter and put her there. A stuffed monkey hanging jauntily from your car’s aerial? I’m the one who picked just the right spot to make your day.

You’re welcome.

So why am I telling you all this?

It occurred to me that Kermit helps me solve my graffiti problem.

See, as you may have gathered from many of the photos I’ve posted on this site, I have a certain … appreciation for graffiti. That is to say, in some sense I’m publicly endorsing vandalism. Which of course I (good citizen me)disapprove of.

It’s an uncomfortable situation.

So. Though I appreciate just about every form of visual public self-expression that there is (let’s leave “tagging” out of this), for me there’s graffiti and there’s graffiti.

It’s not that I have no love for the big sprawling wall pieces, the rococo wild style of the ’80s. It just seems that working in those styles is kinda like modern painters who endlessly rework expressionist or cubist styles. I mean, I appreciate the artistry, but c’mon, people — it’s been done!

No, I’ve realized that the graffiti that really gets me, and that allows the easy forgetting about, you know, property damage, is exactly that element of delighted surprise evoked by Kermit the Frog appearing on a tree stump like a green Virgin Mary.

That’s it. Be clever, people. Be artful. Be smart, funny, and ironic. And pick your spots — just like a tattoo should enhance the body part that it adorns, a graffito should actually make the structure that bears it better.

A sudden burst of color, of humour, the appearance of a cleverly placed image can provoke a thought, alter a mood, or just make someone’s day — especially in the concrete coldness of an urban environment,

Just like this bunny I spotted on Alberta Street this morning.

Thanks.

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Despite a recent crackdown, a decades-long history of (ahem) ‘public self-expression’ can be be read on walls all over the city, from ’80s wild-style to left-wing squatter provocations to the artsy paste-ups of the newly bohemian-chic Prenzlauerberg and Friedrichshain.

Though some of it would have been better off left inside the spray can, a few pieces are amazing — and the atmosphere created by the chaotic visual density of it all is (to me, anyway) extremely inspiring. I honestly can’t imagine a Berlin without it.

I’ll toss up a few snapshots in the coming week or two, and to start it off, here are a couple of beautifully textured samples from somewhere in the vicinity of the Simon-Dach-Strasse.

And there’s more … check out the second installment.