Pretty Quiet Society

Pastel on sidewalk. Done for a local arts event. A collaboration with a wonderful and talanted artist named Rebekah Circenis (along with the occasional help from our sponsors/instructors). My half is the right half.

    It seems no one in my local area would like to discuss this, so I am going to relate a short, personal story of mine with you all. I had only recently decided to move into a new house (forced really, but that's a story for a different day). It was a fairly nice house in a very pleasant neighborhood. My city loves to look pretty; it almost prides itself on how beautiful it's neighborhoods are, how lovely the art community is. "What an accepting town," one would say. One who hasn't tested the waters would say anyhow.
    I'm leaving my new house in the late night with mi amigos (the nightly food run for us) when, all of a sudden, we hear a gunshot echo through my neighborhood. We saw some fighting. We saw a lot of fighting. There were around six or seven upstanding individuals pounding the shit out of each other under a street light, and they were quickly migrating down my street, and we were quickly migrating out of my neighborhood. We pull up to McDonald's, and my dearest friend (whom I will name Rick) dials nine-one-one, explains to them the situation, and is quickly assured that the cops will be quickly on their way.
    I spent the night at Rick's house, I was too shell shocked to return home. The cops, I later learned, did arrive that night around an hour or two later. They apprehended the suspects, retrieved the firearm, and then... that was it. That was the last I'd heard of it. Life went on the next day without a mention of it. I'm not even sure if all of my neighbors understood the situation, they just didn't care. When I tell people this story, they give me a blank stare; this isn't even an incident worth getting worked up over; this isn't worth talking about.
    The other night, Rick and I heard another gunshot. Police arrived on the scene around an hour or two later. Again, that was the last I'd ever heard of it. No one talked about it, my community didn't come together to discuss the repeated incident, I heard even less about this incident than the last one; my community seems to be too caught up in the looks of our city rather than any beyond-superficial issues. It seems that as long as the outside is pretty, no one could give two shits about the inside. It seems that I live in a pretty quiet society.