It felt like a music festival; an immense, heaving, sprawling festival. It felt like Woodstock. We were on stage with Santana, naturally, but you were the one playing lead guitar. Your solo seemed eternal, and I could feel the crowd hanging on to your every expression. The length was of no concern to them, they wanted more more more. All the while, you were kissing me, also for some infinite stretch of time. It was a world wherein time and space were limitless, absolutely limitless. Detaching from your lips, I turned my head ever so slowly it almost creaked and took in the crowd for the first time since getting on stage. You did the same, and the silence that fell upon both our minds told me you could not believe the vision before us either. It was more of a population than a crowd, and I was utterly positive it was made up of billions of people. My eyes strained themselves attempting to traverse from the very front to the non-existent back which seemed to hit the horizon then go far beyond it.
When we could sense sunset tiptoeing nearby, we made our way to the seven-bedroom, two-story house where some of the bands stayed. The front yard was more like a national park than a lawn, and it was sprinkled with a handful of families, all who looked indigenous somehow. Their skin was as brown or browner than mine, but they had dark markings on their faces, surely done with some natural paint they concocted from the earth. They emanated a certain kindness, and I felt like a part of their tribe at once.
A strange emergency erupted at the house, all the musicians were evacuating. It was twenty past four in the afternoon. I watched as people came outside, not running but definitely in some sort of rush. Three elderly ladies sitting beneath a white canopy gestured me over in a peaceful manner, they told me this is the hour when evil spirits run throughout the mansion. "Only the children are safe. Many things get broken and even more things go missing." When the words 'broken' and 'missing' reached my ears, I instantly sprinted toward the house, dropping my black canvas backpack in the process.
Running as fast as I could up the stairs to the second floor where our bedroom was, I passed a few children wandering around the house. They looked like little Mowgli clones and were holding very slim, long knives about eight inches in length, slightly curved at the end, but I got the notion it wasn't me they were after. The door of our room was ajar, I pushed it open with a fragile middle finger and allowed my eyes to scan every corner, nook, and cranny quickly before I stepped in. Everything seemed untouched, so I rushed toward the underside of the bed to grab the dilapidated shoe box I came for. Prize in hand, I hurried back downstairs and out to the lawn.
Inside this box is where I kept all my most cherished photographs along with their negatives, ones I had taken over a span of however many years I'd had my camera. They were visual memoirs I knew for sure could never be relived or recreated, no matter how hard I tripped or how deeply I dreamed. In my backpack was the camera that birthed all of these photographic chronicles, but where was my backpack? I looked all across the lawn, nowhere. I looked at every person's hands and backs, nowhere. The three elderly ladies I was speaking to earlier motioned me over in the very same manner as before, peacefully, but this time they were grinning hyper-pierced ear to hyper-pierced ear. One of them grabbed my backpack from beside her chair, "We knew it was yours, so we took care of it for you." A huge, inner sigh of relief sent a flow of relaxation to every muscle in my body. Despite the 4:20 haunting, the camera my brother had given me for Christmas years ago was still in my hands.
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