8pm. I am still
garrulous and ever so slightly
wired. But on the whole I feel good. I am
sunburned, on my scalp (through a hat), on my face (lightly, through the factor 30 sun cream) and on my wrists (where I didn’t apply the sun cream evenly). This not something that I will have to worry about again for a long time. Four days to go. Yikes! Four days. So much to do.
Daylogs, IMHO serve, amongst other things, a factual purpose. This is life. I neither ask you to accept or judge. I just say, This is one small part of how it is on planet earth.
I awoke at 5am on Sunday morning, cursing an alarm that hadn’t gone off at 4am. Birds were stirring in the trees outside. I hastily dressed and ate and was on the road, heading out of Cape Town by 5:40, got to the vortex venue, the old familiar apple farm one last time by 6:30, as the sun was about to peep over the horizon. A small outdoor party as vortexs go, and many of my friends not there. I was going anyway – why break a habit now of all times, when the largest habit-break of them all is mere days away. The dancefloor was back at the end of the farm, in the end of a valley sonically isolated from the national road and the neighbouring farms. The apples and pears on the trees were almost ripe, in this late mummer.
And it’s good down to the very last drop.
I took the last of my meth orally as always, washed down with juice. I am pleased that it has run out. It’s a mind game – I won’t throw it away, I like it too much. I won’t get more, I like it too much. When it’s not there I know I won’t care about it. It’s only moreish when you’re on it or it’s fresh in your mind. You may think that I'm struggling with this. Heck no, I'm enjoying it.
The trick is to enjoy it to the fullest and then move on before it turns your will to stone.
The music was. Techno is not easily described in words. Good anyway. “Rave” is one of those words that encompasses opposite meanings – to talk agitatedly at length, making a complex point, and the opposite: to dance for hours to to non-verbal, profoundly non-narrative music.
At times, I was in the trance zone, where my body is on automatic pilot and my mind just floats above it all. Later I felt sore and tired.
When the day heated up, they turned on a sprinkler system which proceed to make a slowly spreading mud pool. By the end of the day, several people had rolled in it, or thrown each other in it. (The catbox crew didn’t believe me that I had met the African mud-people earlier today, so there - it's the literal truth!)
I found a stall making and selling blown glass - some earings, some hash-pipes. The woman running it was from Massachusetts. My first questions were the where were you a few weeks ago, when I needed this and Are you from arrgen, they make badassgglass just like this over there.
I asked if she had something suitable for smoking DMT, and she made a pipe for me over the next half hour, out of plain glass, for only R60. Kewl! Now if only she had been around a few weeks ago, it would have been useful – this is a “just in case” measure, as I really felt the lack of a suitable pipe then. More stuff, another posession. Oh well.
She seemed worried that I might use it as a speed pipe. I didn’t explain to her that smoking speed is a personal line that I hope to never cross – I can fully understand what she said about people who had done it and gone rapidly downhill.
I met T-, who is on holiday from hio job doing web design in London UK, and whom I haven't seen in a couple of years. I got his number to call him when I get there.
This was one of the few times that I have stayed at a vortex until the music was turned off. This happened at about 3:30pm. On the whole great fun, if a rather hot day. The last vortex or otherwise Cape Town outdoor trance party that I'll be at in a long time. I feel I've been there and done that.