People, and Thoughts, and Things.

One reason I enjoy getting away from it all – I’m at the Strawberry Music Festival alone – is you can find room to think.

This is how my brain works when I am relaxed and have found space and I am thinking…

I start involuntarily thinking about Ukraine, the destruction of apartment buildings and roads and the cost of rebuilding an entire country.

What do you do if everything is lost? I think about this when my mind starts to let go. How much does it cost and how exactly do you rebuild a country and an economy? I also think about raising the debt ceiling and how I wish our elected officials would cut the drama and just do their jobs.

Before I go much further let me just clarify my brain’s musings . This is not some cost-analysis by an economist or even an armchair Suze Orman. No real discussion of this serious predicament is going to occur because that is not my lane. I am just someone at a music festival under some trees waiting for the music to start and wondering how you rebuild a country from the ground up and why we have to get indigestion over the debt ceiling when it’s not our job to fix it.

This is me, in my son’s 1995 Suburu Impreza, flopped out in the back in a forest, thinking about Ukraine and all the sh*t that’s been blown up and wondering how in the F word this going to get fixed. Ever. And me wondering what I am supposed to do about the threat of economic collapse if the debt ceiling isn’t raised.

Countries rebuild so it must be possible. Ceilings are raised. How would I do it if I were in charge? Hmmmm. Let me think think think think think think think.

Reader, you are now in my brain. You aren’t just inside my brain you are inside my festival brain at 8 am with some loud new neighbors. More on them later.

So my brain starts to think about what I would do if someone put me in charge of things.

With the board game Monopoly as my only point of reference, I immediately make myself banker and start printing (in my mind) paper money in Easter egg colors and then give everyone some money and a job and then my brain fizzles a bit and I can’t decide how the next part would work but I know that I will at some point in this hypothetical have to cave and figure out how to use A.I.

I could say to A.I. – hey I have this pastel money and I’d like you to design an economy using this as your currency. My understanding is A.I. could do it in under ten minutes and get this – if you asked it to do it – if you posed the same question to A.I every day for a month, it would, by day eight, be able to design an economy for Ukraine in six seconds flat. Rumor has it that no one wants to know the outcome of 28-30 days of A.I. practice and learning as it ponders the question. By then A.I. will be devising plans to take over the world’s banks.

Scary.

You are still inside my brain which is now sending shivers down my spine contemplating A.I.’s potential to blow up civilization as we know it. This possibility is looming above our heads right this minute IRL

You can commend me for using A.I. for good – for re-building Ukraine and solving the debt crisis as I quietly and humbly in my festival head accept the Nobel Peace prize.

Ok enough of that.

Let’s discuss the couple next door.

They moved in after me and they are a bit close and a bit loud. Unless you like to eavesdrop. For you children who are plugged into so much technology that you can’t hear your neighbors or people at the next table: listening-in is entertainment. It used to be all we had back in the day and you can bet we did it with gusto.

I hadn’t planned on dropping in (eavesdropping) on a twenty something couple in a black rental pop-up van with matching hats and way more gear than they can apparently keep track of. But when they squeezed themselves into the space next to me the listening–in couldn’t be helped.

Most of their chatter falls into one of three categories. Sometimes they tell each other where they are going to put something : “The nail clippers are in the glove box.” Sometimes they are asking the other person where something got put: “Have you seen the pretzels?” And for some really disturbing reason the woman next door seems to need to consult with the guy she came with before she does almost anything .

Clearly they are dating and not married. If they were married they could pull this camping off without nearly as much chit chat. -Instead, because they are dating, the chick has to try and please this guy she doesn’t know that well by consulting about whether or not to pack the cut up fruit (you can bet she’s the one who cut up that fruit).

She has to report that she is packing the sunscreen. That’s actually normal and translates. We report the packing of sunscreen in my family too, to signal that at least one person has sunscreen so we are covered there and we can all stop trying to remember to bring it. Phew. We have packed the sunscreen.

But other things like cheese and blankets we pretty much just pack up silently on our own don’t we? We wing it with a bit of coordinated effort built over years of these little trips and festivals and excursions together. We know what to do.

I guess not if we are dating. Dating, you gotta ask each other everything. You are learning how to fit in with another person. It’s not trivial. It matters. So I get why the woman is asking. She is not so much asking permission as she is gathering information about how he thinks and how he likes his stuff handled. She wants to handle his stuff, and handle it the way he likes it. He needs to ask more questions of her for this model to feel ok. Why isn’t he asking her as much as she is asking him????

When you are eavesdropping you want to tap the woman on the shoulder and say: “Sorry to butt in, but have you noticed how you are asking him what he wants but he’s not asking you how you like it?”

And just when you think the woman could do better she gets kind of controlling and anal about something – cliché. I am listening to her right now correct him about something sort of meaningless. She is right but it doesn’t make me like her very much.

Young me might have had the same unpleasant vibe she has which causes me to say that they are probably evenly matched. He’s self-centered and she is always right.

Brilliant.

So I am at this festival and I’m gonna need to stop thinking and eavesdropping and get grounded in my own day. I love these multi-day festivals but I have to pace myself and plan accordingly.

I can’t hear too much music too early in the day or else I peak too soon and by 9pm when the headliner comes on I could give a bag of kettle corn and head to my car to sleep.

I am writing in my car this morning and it’s just now 10 am and the music I wanna see starts at 1230 so no need to rush this. There is music on a stage right now and I’m doing this….

The couple next to me is doing this…they are on their way with just a bottle of water this time (they discussed it and agreed).

I have always attended these festivals by myself – except when I’ve been able to get my daughter to come.

It’s nice to be in my head just letting the thoughts flow but it gets old, too.

At some point I get tired of all these thoughts in my head and the eavesdropping and the being alone and even the music.

Then I start the car and drive home, another festival in the bag.