I don't know where it came from. Walking down that same street one day, I noticed a mural in a side alley. It hadn't been there before. It was a big blown-up photo of a tropical beach, about two meters wide and three meters high, with a palm tree on one side, the yellow sun-drenched sand spread out in the foreground, a placid turquoise sea beyond, and a clear blue sky above. It probably once decorated a cheesy restaurant or nightclub or something. Now it was just there, at the entrance of an alley. It was strange, because around it was all brick, concrete, asphalt, rusted iron, trash, dust and dirt. But amid the gloom and waste, there was that giant fresh gleaming blue and gold gem, relieving all the misery around it. Going up and down that street on my way to work, the contrast always caught my eye and held my gaze for a split second longer than anything else would. Sometimes I'd want to stand there and look at it longer, but I felt I shouldn't. I felt self-conscious. I felt people would think me crazy or high or creepy, so I'd move on.
About a week after the mural appeared I found myself stopping to look at it. Either early in the morning on my way to work, or late in the evening on my way back. Then about a week after that, I began stopping by the cafe that was across the street from the alley with the mural. I would leave the house half an hour earlier than usual to stop by the cafe and sip a coffee while I looked at the mural. Or alternately, I would stop by the cafe on my way back from work and have a beer or a bite to eat, again, just basically staring at the mural. It was mesmerizing.
Once I'd made a habit of sitting at that cafe and gazing for extended periods of time at the mural, I noticed other people doing the same thing as me. One out of three or four who passed by that alley would turn and look at the mural. Some would stop and turn their heads, frozen in half stride - probably because of the same self-consciousnessness that I felt - before moving on. I guess they felt the same as me, that there was a big difference between keeping in stride, which was normal, and stopping and turning to face the mural and gaze at it, which is not normal and even possibly a sign of derangement. But I know that's exactly what I had wanted to do, and actually what I was doing now, thanks to the cafe, where I could camouflage my intentions behind the respectable pastime of being seated at a table, drinking a normal beverage, paying a waiter, uttering normal lines like "thank you" and "coffee please" and "check!" and then being on my way as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And yet something extraordinary had happened, because I'd spent my entire time at the cafe staring at a picturesque mural of a tropical island scene across the street, at the entrance of an alley.
I would do so the next day as well, and the day after. Sometimes I would do it twice a day. The wait staff came to know me and greet me by name. I wondered if they knew that I was just staring at that mural. I wonder if they wondered anything, or whether it was natural and normal to frequent the same cafe everyday, and stare across the street. Perhaps they saw through me. Perhaps they thought I was weird, sitting there like that and staring at a distant wall. And I wondered whether there were others like me, others who were too embarrassed and self-conscious to stand and look at the mural, who just did that frozen half-stride-with-head-turned-and-inquisitive-face thing, or who perhaps even came to the cafe like me to observe the mural secretly, privately, inconspicuously. Maybe they were also wondering the same thing now, gazing at me, asking themselves the same question. "You think that weirdo over there is just here to stare at the mural?" I looked around me but there were no people staring at me and smirking. Then again, maybe they were and they just turn their heads away as soon as I turn to look at them. They might look like they're pretending to read their paper, or write on their computers or enjoy their drinks or food or be engaged in an authentic chat with another person, but who's to say they aren't thinking the same thing? Who's to say they can't see right through me? Then again, if they did see through me, if they did understand me, wouldn't they too be complicit in this mural-gazing endeavor of mine? If anything, only they would understand. They would maybe even sympathize. Maybe there's a whole bunch of us, secretly gazing as we walk by, or pretending not to gaze while seated at this cafe... a whole bunch of us sharing a secret, enjoying a warm tropical scene, even if it is only surface deep.
And what of it anyway? Why do I feel somehow perverted, like I'm at a peepshow or something? Why shouldn't I stand and look? Or sit and look? Why shouldn't it all be perfectly normal?
Two months passed and I came to recognize regulars at the cafe. They too seemed to be there almost everyday, or at least I thought they were. There was the older guy with the scarf and the graying beard and the round glasses. He'd be reading mostly, or scribbling something in his notebook. Last time I was there he got into some heated argument on the phone, just as I got up to pay the bill. Did I imagine it, or did he keep looking at the mural while he was talking? Was he there for the mural? Or was he normal? Was he a normal cafe goer who ordered his coffee and sat at a table and read his books or his papers very normally, and then said normal and accepted things that were never out of place? Did he just say "keep the change, see you tomorrow" or make idle chit chat with the waiter about the weather? Or was he also secretly drawn to that mural? In between the routine and the normality and the expectedness and the overt non-weirdness of everything, was there something inside him that drew him to spending time here at the cafe, time that could otherwise be spent on very normal and relatively accepted things, just to be able to gaze at the mural, just to look at the big blown-up photo of a palm tree, a beach, a sky and a sea, amid bricks and concrete and sirens and cars and people being normal, heads down, going to work, or home, or other normal places? Every time I sneaked a glance at him, he seemed to be doing anything but looking at the mural. He seemed genuinely interested in other things... accepted and normal things.
