The following is my best recollection of June, 29th 2013
I can remember the anticipation. I remember the letdown. It was not the Saturday I bargained for. It was tiresome and chaotic. All in all, it ended well with a great re-union and final hurrah.
In order to tell this story we will need to start from the beginning.
I had gone to Brady Street for the Spring Arts Festival. It was there that I met an artist girl. She was smart and nice and pretty. I saw into her artwork a powerful and talented soul. I saw into her eyes a beautiful heart. She spoke with intelligence. Though she stood with hints of anxiety but was poised in courage. Instantly my mind woke up. Infinity licked at me again. Something stirred.
That day, I mixed a dangerous cocktail of lonely heart, big imagination, and curiosity. I allowed my heart drunken vision to consume and corrupt me. I have made me not myself again.
For weeks, I had religiously pestered her on Messenger. We exchanged fancies and talked of mutual interests. However, it was doomed from the beginning. Our first conversation went well enough but after that the quality of conversation deteriorated. I was so fixed on establishing myself to her that I sacrificed sensible reason. I changed from a slight curiosity to an annoying box of puzzle pieces that nobody wants to tackle. Some pieces are missing. Some pieces don’t belong. Some are warped. Others are water or fire damaged. I delude myself by thinking someone might want to put me together.
One day, I saw she was interested in going to a show. So I talked my friends into wanting to go to Summerfest. I told her that we were going and asked if she would like to come along. For a while, we worked out a few details and loosely planned to meet up. This would have been the first time we would be exposed to each other since we met. To me, it seemed my only chance to charm her enough to meet again. I was excited for prospects of sharing time. I wanted to talk about ideas and philosophies and experiences. I wanted to get to know her. I wanted and wanted and wanted. I had infinite wants. I thought of a thousand things to do. I got out of hand quickly.
When the Friday before came she contacted me. I asked if she still wanted to come out. She let me down easy but I fell hard. The worst feeling was that of having allowed my mind to take off so far down this tangent. I allowed my pride to grow and so she popped it. I was really hoping that the universe would take care of me on this. Of course my ideas often flow against the fabric of reality. I should not have been so willy-nilly with my heart either. She dropped a huge reality check and in retrospect I am grateful. She also left me with a bit of advice that I had yet to really understand. She told me not to be so pushy and to let things be. With that, another had passed me over.
Thus I drank.
Saturday, I awoke into a blasé state. My heart felt nothing. I had clear vision and nothing was distracting me. I spent the day driving around and helping my friends move. I let her parting words ring around my head for a while. It finally became time to relax and do something with my friends. I found out that we were all split up and we had to figure out what to do. S███, C███ and I decided just to go to Summerfest to find our friends. So we departed on a packed Bus # 30.
When we got there we found a few friends leaving. They told us that tickets were sold out. I saw hundreds of people at the gates. C███ was gracious enough to give me her ticket and she left with them. S███ and I braced ourselves to enter hell. We made it to security and they didn’t even look at me. We made it to the ticket scanner and she didn’t even turn around. We literally walked in while an angry mob bellowed outside.
We walked down the main stretch towards where we thought some artists we liked were playing. Soon we were engulfed in a sea of people. Currents went every which way. We were boxed in. We were separated. Everyone was pushing this way and that way. Our anxiety levels skyrocketed. Just as S███ was about to lose it she looked down to see a crying little girl. Moments later we both emerged exhausted and frantic.
From that point on we decided to take the less trodden paths. We paled around for a while and looked for our friends. We saw Pretty Lights for a few minutes and checked out some others. There was a decent reggae band. After two beers we decided to call it. We weren’t finding our friends here.
We walked back to take a crowded Green Line. Then we met with B███ and J███ at a bar. Slowly we collected more friends and visited more bars. Eventually we set on Two Bucks and everyone assembled. The night from then on was excellent.
Drinks and friends quell most aches.