all photos by Amy Price

A friend asked me how my week at the Country fair went.  I responded that I had had a fantastic time, spent beautiful time with beautiful people, fell in love with my girlfriend all over again, bought a couple of skirts, and was happy to be spiritually refreshed and ready to work.

I have to admit that I included the last two bits of information purely to get a response from him.  It worked.

His lip curled and he asked me if I had become a girl for a week.  I laughed, but then pursued the question a little farther.  What had I become for a week?

Those three days in Veneta become a school and a temple in the hindsight of my mind’s eye.

It struck me as I was directing traffic dressed in a long, breezy skirt, tie dyed uniform shirt and lime green fairy wings (of course I had a straw sun hat and shades).

I am a character in a magical reenactment of a dream.

As the busloads of fair comers flowed into the fair I smiled and waved.  Not everyone met my eyes, in fact only a small percentage, but those that did…our eyes met and danced in giddy awareness of the proximity to the fair.  It seems strange to look back upon the moment, clinically take note of the tears of joy, and move on to the next page in the story…

The awareness of  one’s superhuman status arrives when you meet the wide eyes of the children wending their way into the fair.  The veteran fair children meet your eyes with confidence, appreciating your spectacular garb as requisite, greet you and move on.  They know where they are going.

The first comers are big eyed at seeing cartoon characters come to life.  And they haven’t yet been through the rabbit hole and into the Fair.

So, for a few hours a day I became an empowered cartoon character, directing traffic and welcoming beautiful young souls to the bazaar where they could meet souls from all over the universe.

When I was off shift I became something else.

Gender roles check their hats at the door to the fair and social mores adjust to a new reality.  Not only are gender roles different, but social attitudes take on a much more humanistic tone:  it matters little what skin color you carry when you are participating in a midnight glo-in-the-dark-juggling-free-for-all; the music jams just as hard whether you drove to the fair in a BMW or caught a lift on a hay truck; language ultimately breaks down and there are just smiles and glowing eyes.

From my shift working traffic I ease into the shade of  camp.  Back at home, where I pitch a tent every year back along the fence, there are benches filled with sharp intelligences, cold kegs of beer (Fort George Beer!), and no real expectations at all: a veritable buddhist retreat!

But here, in this wooded demense, are my best friends.  These folks come here every year because one can surround oneself purely by positive, loving people.  We flock to the fair because it’s fundamental foundation is one of love and acceptance.   All the cares wash away from our lives, sometimes immediately, but mostly it takes a day or two to acclimate to the magic: to hear the little voices in the woods.

While the front of the fair may be the theater in which children are educated, the back end is where the parents of those children, who have already experienced the process, are now learning to parent.  There is a community at the fair…carpenters and farmers, midwives and seers, doctors and cooks…all the knowledge one may need to live in harmony with this earth exists here in this setting.

Children have the freedom to learn about each other, test boundaries, explore, but in a loving way because the wood is filled with parents, and with gentle folk who realize that we are training the stewards of tomorrow on this hallowed land.

Young boys learn to speak with young girls without the confing social mores that so guide much of what we do and how we do it.  At the fair people learn to dance, unaware of social expectations, blissfilly ignorant of the designs of corporate America…we dance in exultation, in the irreverant glamour of a magical wood, in awarenes of our oneness.

So what had I become for that enchanted week?  I danced, because I cared not whether I was skilled or not.  I dressed in costume, sometimes changing wigs a few times a day, because it was fun, and because it contributed to the community.  I hugged freely and indiscriminately because I am a creature of love and so are the many creatures dancing around me.  I picked up gum wrappers and fallen sequins, because this is our world, to respect, to cherish, to maintain.  I played with children, for I too am  a child.

My higher potential flowered that week and I was whom I  strive to be…I was human.

daniel@duckspoon.com