And what about the others? Day in day out, there, I recognized this girl who looked like a university student. I would see her a few times a month. Others were there too, like those twins, or that really shabby guy who looked like a hobo but could still eat and drink there, so I guess he was some kind of artist or something. What about the lady with the dog? Did they look at the mural? Were they there like me, secretly gazing at the mural? I'd been there so long gazing at the mural that I even started recognizing regular passersby, and I took note of the ones who would look at the mural. But they never stopped to look at it. I wondered if they would come and sit at the cafe instead, order a drink, and look at the mural in an accepted and normal way that would not be deemed strange. But they never did, I guess. At least, none of those people were ever at the cafe when I was there. Maybe they were there sometimes, but not when I was, as far as I could tell.
Then I noticed for the first time a person who was there just for the mural, openly, unabashedly. Not at the cafe, where I and an unknown number of other mural gazers would satisfy our need in secret. This was... well, I don't know if he was a hobo or some homeless guy, or what. He seemed dressed ok enough. He had a scruffy beard but he didn't seem like a derelict. On the other hand, he didn't look too stylish either. And considering the amount of time he would stand leaning against the opposite wall of the alley, and often even just sit in front of the mural, on a piece of cardboard, I could assume he didn't really have any place to be. Sometimes he fidgeted with something, a notebook or a pad or something, but the rest of the time he would stand or sit there looking at the mural. People would pass by and sometimes they'd throw a quick glance at him. In a thousand heads that would walk by the street that day, they would form opinions in fractions of seconds, as soon as they saw a man sitting on a street, doing nothing, staring at a wall... they would form opinions in split seconds that would condemn that man. He was abnormal. There was something wrong with him. How do I know? Because now that the man was there staring at the mural, the passersby who had until then frozen in mid stride and gazed inquisitively at the mural, even if only for a second, didn't do so anymore. It was like the mural and the man were interconnected, and by showing the same sort of abnormally extended and unaccepted degree of interest that the abnormal man shows to the mural, one would be implicated in that same abnormality. The shared act, the shared experience, would condemn the normal to being associated with the abnormal.
Unless of course you could do what I did and normalize the abnormal act by disguising it in a normal one, such as sitting normally at a cafe and normally sipping some normal coffee like a normal person, all as I satisfied my--our?--abnormal interest in the mural. So one day I decided to invite the man to come and share a coffee with me. He looked at me, then looked at the cafe, then at me again. I guess he was trying to decide if I was some kind of weirdo. Then he accepted my invitation with a nod of the head. We sat at the cafe and ordered a coffee each. It was morning, and I still had a half hour to kill, which could be spent staring at the mural. And that's exactly what we did. We didn't talk at all. We just sipped our coffee and stared ahead, at the mural. It seemed like the most normal thing in the world to do. He was as conscious of the fact that I was looking at the mural as I was conscious of the fact that he was. And he seemed to know it too, but paid it no heed. For the first time I wasn't even conscious of myself while I was staring at the mural. For the first time I didn't try to hide the fact that I was staring at a mural. For the first time I didn't care if anyone saw me staring at the mural. It felt normal now. A few minutes later he turned to me, thanked me, offered to pay for his coffee (which I refused), bid me a good day, and left the cafe.
Two weeks later, the mural was gone. The morning I'd noticed it was gone, I still took a seat at the cafe out of habit. Out of habit, I even kept staring at the dirty red brick wall where those palm trees, blue skies, golden sands and turquoise waters had once been. Now there was just a wall. I looked around me and the cafe was empty. The man with the graying beard and the glasses wasn't there, neither was the girl or the lady with the dog, or the twins, or anyone else. I didn't order a coffee. I just sat there by myself, outside in the cold, and stared at that wall in the entrance to the alley across the street. One of the waiters threw me a commiserating look, as if in sympathy. I looked for the man who would sit there by the mural and who I'd shared a coffee with, but he wasn't there either. I really wished he was there.
It started raining. I buttoned my coat, got up, and left.
