The Morning After the Motion Notions...

It’s almost 2:00 in the morning. I am standing in a farmer’s field talking to a grown man in a teddy bear costume. I am fairly sure he’s speaking English…the “early-morning-and-I’ve-had-way-too-much-to-drink” dialect.

 

“Ivy um veezee,” he says, punctuating the statement with a warm and fragrant belch that’s a little too close to my face for comfort.

 

“What?” I ask.

 

“I vum vee zee,” he says again. Louder. He’s swaying slightly.

 

He’s looking at me through heavily lidded eyes waiting for a response. There’s a crooked smile on his face. It’s already hard enough to hear him. The music goes boom boom b'boom boom boom in the background, the same tempo you would hear in your ears if you were about to have a heart attack.

 

A pretty blond in a kitten costume leans in. Since I make it my personal business to pay attention to anything pretty blonds say to me, I listen.

 

“He is saying he’s from BC,” she shouts. Her breath smells of pot, tobacco and beer.

 

The teddy bear guy nods excitedly.

 

“You understood that?” I ask Miss Stinky Kitty.

 

“Of course,” she says. She’s still swaying to the music. Everyone’s swaying to the music. Except me. Boomboomboomboom…boom…BOOM…BOOM…b’boom boom boom.

 

“Iva Bee Zee,” the teddy bear tells me proudly. Again.

 

Having never been faced with a geographical admission like this before, I am not sure what to say. “Good for you,” I tell him.

 

“Ay-oo,” he says, beaming at me as he claps his hand on my shoulder, like a am a long lost but beloved brother.

 

“You’re welcome,” I tell him.

 

Satisfied, he melts back into the crowd. I realize the song pounding out of the speakers was once “Shattered” by the Rolling Stones. But it’s been boom b'boom boomified by someone, who apparently hates music.

 

I look up and see ribbons of green light arcing through the air, playing off the smoke from pot pipes and cigarettes and campfires. (I love the smell of pot. There was a time…never mind.) It is a surreal moment. Hell…it’s a surreal evening.

 

I am at “Motion Notion” – Alberta’s answer to the Burning Man festival. Thousands of young people are here. They all wear handmade costumes. Most are animals. I recognize some elven characters and a ton of people from Star Wars. The skies are alive with lights flickering and flashing, exploding, pulsing and thumping in time with the music. (The aforementioned boom boom boom.) And I can’t find my wife.

 

Since it’s the middle of the night, shapes move all around me. It’s like a rock concert run by people with a molten crack pipe who have decided to journey to Mars in their minds.

 

(Earlier that night, I finished a three hour career making magic and balloon animal walkabout for the good people of Jackfish Lake. I’m exhausted. I’d planned to go home and write more on my second novel…but I got to missing Sheree, who has been at this festival for hours. I decided to drive back out to see her. I arrived at a little after eleven…when the party was just getting started.)

 

I had no idea. None. Motion Notion is Vegas having a bad drug trip, it’s exuberant youth partying and laughing – it is one of the most surreal places I’ve ever been.

 

I dial Sheree again. The website warned cell phone reception sucked. The website was right.

 

I wait. Then: “Hi! This is Sheree and you’ve reached…” the same message I’ve gotten twelve times. No responses to emails…and only one telephone message.

 

A girl leaps onto the stage where the Boom Boom DJ is now playing a dubiously re-mastered version of “Every Breath You Take” by the Police. She sways in time to the boom boom and it appears, after careful (if somewhat near-sighted examination) she’s not wearing any pants…or actually…anything on her lower regions. People stop swaying for a moment and applaud…and then realize that the “nude look” is simply part of a cunningly designed costume.

 

I see my new teddy bear friend waving at me from across the crowd. I suspect he wants to come over and burp on me some more. He begins a shuffling stagger my way. I cleverly slink out of the area.

 

Between the stages is pure Stygian darkness, with indistinct shapes shambling through it. A man invites me to join him in the bushes, presumably for a rousing game of Monopoly. I pretend I don’t hear him and dial Sheree again.

 

Her chipper little voice comes on again “Hi! This is Sheree…” I sigh and shut the phone. I miss my wife and I am tired.

 

My one clue to finding her is in the single voice mail she’s been able to get to me. In it, she tells me she is going to see a light show. Of course going to see a light show at Motion Notion is sort of like going to see a priest at the Vatican. But Sheree went to Bon Jovi on Thursday and Extreme Fights on Friday…and, since I kinda like her, I have begun to miss her. I would like to find her. But there are thousands of people here. It's pitch dark in areas not lit by the frenetic lights and I am seriously tired.

 

I flag down one of the shadow people. He’s an ewok, I think…and I ask him “Where’s the main stage?” I am reasoning that if there is a BIG light show, it’s gonna be at the main stage.

 

The kid looks at me for a moment.

 

“It’s up this trail, sir,” he says. “Can’t miss it.”

