pockets full of sand

When I got home from Dunestock '06 last Friday night, I had sand everywhere. In the rolled-up legs of my jeans, filling my pockets, crunching between my teeth, making my eyes teary. I shook my head and heard grains of it skittering across the tile of my bathroom floor. I guess it's inevitable when you go to a music festival set on a 50-foot-high sand dune. I didn't go to Dunestock for the music, and thank goodness for that because if I had I would have been sorely disappointed (but more on that later). I went just to see it. And if only for the spectacle, it was worth it. We drove just 30 km or so out of town to the place where the dunes supposedly sing as the wind whistles across the sand. (Due to the off-key screeching of Irish ballads, however, the music of the natural landscape was unfortunately drowned out.) As we approached from the parking area, we beheld a very respectably sized stage facing a huge parabolic sand dune that acted as a natural ampitheatre, accentuating the oddly monotonal cover of The Edge's guitar solo from With Or Without You. At the foot of the dune was a large flat area where most people were sitting. Some people, like our motley crew of Cornell employees and Turkish architects, were perched mid-dune, carving out benches and trying to avoid the constant cascade of sand descending from the feet of toddlers throwing themselves willy-nilly across the euphorically forgiving terrain of the dune. Still others ringed the upper edge, with a bird's eye view of everything: the stage, the beery, dancing expats, the 4 corners of the constellation Orion piercing through the humid sky, the 3/4 moon suspended directly overhead. Mostly we just lounged on the dune sipping our contraband and wincing at the painful covers of "Summer of '69", "Cherry Bomb", and other variations on Aerosmith and Neil Young. Autumn and I ate overpriced chicken shawarma and wondered at where all the handsome expats we saw there usually hung out. Definately not at Rydges, our usual Thursday night haunt. There must be a bar for good-looking expats that we just haven't found yet... At one point we heard a country tune and I took Autumn out in the dusty patch in front of the stage for a lesson in the 2-step. The yellow lights made everyone's pallor sort of sickly but beautiful in a way, too, in that hazy romantic way that stage lights can make almost anyone into a sex symbol. At one point there was a very talented jazz ensemble that took the stage, but it was a short set, and as the next band started up (named "Hard Khor" for the district of Doha from which the members hailed, called Al Khor--very funny) we decided it was definately time to head home. But before we left we *had* to climb up to the top of the dune and then...what? Should we run down? Slide? We decided to take the most infantile approach and descend the dune log-roll style, like you do when you're 10 years old on grassy hills at the playground. Sand, sand, sand everywhere! Filling my mouth and my pockets and my ears. My hair was thick with it, my nose itchy. But it was so worth it. Though Autumn and I somewhat ill-advisedly started together and clonked heads a couple of times on the way down, we managed to avoid injury and any major humiliation. It reminded me of the time I almost got kicked out of the Starwood ampitheatre in Nashville for rolling down the hill at a Spin Doctors concert, and I knew it was the only appropriate way to close the festival.

So, this Friday I head off to Turkey for 10 days. More postings and photos to come after that trip. I hope this finds all of my loved ones well, and I hope that spring is finding you in your respective latitudes. Don't forget to leave comments. I love to read them!

Lots of sandy love,
Emelie