Life Is Picturesque
Cruising the seawall with our bicycles. Ipod blasting through $20 speakers strapped to the back of her brown cruiser we assume we're important enough to impose our musical sensibilities on the rest of the world. She's dawning a yellow sundress, flip flops and straw hat, cigarette in one hand as she rides. We're so cool we're uncool. So cool we should be on cocaine, and street lights and car alarms should be exploding in our wake. But we're only people. Our auditory assault passes quickly and onlookers don't bat and eye, but we're convinced we'll be a memory to them like the one day that bandits came through town.
Our destination is a music festival for which no one has bought a ticket. The music seems secondary to the thrill of sneaking in over the fence, and many do so only to return shortly and sit by the beach. The Grass is always greener. My companion is the embodied equivalent of an unanchored howitzer, and she's dyed her hair red to match her personality.
We soon find ourselves enmeshed with a pair of free birds that my friend summoned from the crowd, an unimaginably hairy French tramp called Scapou and a baby faced, raven haired flower child who calls herself Mango. Mango talks with the drawn out whimsical lilt of the truly naive and profoundly drunk. Her perfect skin and clean socks belie the beads and feathers in her hair. This girl is a babe in the woods and a tourist in Scapou's world of vagrancy. Scapou on the other hand is a veteran of nomadic bohemia. He speaks little english, and half of that is poorly timed vulgarity. It's hard to tell if he's drunk, or just French.
We both narrowly escape the unwanted advances of the drunk french wanderer, and make our way to the water's edge. "I'll never get the taste of frenchman out of my mouth!" one or both of us could be heard exclaiming. Suddenly and for no reason we both break into laughter. It's the long hysterical crying laughter that speaks to the blatant absurdity all around us. All we can do is laugh, words have lost their meaning.
Pretty soon the sun is setting. The sun on the left side of the sky a perfect twin to the colossal city lights on the right, rising between the mountains like an early sunrise. The orange hues of the city and the sun melt into the sky, and gradually in the middle a patch of pure night starts to form. I turn to my friend and say the obvious thing. "It's fucking picturesque isn't it?".
She nods back at me, and I go on to say something about how if life were like TV then this would be sweeps. I spend so much goddamn time on reruns, reliving past glory. It's nice to have some original programing for a change.
Our destination is a music festival for which no one has bought a ticket. The music seems secondary to the thrill of sneaking in over the fence, and many do so only to return shortly and sit by the beach. The Grass is always greener. My companion is the embodied equivalent of an unanchored howitzer, and she's dyed her hair red to match her personality.
We soon find ourselves enmeshed with a pair of free birds that my friend summoned from the crowd, an unimaginably hairy French tramp called Scapou and a baby faced, raven haired flower child who calls herself Mango. Mango talks with the drawn out whimsical lilt of the truly naive and profoundly drunk. Her perfect skin and clean socks belie the beads and feathers in her hair. This girl is a babe in the woods and a tourist in Scapou's world of vagrancy. Scapou on the other hand is a veteran of nomadic bohemia. He speaks little english, and half of that is poorly timed vulgarity. It's hard to tell if he's drunk, or just French.
We both narrowly escape the unwanted advances of the drunk french wanderer, and make our way to the water's edge. "I'll never get the taste of frenchman out of my mouth!" one or both of us could be heard exclaiming. Suddenly and for no reason we both break into laughter. It's the long hysterical crying laughter that speaks to the blatant absurdity all around us. All we can do is laugh, words have lost their meaning.
Pretty soon the sun is setting. The sun on the left side of the sky a perfect twin to the colossal city lights on the right, rising between the mountains like an early sunrise. The orange hues of the city and the sun melt into the sky, and gradually in the middle a patch of pure night starts to form. I turn to my friend and say the obvious thing. "It's fucking picturesque isn't it?".
She nods back at me, and I go on to say something about how if life were like TV then this would be sweeps. I spend so much goddamn time on reruns, reliving past glory. It's nice to have some original programing for a change.