 

“Did you just call me ‘sir?’” I ask. (If you’ve been following this Photostream (and who hasn’t?) you know I have decided to brood of late about how old I’ve gotten.)

 

The kid smiles and nods vigorously, causing his furry little ears to shake.

 

“Is that because you think I’m old?” I ask.

 

“Well…ummm…,” he says…and shuffles uncertainly for a moment...and the slides back into the darkness before I can feed him his own tongue. Respectful little shit.

 

I check my watch: nearly two-thirty. I am really tired. I can’t find Sheree. I wander toward the next set of lights (telling myself I am NOT a moth) and when I get there, I see vendor carts…one of which is serving hamburgers – which I consider a food group.

 

I order one, grumbling only slightly at paying six and a half bucks for it. Still, I’m hungry and surely for that kinda dough it’s gonna be a great burger. The twelve year old doing the serving hands me a piece of burned meat wedged into a patch of grease between two sides of bun.

 

I add onions and mustard and some kind of white stuff that isn’t mayo and settle my butt down at a picnic table beside two anorexic girls. One turns to me.

 

“Are you security?” she asks. (I suspect she's supposed to be a vampire princess.)

 

“Nope,” I return around a mouth full of stuff.

 

“Are you someone’s dad?”

 

I look at her. “Yes.”

 

She nods. She is well into her cups and appears to be on the edge of tears. She bites her lower lip uncertainly before speaking. “Just let the kid be herself, okay, sir? She’ll come home when she’s ready. It's just a party...kids need to party. Okay?”

 

A couple of thoughts war in my mind for dominance. Getting called “sir” twice in one evening is disheartening. But getting called "sir" by a pretty young woman (even though a slightly smeared trickle of blood is working its way down from the corner of her mouth) is especially discouraging. I sigh and explain that my daughter has five children of her own and is probably home right now. With them.

 

She looks at me blankly for a long moment and then nods. With a half wave, she and her friend rise and wander off into the shadows.

 

I finish my hamburger. I have tried texting Sheree. I have tried calling her. Nothing. I resign myself to sleeping alone in my car. I return to it and recline my seat. I go to sleep. Under all of it is the steady boom boom b’boom of techno crap. I unpack my iPod, turn on my kinda music (Back in Black, if you must know), plug in my earphones and leap joyfully off a mental cliff and into the downy softness of an exhausted sleep.

 

(taptaptap)

 

...tap...tap...tap

 

Tap. Tap tap tap tap.

 

TAP TAP TAP!!!

 

It’s not quite three. I have been sleeping for less than 45 minutes. I open one eye. A girl in a ragged Star Wars costume is knocking her metallic ring against the window. I used to dream about such things. (Where were all these women when I was eighteen?) Now I am just tired...easing into cranky. I roll down the window.

 

“What?” I ask…because this is all I can manage.

 

She looks at me. Her eyes are heavily lidded. “Sorry, man. Wrong car.”

 

She stumbles off into the boom boom b'booming darkness and I roll up the window, mutter something unpleasant and go back to sleep.

 

CRACK!!!!!

 

Thunder…so loud it shakes the car. Seriously. I have been dreaming and am now instantly awake.

 

I open the other eye (since variety is the spice of life) and peek out. Rain is pelting down like so many tiny cannon balls against the hood of my car. There’s a storm all around me. But the boom b'boom booming music continues. Are these kids not smart enough to get out of the rain? Are they ever gonna go to sleep? I remind myself I am on their turf...I came here. Still...damn, I'm old, I think -- and experimentally flex my two remaining muscles.

 

I crank up the iPod and go back to sleep.

 

Morning.

 

It’s breaking like a golden curtain over the skies. I know that sounds flowery, but that’s what it looked like. Golden light. Brilliant. All over the sodden field.

 

I get out of my car, stretch, grab my brand new Nikon and go off to take pictures of the morning after the night before.

 

The site is a sodden muddy mess. I have cleverly worn the only shoes I own with absolutely no grips whatsoever and I move in what must be described as a controlled slide around the site, taking pictures of the carnage. Music is still boom booming somewhere.

 

My phone vibrates with a text message…

 

…from my Sheree.

 

I answer and we have a short discourse about how much she missed me and what an idiot I am for driving right by her in the complete dark (not psychically divining her location) and how we really need to see each other.

 

I get instructions on where she is and put the Gnomemobile (my car) into gear as I slide down the slick road to find her. I see her. She smiles broadly, waves and blows me a kiss…and my heart does a brief happy dance.

 

“I don’t sleep well when you’re not there,” she tells me when we're together.

 

I smile and hug her. She asks me if I am hungry. I explain that I left home in a hurry after my LONG SHOW which I did to SUPPORT US because I really wanted to see her and all I packed was an Aero bar and some rice crisps. I admit I am hungry.

 

She calls me an idiot with the survival skills of a rodent contemplating something in the distance as it stands in the middle of a highway. But she's smiling at me...and that's when I know I am home again.

Done