rave sketch - prose poem of refilling a camelback

To refill his Camelback, Aden leaves the dance floor for the first time since it was night and not early morning. His bare heels don’t sink in stomped alluvium anymore, and he can hear to think. His ears are ringing. At last, the idea of coming down, or the idea of the idea, the ability even to countenance that this has to end and there has to be a deficit to pay, settles somewhere in his thoughts like the condensation in a kitchen after a big loaf of bread has baked. He’s surprised to find his strides are almost lithe, fresh. Atmospherically, there’s little happening – milder than cool, birdnoise just audible above the pounding kick drum, which seems ridiculously out of place now, magpies mainly but also kookaburras, cockatoos, maybe a distant cockcrow. Other birds an enthusiast or someone with the app could name.

At the trough, all the taps are in use. Face washing, tooth brushing, one man refilling a fifty-liter drum, clear plastic so thick it’s bluish, like crystal, which must supply his entire campsite. The distance from the dance floor is such that only in a squint can Aden hear music. Miraculous how the natural amphitheatre can staunch so much of the bleeding, Aden thinks, grey mud between his toes. Nausea at the smell of fresh espresso, a feeling of invincibility, a feeling of being on the verge of collapse, maybe death, maybe madness, maybe outright crying as he steps up, fumbles the bladder onto the end of the muddy aperture and starts the pour. Eerie signposts, all feeling, tropical fruits under waxed paper under sunlight such as will soon beam over the hills, sweat tents empty. Not Lily – she could sleep through a bushfire.

He has a sudden urge to void his bowels, to be purged of absolutely everything. The calm is like none he can remember and yet much of the driftwood running on in his mind is black, suicidal, simply evil. He shakes his head, as if to shake off a blowfly, concentrates on filling. Progress is slow – the water tank must be on its last legs. Shifting position so that his back digs into the edge of the trough and his arms jag back, armless, Aden stares beyond the campgrounds into country. On the ridge, some of the gum trunks look to be blackened. Black Saturday was four years ago, he says aloud after a time. Black Saturday, was four years, ago. Misbehaviour infiltrates his lips. A Japanese hippy, holding a bottle of bargain store shampoo, taps his shoulder and says, excuse me, but you are finished.