Radiate

by Lucy Macieira (United Kingdom (Great Britain))

I didn't expect to find Croatia

I couldn’t quite believe he was a living entity and not a subconscious creation. I met him outside the campsite where he introduced me to Martha, his living-working home on four wheels. They’d seen the world together, I was jealous of her steel cladding, wilted mattress and weathered back seat, but everything was intact, including his refined smile which I found surprising. His fingernails ungroomed, his beard unwashed, his hair dreadlocked, he wasn’t much to the commercial vail of beauty, but he glowed beyond the midday sun. He’d driven in 3 hours ago, Martha was filled with New Delhi’s finest, she carried a whole colony of children’s sweatshop items on her rear seat, the delicate decadence was too beautiful for my moral intuition to decline, his eyes convinced me of another story, he told me this was his currency to live. I grabbed a pair of tie-dyed trousers and some incense in exchange for the last of my kuna, and his validation, he took my hand. I put on my idealist uniform, we both waved goodbye to Martha as we set our path for adventure. I wasn’t sure if the plan was going to work, I was so swept up in the impermanence of the moment that I held him like a torch. I felt like every experience should be nourished, and every risk should be taken, I was about to risk the impossible, and against my embedded moral inventory, for him. I led us through the gate where four security guards awaited us. One, two, three all looked like they had more interesting things to do in the glaring 37-degree sun, except one who scanned our wrists. With one eye, and one snap of the wrist my arm overtook his and guarded his naked membrane, this security guard was not about to draw haste on an experience I was yearning for. The guard looked away, we’d made it through. The colours became more vivid on the other side of the fence. Brown had shifted to a state of purple, grey to blue, orange to red. Music was pulsating from the temporary structural fibre of every man-made construction. The site was dripping in ecstasy pearls, as they heightened my own sensory boundaries. He was perched on the side of the stage that overlooked the Pacific. A beer in hand, a reefa roll in the other. The music turned to visual as the sun set over the horizon. I surrendered to the movement of exhilaration and water moving to the rhythm of conscious sound, strobes cutting waves raised me out of myself, and into the universe. He, became them, his figurative presence turned to a mist of particles, and waves gripped my physicality. I began to levitate as he held my hand. The light I held him to be, we now radiated together, separation was no longer a valid formation as the trees began to whisper. Sand footprints follow the secluded trail where we lay to welcome in dusk. I could spend the rest of my life here, but one night would have to do.