What I love about art vending machines is the feeling that somehow they’ve leaked through from a parallel Earth. In that world the better angels of our nature won out. Instead of the worst of who we are (junk food and cheap crap made by children in sweat shops in China) the vending machines sell poetry and hand-made works of art.
Every once-in-a-while, I’m lucky enough to get that feeling in other ways, too. A few months ago I was using the bathroom in Zoots in Camden, Maine. Taped to the wall amongst the event posters and business cards (Camden’s equivalent of graffiti) was a mixed-media poem. It was done with great care, hand-written and painted, cut out of a paper bag and glued together. My photograph doesn’t do it justice. It was wonderful. I love the fact that for somebody out there it’s really important to inject a little beauty and wonder into the lives of people she’ll never meet. For a moment it was that alternate world slipping through again.
