“Walls Have Ears”
I still remember a few poems and phrases from my German classes I took in high school some 20 years ago. One in particular was the German colloquialism, “Die Wände haben Ohren,” which means, “The walls have ears.”
My German teacher explained that even words spoken behind closed doors somehow make their way into public hearing. At the time, it seemed to me that he offered it as a bit of wisdom for us teens, who knew little about the sacredness of spoken words. I remember the foreboding feeling that there were no such things as secrets.
In urban areas, blank walls can serve as a city’s ears. "Vandals" tell them lots of things in enigmatic graffiti letters. People scrawl names and dates on them as monuments to brief moments, perhaps hoping to make them eternal. Messages are left behind for those who may or may not notice.
Walking through a tunnel in downtown Atlanta that smelled of urine and was filled with homeless encampments, I came across a conversation scrawled on the concrete wall:
“God loves all humans”
“Why? I am a terrible person.”
I stood there for a moment, awed that something so profound was hidden in the city’s underground. Who left the first message, circumscribed by a heart? Was it an attempt to plaster hope on the concrete panels where the poor shelter?
Who left the response? Was it an attempt to express the hopelessness humanity feels in such desperate situations?
Maybe walls are the only safe places for some to share their secrets.
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