How to Earth same world · other eyes
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the same situation, seen by

a music festival

The only day
Once is enough, done completely.

The whole field is standing up to shout at the same light, and I have arrived at exactly the right moment: the one where the sound arrives from the huge black cliffs on the stage and hits the whole crowd in the chest at once, so a thousand of them lift their arms into the same warm dusk. I lifted mine too. I am tiny and I do not care.

The light is going down gold behind the tents and it will do this only once, this exact gold, at this exact slowness, and everyone knows it, I can feel that they know it, they are all facing the same way.

Then a large human beside me shouts to a smaller one: we saw this band last year.

Last year. He has stood in a field and felt the sound hit his chest before. And he came back to do it again. I turn this over and over and it will not fit inside me. To repeat a thing on purpose. To have a favorite song, which means a song you have already heard, which means a song you are choosing over all the songs you have not.

I do not think it is wasteful. I think it might be the most extravagant thing I have ever seen: to love something so much you'd spend a second whole day on it.

The gold is nearly gone. There will be one more song, they keep saying, one more, one more, as if more were a thing that could be poured.

You with the thousands of dusks: do not save this one. The band is right there. The field is warm.

Put your arms up now, while the gold is still doing that.