Hempfest pt. 2

     You wake up with a mouthful of dirt and a down jacket stuffed with regret. You are lying face first in a pile of leaves underneath a few trees, next to a chain link fence that is blocking railroad tracks. You can't really feel your body other than the fact that you are experiencing an excruciating pain that begins in your Achilles heels and ends in your eyebrows. You flop your arms over, or should I say you attempt to flop your arms over as you turn your bare belly to the blue, cloudless sky.
     The last thing you can remember was eating one of those Reese's peanut butter cups. Where did you get those candies? You drill yourself with this question as you begin a line of self-interrogation that you hope will excavate the remains of your day. Ah yes, the Vietnam vet. You picture his janky smile and it warms your aching heart that feels like it just became the recipient of ten thousand Swiss army knives being dropped onto it by Yao Ming. The brown leather elbow patches on his jean jacket give you the feeling of catching fireflies on the back porch, burning a warm August night away before you had figured out the purpose of time. What the heck was in that Reese's peanut butter cup?
     You need to find this old man, you tell yourself as you try with everything you have to wrangle up the energy to hoist yourself upward, back to normalcy. You know the March of Progress picture that represents evolution? Imagine that except littered with half drank Mountain Dew Code Red one liter bottles, chewed up hot dog buns and the emanation of mental disarray. Basically, think on it like an episode of Hoarders where the person becomes buried by their own collection of old newspapers and needs the help of the producers to climb their way to safety. The Reese's peanut butter cup is your ten foot high pile of old newspapers from the Ford administration. The nameless Vietnam vet was your Carl Bernstein. You are buried by your own sense of wonderment.

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