A fiction: Tribute to the bastard bird

The perfection of life was revealed to me by a seagull by the beach one sunny mid-summer's day.

Oh the contentment I felt when I walked the tranquil beach in a solitary guise. My white shirt looked whiter than it seemed for the warm rays of the sun intensified its magnificence. So was the beach; such beauty it beheld yet it was nothing more but a stretch of white sand. As I walked the beach with the soothing sound of the ocean in my ears, I thought everything is already perfect. Every aspect of that time. The melancholy of the concrete jungle has left me! Or so it seemed.

What's this? Is that what I think it is?? Can it be? Oh my God, yes it is! It is! Quite a distance away, there lay a black bottle cap. If the beach was not so very white, I wouldn't have seen that piece of an eye sore....

I then walked towards the item to pick it up. Such items should not be allowed to desecrate the beach's purity. As I proceeded to collect the item, my eyes flinched for the sands' whiteness was blinding me. "How could this be? The sand's radiance has not pained my eyes before." I queried myself. I did not mind; I proceeded to picking the object up.

The moment the tip of my fingers rested upon the bottle cap's ridges, a bird startled me with its scandalous squawking. There stood a bird, a seagull. It stood in front of me as if mocking me with its head bobbing and wing-flapping. I tried shooing it, but to no avail. The process actually back-fired: the bird bit my thumb and rapidly pilfered the bottle-cap from me.

I jumped around uncontrollably as I clutched my finger, cursing at the bird and the unwelcome scenario. When everything felt like nothing more could go wrong, the bird, malicious as can be, dropped something onto my perfect shirt. There I was again, shouting and cursing far more than before. The bird squawked as if it was laughing to its heart's content.

But being a poet and rational man, I calmed down and proceeded to think; all these must sum up to something.

I sat there, disgusted. Still cursing at what the bird has done to my shirt which now smells of dank farm barns after a heavy rain. In short; my shirt stank. But... would have I noticed how white and pure my shirt could be, purer than the sun's warm rays which intensified my shirt's magnificence if it was not dirtied by that bastard bird? Would the sand be more radiant to the point of hurting one's eyes if it wasn't for the black bottle-cap? Would I be feeling tranquility if I had not lived the life in an urban jungle? Would I be feeling the comfort to my thumb if it has not been bitten by the bird? Would I be feeling an ease of mind had I not sat down and think?

The answer, which made me smile, was no. In a much grander scale, life is beautiful in its own, complex way: it contradicts its self; it shows contrast between two aspects of itself, thus making things of simplicity to such grandeur.

As I walked back to where I would spend my night, I was smiled. If it was not for the bird, I would not realize something of such intricate elegance. With these facts rested in my mind, I then, should not curse, but thank the bastard bird.

Thank you, bastard bird.