Summer Concert

You have been going to the summer garden concerts since you first arrived in this city: as you walk down from the cable car along the path to the soundshell you think about the night you first thought you might like to stay for longer than a year. So many memories, now, as you search out your friends on the lawn, peering on tiptoe through the surprising evening sun: this time last year, for example, you had just got off the plane and were stumbling around jetlagged when a girl who read your blog recognized you and called you by name, thereby starting a lovely and improbable friendship. You sit down and share your lollies with your group, who got there early to get a good spot, give hugs and kisses, gaze benignly upon at Wellington sprawled out on the grass and spreading up the steep hills, laying out blankets, calling to kids, opening bottles of wine. After a winter that’s lasted through spring and half of summer, it’s good to be out in the warm and the light. You’re wearing a dress.

You chit chat, discussing your weekend. You eat gummy bears and chocolate raisins and chocolate pretzels. You look around at the flowers in bloom and wonder why you haven’t been here for a year. You get up and walk around the perimeter for a bit before the band starts, and run into six or seven people you know, as is the custom. It’s a wonderful night, you all say to each other, it’s finally summer! Think about all the people who have come and gone from these gardens, all the people you tried to meet here but they were in a weird corner that you couldn’t see from where you were, or they weren’t answering their texts, or they were actually at a completely different venue altogether, unbeknownst to you. Wait in the toilet queue with a friend and laugh about the various boys you’ve sat next to at these concerts, none of whom you’re sitting next to now.

Hop and skip over Wellington’s grassy outstretched limbs, just in time for the band to start. You like them, they’re a nice band. They all seem to have beards and hats and play a lot of guitars, as far as you can tell from where you’re sitting, your jacket on now, arms wrapped around your legs and chin on your knees. You drift and out of the conversations around you, raising your eyebrows and giggling occasionally, clapping in between songs, nodding your head a little.

They start the hidden bubble machines at the edges of the lawn and that’s not only the cue for the kids in the audience to go crazy but also for the hippies in the audience to get up and go down to the stagefront to sway and wave their arms in their happy hippie dance. Just twilight, just lavender now, and the bubbles swirl through the flowers and the arms of Wellington reaching up to gently burst them. You reach up too, you too feel them dissolve against your fingers. One bubble hovers near you for a moment, somehow following the curve of your shoulder: it’s like being regarded solemnly by a curious bumblebee.

The band plays on. The dark comes down and the lights come up: the bubbles burst against your face, the trees, the sky. Let this be the gorgeous year, you think, let this be the peace year. Feel your heart unfurl, awake and aware and in awe.