Festivities

It is interesting enough. I've never seen so many different kinds of people peacefully gathered together. There are so many oddities and unique individuals as to give me plenty to ponder as I people watch. I split a funnel cake with two girls I've never met. The music isn't really my type, but they are playing it with passion, so it's fun to listen to, regardless.

Being alone in the middle of a crowd gives me an exhilarating feeling, only slightly tinged melancholy. 'My friends would love this.' Everywhere I look I see strangers. They seem familiar somehow as if they could easily be people in my life.

I see a fairly young boy in a plaid shirt with long, dirty blonde hair kept out of his eyes with a bandana. I picture him drumsticks in hand, and then create for him his own quite ordinary story. He works for his dad in a pool and spa supply store. It's dull and he hates sitting all day alone but for the plastic parts and bottled chemicals, but it beats being broke. The only girl he's ever really liked gave up on him and is now with some other douche bag and, though he cares more than he'd ever admit, he'll never do anything about it.

I pass a free spirit, past her prime, swaying to the music with her eyes closed. Her name is June and this music transports her back to when things were good. Things were actually quite bad at times, but that fades eventually and we can only remember the glory of our youth. She is suddenly overcome by the image of a tender face hidden under a scruffy beard looking at her through the blades of grass and her heart swells with a secret remembrance of days gone by. College kids push past her left and right seeking another beer, not giving her a second thought, their first being that she was really weird, man. "This," she thinks, "This is real music. This is movement. This is existential."

And it was.
And it is.