Time Warp
Twenty-four hours have passed since I had the time of my life. Every pore in my body was clogged with sweat, and I can't ever remember frowning. They say you should choose to do things in life that make you feel like you're getting the most potential out of your time. Yesterday, I lived a life and a half. Today, my body was wracked with fatigue, as if I had lived so deeply that my muscles had died and come back to life.
We arrived early. We arrived early enough that the dew of sleep had not yet completely worn off our faces. We stood outside, surrounded by our fellow youth. Jokes were made that got more laughs than they deserved because we just needed an excuse to laugh and scream and be excited. We were let in. We wandered hurriedly, making notes and priority decisions. We took photos and we crowded up to a stage that had only sprung from the ground hours ago.
They played. They played, and they sang, and they made magic before our eyes that we couldn't explain because it was so early. The sun started to tease, I started to be grateful that I'd dressed light. I dressed so light that I almost floated away, but my friends were there to hold me down.
We stood in a much longer line for much more magic. We wrote poetry a line at a time to remind ourselves that we were still alive, despite melting sunny-side up on the pavement. I left the line an hour later with four scribbles on a CD jacket and a memory of a fifteen-second conversation so vivid it hurts my eyes.
We trekked down a mountain to a beautiful space of seats and a stage and shade. We stood behind a railing, behind a thousand people pressed together like lovers. They played, and the lovers danced together. We returned to the first ephemeral stage to hear different voices and different magic. We were the lovers that time.
Another stage, another flurry of beauty vainly captured in photo moments and brief video clips. Then, the sprint. We ran like rabbits, back down the mountain and back to the thousand lovers. We waded in and waited. My expectations were so high, they could not be met in a hall with such a low ceiling. I thought.
This time, it was surreal. Iwasfloating, and my friends couldn't manage to hold me down. I sang so loud I couldn't hear my thoughts of money and academics and constant frivolous worry. For the first time, I helped to carry people instead of running away from them. I left my earplugs in my pocket. Pure joy streamed from the speakers, talking of rivers of denial, snakebite hearts, ticking time-bombs, vampires, not weekends but years, rats in mazes, flames that get out of control, and unadulterated and irresistible cash flow. I was not a god, but I became more than myself somehow.
Another stage, we were farther from the magic this time. I sang every word and took photos even though I knew they would be too blurry to be considered acceptable. Then, I turned on my heel and walked back into life, a life that is blessedly full of reasonably overpriced shaved ice and boy band parodies. We made a long journey on foot. I only fell once, and I had no cross to pick up, so I was still the luckiest in the world.
A car brimming with bodies and hungover ecstasy. Not the drug, but the feeling one gets when devouring a McChicken on the highway and willing the seconds to slow. I slept so profoundly that I only awoke after eleven and a half hours. Now is the time to take stock of our bruises, to pick through hundreds of hasty photographs, and to remember how to float away.