All Aboard The Snake Dance To Sanity

There is nothing like spending all day in a beer tent watching an endless parade of people you knew as a child, people you knew in high school, people you dated in high school, people you try to deny you dated after high school. It's an eye-opening (and narrowing) experience.

It's also so weird to smile and talk and say hi when inside you want to just lie down in the grass, stare up and beg someone to pour a drink in your mouth every so often. But, then you suck it up and buy more tickets and another beer so people don't start to hug you and shit. It's a creepy medium. To be having a great time, then you go to tell a story about someone and sort of freeze... not knowing if they're in your life anymore. Then you remember you maybe shouldn't be having a good time. Then you think that all you really have right now is the idea of having a good time. Then you float somewhere between "oh well, fuck it." and "I can't wait one more second until this is resolved because half the shit and people I care about just disappeared like they were covered in an avalanche of insanity".

Then you stand there spiraling down, down, down, wondering if anyone else even cares or worries about the same things as you. Then you look up as your ex-boyfriend slams his hand on the table and he's walking with a cane because a few months ago he fell and broke like, umpteen bones and almost died. Then you wonder if it was karma. Then you take the high-speed train toFearville because you wonder if it was karma, is something even worse coming for you? (fuck!) Then you realize YOU are the one that is now swimming in a nice, cool pond of insanity. Without floaties.

Then you see someone who babysat you. And they tell you they are so happy to see you and that they are so glad you are healthy. You hug them. And then you remember sitting in that hospital bed. Day after day after day and not knowing when you were leaving, what you would be like when you left, if you would leave. And you turn and see a table full of people laughing. One's parents refused to accept she was gay for years. One had to tell her fiance that she loved that she wasn't going to marry him. One recently broke up with her boyfriend, lost her mother as a little girl and now has a sick father. There's the sick father. There with his current wife and they are getting up to get more beers laughing at all of us. Then there's your best friend. Who you dated, who you cheated on, who took you back, then you rebelled against, then broke up with and is still your best friend. Handing you money because your home town ATM's are refusing your good Ohio card.

Then next thing you know you're stealing bites of corn dogs. Your searching every pocket you ever thought of having for more beer tickets. You are organizing a transport called a Snake Dance to a bar about 40 feet away. Your best friend leads said Snake Dance, pulling you, a farmer, 2 teachers, a nurse, and a husband and wife insurance team down main street, through Carnie booths and a dirt parking lot (off the path) toward the bar because "why just walk?". You are winded and laughing. You decide "this bar is for babies" and is really just too crowded, so you and your lesbian friends head back to their farm. You put on chore boots, you wander around, head pointed at the sky, marveling that you can actually see stars. You fall asleep covered in a Jack Russell Terrier while a Kenny Rogers documentary plays in the background. You wake up to a mini-horse loose in the yard. You put your chore boots back on while still in your sun dress from yesterday, wander out and make friends with the 3-legged dog that usually wants to bite everyone. You help pick veggies out of 2 gardens. While those veggies are being cooked for your breakfast, you feed chickens and watch butterflies. You eat said breakfast of all things from the farm where you just slept. You cruise around in a truck in the sunshine all day long looking at fields and waving at lake-dwellers.

You have to head back to Ohio at some point. You say your good byes and thank yous and you get on the toll road. You are going along at the normal pace, erasing voicemails. You decide you make your usual long drive calls to your favorites, and you are suddenly back at the beginning of this circle. But there is no beer tent. There is no table of wonderful people. There is no Snake Dance. (which is good because my arms hurt) There is just the road ahead to home where the basement pump has leaked and the carpet has filled with water.

Man, these blogs are getting pretty fucked up. I need to "Get busy livin' or get busy dyin'" because walking the line between is FOR BABIES.