The Mural

There’s a mural at a park near me. It’s of a bunch of birds local to the area -- I don’t know if it’s all of them or just the most common ones, but there’s certainly quite the variety. The most well-known one is one that, inexplicably to me, was painted with red eyes so it looks like an avian possessed by some sort of demon.

Calm down, this isn’t going to turn into a spooky story or anything like that (though that’s a pretty good hook to save for later).

My friends and I call it the “Demon Bird.” “Do you want to go see the Demon Bird?” we’ll ask each other when it’s nice enough to walk a block or two and then through the park’s one main pathway. I have to admit, though, we don’t even look at it most of the time. We’ll get caught up in our own conversation and not pay the mural any notice.

Recently, though, the cracks in the wall are starting to show. There’s even a part that’s been painted over, and I don’t mean, like, tagged or anything by someone with a can of spray paint, I mean just painted over the same color of the background. I wouldn’t call the mural out of the way, but it’s still, you, know, not visible unless you’re looking for it. I don’t know how many people care about this thing besides me.

I guess that this post is more about the nostalgia of it, which is probably ironic given what I could have been writing about this week. It’s my own personal memory of this landmark that I know isn’t going to exist for much longer.

There isn’t really much more to say about it than that.

-F