DOVE You are walking through an art gala. There you stand before a massive mural of a mourning dove sitting on a tree branch. The dove glows with a heavenly aura. Its beauty truly transcends its physical art form. You feel as if the sun depicted is kissing your face and each color was chosen to massage your brain in just the right spot as to make you feel pure bliss. It's life changing to say the least. You wish you could simply walk into the painting and sit with the dove. You wish you could be the branch supporting its frankly chubby body or be the leaf that protects it from the sun's light. You wish simply to participate in the play of objects presented in the picture, each perfect in their own way. But, of course, you can not. You can never enter the painting because it is a picture, stupid. An imagined world for people with nothing else better to do but imagine. No matter how great you feel it is a world you will never enter and, truthfully, do not deserve. How could something as imperfect as you be a part of something as perfect as this painting? Before I learned to drive I had to ride the bus everyday to and from school. There were many things about that bus I don't miss but there is one thing I look back on happily. The bus rides would give me a chance to truly shut out the world. I would turn on some music, stare out the window blankly, and just think. I would go through my day or remember something from a long time ago and think about it. Sometimes I would shut my brain off and sleep. It was the only time of the day I felt I could do something like this. I haven't been on the bus since sophomore year in high school, but of course, my freedom giving X3 broke down and I had no other choice but to ride the bus once again. There I started thinking about my life and why I am so unhappy. "Thinking" is a stand in for self depreciation. I never give myself a chance, I always have to find something about myself to hate which means any time I get to sit and think on myself is spent in absolute loathing. So, of course, that's how I spent one of my last bus rides. While I was staring out of the bus window I saw a mourning dove sit on a tree branch. I see a lot of people online talking about how nostalgic the call of the mourning dove is. It's a very beautiful call that cements it as my favorite bird, a very prestigious position in the bird community. I felt a rush of euphoria. I'm not sure what caused it; maybe it was the mixture of the happy music I was listening to and the sight of that dove. I almost broke down right there on the bus. My love for life spilling out of me as a few tears and a lump in my throat. I've felt this way before, it's a short euphoric high in a large valley, very few and far between. However, it is not pure happiness but a strange mixture of 2 parts happiness 1 part dread. In the back of my mind I still find room to hate myself. It was while I was high off my emotions that I realized something. I love life so much. I love all the people in my life so much and I love all the simple things like the rain and the grass and the mourning dove; the music I listen to and the bus ride and my brother sitting next to me. There is a lot to dislike, sure, but even then I always feel that the good of life outclasses the bad several times over. Everything in my life makes me happy in some way except myself. A faulty circuit may blink every once and a while but no matter what that fault wont allow it to shine. You have been waiting for this meeting your entire life. The painting of the dove has been haunting you, it plagues every thought you have. You have gone mad trying to contact the painter. You want to understand the creative process that went behind the painting. And now you have that chance as he has agreed to a meeting with you after waiting months for his response to your email. You meet him sitting down next to the mural. He wore a plastic bag with two eye holes cut out to conceal his identity as he has become a local celebrity. You tell him of your obsession with his painting and how you wish you could be in the world with the dove. He shows pity and offers to paint you in with the dove. You get to finally be up on the stage with all those gorgeous things. You watch and wait as he paints you in detail. And then you stare as he finishes. You feel nothing. If anything the painting seems worse with your presence. You are an outsider in a world you do not belong in, an outsider that needs to be purged in order to bring things back the way they were. You get up and tear the weak paper. Everything, including the dove, is destroyed. You can feel the thick bulges of oil paint on the canvas resting in your hand. Music made by my good friend Vinacom!!! Go check out his bandcamp : https://vinacom.bandcamp.com/