I was going to another country. This should have been the happiest moment in my life, I reasoned to my dream self, but she remained fervent in her frustration. Still, I could feel a glimmer of hope alight in her heart. Neither of us knew where we were going or with whom we were traveling. We were just going somewhere.

Sometime later, I found myself at the entrance to a large and luxurious garden. I thought to myself how beautiful it was and looked at it from the outside of the gates. What puzzled me, however, was that no one else was paying a visit to the garden. And I was not alone. There were hundreds of people behind me: I could hear the soft thumps of their footsteps and the loud hum of their voices coming together as one in the open air. Perhaps, I reasoned, this exhibit isn't open. I set my hand on the lock, and no sooner had I done so, than it fell to my feet, leaving the gate unbound. Well, I reasoned again, maybe no one knows that it's open. I opened the gate slightly and peered around to see if anyone was interested in coming along. Indeed, they completely ignored me and the garden, bustling instead to the numerous other sights which were so unimportant to me that my dream hadn't deigned to give them any legitimate names or manners of business. Seeing this, I shrugged my shoulders and entered the garden, with the large metal gate closing behind me.

The garden was, at first, the most beautiful thing I'd seen in my life. There were flowers everywhere and trees whose trunks twisted toward the sky and ended with brilliant bouquets of flora. I was immediately captivated.

And as soon as I was captivated, I was repulsed.

I wandered farther and farther. While I began to wonder how far this garden actually went, I realized that something was going wrong. For one thing, there seemed to be absolutely no one here except me. For another, the twisted trunks of the trees were turning into something else: hard, stony structures that seemed to be molded by hand. Statues. The trunks that extended into bouquets soon became hands for these molded bodies and figures. They were people, animals, all sorts of things made of perhaps every single type of material as I progressed. Wood became stone; stone became steel; steel became iron. And the wood was chewed upon, the stone was chipped and crumbling, the steel was bent, and the iron was rusting. It seemed that the figures realized they were being acted upon by nature and were frozen in agony, waiting until nature ate away at their molded faces and bodies entirely.

My wonder and then repulsion had turned into absolute sorrow. I had wandered too far into the garden and, for some reason, couldn't bring myself to turn back if such a thing was possible. I glanced into the distance to see how much further the garden went. There, just in the distance, I saw the sea, sparkling in what little sunlight illuminated the now-sepia-stained garden. It was far, but I was determined to reach it. Why? Well, the sea has always meant freedom to me. Perhaps in my mind--in my dream--the sea was also a way to escape this miserable garden.

I began my trek with new fervor, but it wasn't long before I began to hear someone humming. I came across a small home where a man was standing. He was busy at work, painting something on a large canvas. Even despite the paint, I could see where there had been dirt stains and mud on the canvas. I approached him to watch, but he soon noticed me. He looked me over for a while as though determining whether or not I was a threat and then pushed his palette toward me.

"Help me paint," he commanded me.

I waited for a few moments in the hope that he would offer me a brush, but he simply pushed the palette closer to me, an irritated look beginning to appear on his face. Seeing no other choice, I dipped my fingers into the paints and then looked over his canvas. His picture looked almost like an elaborate blueprint for one of the sculptures I had seen earlier. However, the subject was much simpler than they were. It was an iron bar rusting away in a field of grass. The man resumed his painting without another word or look at me. I became despondent. I couldn't imagine what I could add to his painting, especially since none of the colors I had chosen were on the canvas.

Furthermore, what was left for me was what was covered in dirt and grime. I had nothing but my own colorfully dirty fingers to do anything with.

Unsure of what else to do, I looked up to the sky. Above me, thick, fluffy, strikingly white clouds floated toward the sea that I had once wanted to run to. I extended my hand toward them and began to playfully fill them in. And, startlingly enough, they began to be tinted with my colors, but only faintly.

I stood there, painting and painting...