Cul-de-sac

She sits in her small black truck in an affluent suburban cul-de-sac. The road is somewhat narrow leading in, but at the end, where the road dead-ends in a row of shrubs, the asphalt opens wide, creating a circle where any car can turn around fluidly.
There are two spots of shade on either side of the street. Her car is parked beneath one, next to an old yellow fire hydrant and a five foot tall row of shrubs. In the other swatch of shade, an occupied mail delivery truck sits with the motor turned off, the mail-person is just barely visible below the reflection of autumn leaves on the windshield.
There are three large houses that face the cul-de-sac. They are many feet away from the street, shielded from the asphalt by long driveways and ivy and bushes. There are mature trees and shrubs that separate the houses from each other, with ample space between them for fencing and foliage.
Parallel to the cul-de-sac, just forty feet away from the houses and the nearly deserted street is a fairly busy road. Sitting on the cul-de-sac, she can hear a busy street not too far away.
She can hear the sounds of the school on the opposite side of the busy street. Children are playing, calling to each other on the large carefully tended field. Little boys scream with pleasure as a goal is made. There is a repetitive sound of green balls hitting the floor of a tennis court.
Cars pass regularly on the street behind the houses and cul-de-sac. Occasionally a truck with its powerful diesel engine winds its way through the neighborhood and passes the school.
Her car adds to the music, something is ticking mechanically, though the engine is turned off. In the trimmed bushes beside her car, hiding in the thick bed of fallen leaves, a small animal scavenges for food, crumpling leaves as it walks and scuffles the underbrush.
A gentle breeze passes through the two open windows of her truck. It is soft, sending a cool touch over her skin and rattling the long pieces of hair that hang on either side of her face. She sits in the car, her eyes closed, listening to the chorus of sounds that fill the cul-de-sac with vibration.

Party

It is a huge plaza, surrounded by large gray buildings. On the west side, there is a silver dome outlined by golden ridges, on top of a rectangle of concrete punctured by curved little windows. On the north there is a tall solid box of glass, crisscrossed by gleaming metal columns. On the east, two are two large, white complex structures, of many corners and curves, like mazes that have been pulled inside out. On the south, there is a flat long box of black metal and polarized glass. In the middle, there is grass crisscrossed by concrete pathways and some small structures. There are tall poles and some small signs. On the top of one pole, a big flag waves.
The entire place is full of people, noise and music. The streets that separate the middle area from the buildings are covered in dancers and large trucks, covered in symbols, adornments and puppets. Each truck has a set of large speakers pumping out loud techno. Each truck is playing something different, different key, different tempo, different feel. As you walk around the space you create your own music mix, you can step back into something you left before, move forward into something unknown, or stay with a deep trance beat that signals the end of times with corrugated chords and earth moving bass lines. Around each truck many have chosen to stay… and they dance, move, dance, touch, dance, smile, jump, dance, kiss, grind…dance.
A skinny Asian girl wearing a light blue polka dot dress dances atop one truck, her arms up in the air, her eyes covered by sunglasses. Next to her a girl in a jean miniskirt and a light brown vest shifts her hips back and forth, sometimes looking at her, sometimes looking at the crowd that bubbles shapelessly on the street below her, like an enormous amoeba made of tiny painted heads. The truck has black metal horns and a white skull painted on its cabin, an invocation of a older violent task that is now rejected. An older man in black leather pants and no shirt dances to the right of the two girls. His eyes are looking inwards, his movements are more daring, less about what will be seen and more about what is travelling through him.
Another truck is covered by blue Styrofoam structures that simulate some kind of underwater creature. It has many eyes, and many tentacles that extend from all sides of its face. On top of that truck, a couple dances with sexual abandon. A girl in tight black pants grinds her hips against a boy in shiny spandex, wearing a vest and a yellow hat. The girl leans all the way into her partner, allowing all her energy to flow through the repeated movement of her hips… back and forth and around. Her partner pushes hard against her, grabbing her by the hips and pulling her closer. They both hide their eyes behind dark glasses and a veneer of nonchalance.
There is an old school bus, drowned in people, inside and out. Through the little windows you can see movement inside, people running back and forth, a shoulder, a back, a head suddenly sticking out then pulling back in. On top of the bus there are more people. A quartet, two women and two men, looking down at the crowd, smiling, waving and swaying their hips to the booming beat. On top of the yellow cabin, a man sits cross legged. He wears a long white robe and a very long white beard, which extends all the way to his stomach. His eyes are closed but he is very much present in the space and with the music. His shoulders roll back and forth ever so slightly, in time with the beat.
Among the crowd,a gray haired hippie sits on a lawn chair, his left hand on a beer bottle which he drinks from every now and then, his right hand on a white dog that squats beside him. The dancers roll past him and around him. Both his eyes and the dog’s follow each little group, each lonely straggler, each loving couple, each group of tough young boys, each pair of sweating girls… as they dance and walk and run and sway and grind right past him. He nods his head, pets his companion and smiles. Only he is aware that this party has been going on forever.