What's your limit when it comes to close quarters in the woods? Tents pitched back to back, barely a path between the thin nylon bubble that is your abode for days. You open a window flap and there's the neighbor. You step out your door in pajamas, there's the neighbor. Coolers emptied of their water in dusty, bustling walkways that serve as the inroads to this Tent City at music festivals all over the country. Up and down the alleys there are people brushing their teeth, discreetly spitting in the nooks and crannies around their temporary homes. Peeing goes on too, sometimes not so discreetly, late at night outside your window. Outside the City the Port-o-Lets are lined up, ready and waiting for the thousands of people that would NEVER use these odoriferous pods otherwise. Thye'll walk a mile for a spit of water to bathe with. More likely you walk around with dirty feet for several days or take a bird bath in that dusty pathway in front of your tent.
We manage to accept these short term, no luxury lifestyles with gusto and a sense of verve because we get to be with our pals. We've all had the Festival Koolaid and will turn a blind eye to those Port-o-Lets and dirty feet for a long weekend just so we can spend time with friends we adore to listen to often great, sometimes lousy music and dance our asses off in either case.
But, just a thought, what if we ended up in these very same circumstances- a Tent City with limited amenities-because suddenly our homes got blown away by a dastardly hurricane or similar catastrophe? Would our attitudes be the same? Full of fun and frivolity, patting ourselves on the back for being able to give up our cushy cyber lives for a few days because we know that Sunday evening we'll be back in the sanctuaries of our homes: clean sheets, clean feet, clean toilets. Just a thought...
( Special thanks to my Tent City friends for once again thinking, foolishly I'm sure, that I might be an okay companion for Floyd Fest 2010. We did, actually, have a helluva good time. Living the Good Life no matter what the conditions are is all about the people...)
