Portrait of Beauty

                I am alone. Deaf to the world, I sit here engulfed in silence. My mind and body are the only presence atop the solidarity of wood and iron. I am blind to all else except what I am looking at. I am looking at a portrait of beauty. Beauty only I can see and understand.
         Across the way I look at a portrait of beauty. Like a newborn baby’s skin, a soft light glazes the clear sky from the setting sun. The rays play with the autumn trees as they jump on the leaves and out through the gaps. Allowing the leaves to show their true beauty, the rays paint them with vibrant colors of happiness. Other’s eyes view the swamp as a disgusting gathering of murky water and dirt. My apple green eyes see its true beauty as a canvas ready to be painted and reflect the world diversely from reality. The joyous trees that once played with sun are now watery paintings that are blurred because that’s how the water painted them. The canvas not only reflects life, but also withholds life. Living things grow and are nurtured inside this masterpiece that also nurtures life outside it by providing food and water.
         As the sun descends, a carrot colored blanket covers the insomniac towers of downtown Portland. My sense of beauty is being deaf, but not blind of the loud, invigorating life beneath that blanket. Adjacent to such vigor, is the silent song of nature. The final rays of today’s light touches every treetop across the horizon singing songs about the essence of beauty instilled in my eyes. To bear all conditions and still stand tall and lovingly embrace the sun’s touch is beautiful like the shameless love between two people despite their differences.
         With my feet comforted by the cool, gentle touch of grass, I look at a portrait of beauty. A once bold blue sky is now painted with colors of warmth. Above the horizon of nature lies lemonade to cool the trees and peaches settle between the towers of downtown. Behind me, calm water flows over towns of life. Pink cotton candy floats across the newborn strawberries that cover my portrait. The sky is beautiful because every minute it changes and new colors play across it, painting its emotion.
         The sun is gone, but the wood and iron beneath me remain, as does the grass comforting my feet. Lost in the unreality of my own world, I still am looking. I still am looking at a portrait of beauty. Such beauty is my source of escapism. It is beautiful because it is my own perspective that no one else can realize. My portrait is always changing, but in the end, I can still paint it with my own thoughts and aspects.
         I keep reading this essay over and over again. Each time I read it, a smile crosses my face. Each time, I can put myself in the state of mind I was in a month ago, when I wrote about Portland’s beauty in its entirety, and I can see the same picture, a simple picture of a simple sunset. People drove by the bench where I sat looking at that sunset more times than I could count and I bet that not one driver appreciated it the way I did. They were too busy to stop and realize true beauty, something I am not busy enough to ignore.
         That is who I am. I am someone who analyzes everything and appreciates even the smallest things. Tonight, for example, I was driving home from Safeway where I bought popsicles for my dad. I was about a mile away from home when something caught my eye. I looked up and I saw a flock of black birds, possibly crows, flying through the sky. People look at doves as signs of peace and love, but crows are signs of bad luck and misfortune. Contrary to such beliefs, somehow there was something magnificent about how their sharp black color stood out and was almost iridescent against the dark purple sky. How they glided across the sky so peacefully as one fluid motion. Weird, how I think dirty birds at night are beautiful? Or unique, because I am not consumed by the materialism suffocating our society, preventing people from breathing and embracing such beauty? Such beauty that is so simple and present every which way you look.
         Maybe I am crazy. Maybe I am crazy because I look at downtown Portland and see a portrait of beauty. Maybe I am crazy because birds flying at night are beautiful. Maybe I am crazy because every which way I look, something so small, so simple can be beautiful. Well, if I am crazy, then the rest of the world is irreversibly mental because they look at the world, blind to things so small and simple, unable to appreciate their true value. It is how you look at things that make them beautiful. Anything and everything is beautiful, you just have to learn to let reality fade away, let faces, actions, words escape, and simply let your heart, mind, and soul take control and lead you to see, hear, and feel for the world in a way entirely diverse from the norm. If you succeed and completely immerse yourself into such a state of being, you will hopefully attain a new sense of appreciation for all that dwells upon the earth: big, small, near, or far, and no matter the places, sounds, or appearances, discover the true beauty and value withheld in them all.
                What you experience and what you discover will be something entirely your own, something incomprehensible by anyone else. It will be your portrait of beauty that you will paint with the things you see, hear, and feel; every sound, the wisp of a breeze, the hum of a bicycle; every sight, the shape of a hill, the colors of a sunset; every feeling, the loving embraces of the sun when cold, rain when dry, snow when need for fun, the happiness of life drifting from mountain to ocean, to desert to treetop, across the world, constantly turning round and round with the world. Nowhere does there lie something that is not beautiful; there is beauty everywhere, you may just have to search a little. How you look at things, think about things, and appreciate things is true beauty. True beauty is a portrait only you can paint.