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Day 48
I'd never seen a Zebra before. I'd seen them in picture books, but other than that the only animals I'd ever seen were the fellow gangbangers and drug dealers, the misfits and the unwanted.
It was the oddest thing. The animals had broken out of their zoo because of the storm that made landfall right on the coast, and this must've been one of them. It looked so sad and wet as it walked through the flooded streets. It inspired me immediately. I took a photograph with my cracked smart phone, and I studied the picture for the rest of the week every time before I went to sleep.
Then I started drawing it. I started drawing Zebras with pencil on any piece of scrap paper I could find. There was something about them. Something about them that inspired me.
It turned out quite well for me in the end. I got myself out of that city that was threatening to suffocate me. Learnt a trade, found a wife. I still draw zebras in my down time. The kids have moved out, and I have a lot more me time now that I'm a senior employee. Every time people ask my about my particular choices in life I give them the usual spiel about how I pulled myself up from my bootstraps, how i fell in love, how God spoke to me in a dream.
But the truth of the matter is I got obsessed with an animal that broke out of a zoo, and it changed something in me. An experience, mundane and meaningless became the core of my new self.
I think that's something beautiful .
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