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----table of contents---- 1. monday - arrive 2. tuesday - grow 3. wednesday - metamorphose 4. thursday - die 5. friday - rise 6. saturday - love 7. sunday - burn 8. monday - leave ------------------------
1. monday - arrive The road from Reno to Gerlach and then up into the harsh Black Rock desert is a narrow treacherous affair, especially for the many imperfectly rigged trailers and overloaded pickup trucks that the crazy artistic types pilot to Burning Man. Fortunately, my companions and I had put all our big stuff in someone else's truck and were zipping along nicely in a small car. This road, route 447, is the only way in, and the only way out of, Black Rock City (BRC), the temporary city that becomes Nevada's 3rd largest for a single week every August. "Holy shit, I'm so excited!" Rob yelled suddenly as his eyes locked on the blue and green lights just beginning to appear on the nighttime horizon ahead of us. "That's the Man," observed Dave, my other companion, pointing to a tiny blue neon stick figure also at the horizon. It was impossible to tell how far away we still were, but as I, the BRC virgin among us, drove, I could tell the city was huge. Fifteen minutes later, almost exactly at midnight, we turned off 447 onto the sand. We stopped as we reached the end of a line of vehicles entering the city, and then one at a time, we inched along towards the gate. "Welcome, welcome!" grinned a tall pony-tailed man as I rolled down my window. The air was cool, dusty, and dry. The man walked around our car, checked it out quickly, then took our tickets and handed us maps and When, What, Where guides that listed hundreds of activities on offer every day. Then he waved us through. "Remember, 5 mph speed limit. No hurry, you're home now." My fingertips and toes were tingling with excitement, but I guided us along carefully at a 5 mph crawl. Small signs alongside the road carried lines of poetry about this year's theme -- Belief. "And the unicorn said to Alice, if you'll believe in me, I'll believe in you." We rolled right into BRC. In our headlights we saw people setting up camps, and we passed pedestrians in outlandish costumes and neon lights walking around and greeting each other. It was like another planet. There were exuberant shouts and the air was rife with anticipation as well as release - as if, and I got this sense, some people finally felt home. Rob could contain himself no longer, so we parked and he hopped out to go find out where we were to camp. I let out a few of my own creative howls to the moon, and then Dave and I sat watching a massive white boat-car pass us, pulsing with lights and techno music and dancers on the front deck yelling. "We're at Revealed and Dogma," Rob said when he returned, sweeping aside his black hair and smiling. BRC is laid out carefully in gigantic concentric circles, and the streets all are either radial or circular. So we drove along Dogma until we hit Revealed. We parked at Revealed & Dogma and climbed out, and then met our Loth camp friends -- the folks from the Loth collective commune in Berkeley with whom we had arranged to camp. There were 24 of them and 3 of us. We pitched our tents amid the Loth camp tepees, right on the playa (the name for the packed sand desert floor). Satisfactorily unpacked, we set out for the esplanade and the center playa, where the Man stands. We passed a huge neon red heart, and more people in lighted costumes that looked right out of Tron, the movie. There were green lasers and dance domes, and in what was to become a repetitive theme, the intense sights and momentary experiences got the three of us immediately separated. Large groups in BRC inevitably disintegrate, often down to pairs and single witnesses. Rob disappeared with his irrepressible enthusiasm, but I found Dave again, and we walked around the playa. We walked down Absurd Promenade, a street lined with dim street lights and art installations, towards the Man. An enormous magic carpet rolled by and we climbed on and rode on it across the playa with other witnesses and participants. It was one of hundreds of "art cars:" vehicles turned into art. I got compliments on my green mohawk and orange lightning-bolt sideburns, both of which the hair people back in San Francisco had done a good job with. Others appreciated my costume -- i was in all black with strings of white lights crossing my body like electrons surrounding an atom. I was disappointed the lights didn't blink as fast as I wanted -- they were more like random blinking xmas lights. but it was delightful to be participating in the expansive creative spirit visually transforming everyone. my eyes gazed wondrously at lasers bouncing off of the dance domes. I marveled at a huge sculpture of a giant's hand stuck there in the playa that intermittently shot tall skyward jets of flame from its fingertips. We climbed off and Dave happened to have a glow-in-the-dark frisbee, so he and I tossed the disc around on the open playa. The night air was delightful and redolent with soul-touching freedom. I thought to myself, Of course! Of course this exists. This is the missing piece in our culture. When so much of our culture is corporate and we live and work in worlds where only hard work and no-frills discipline is valued - and where creativity is discouraged and efficiency is the highest value - of course this place exists. All structures cast a shadow, and this is the shadow world of our brutal mainstream culture. Here creativity is not just encouraged, it's demanded; and efficiency and conformity and discipline are ignored or even derided. Everything creative is celebrated here, and everything predictable is forgotten. What would become of me - or of anyone - living here permanently instead of out there in the duller America?
2. tuesday - grow I woke sweating in my tent. the sun was beaming through the top of the dome, turning my domicile into a greenhouse. I unzipped the door and stepped into a brilliant desert day. Light breezes whipped beige playa dust around the streets, and naked people biked by to look at each other and check out the night's crop of new installations and structures. The sky was bright blue. I breakfasted on granola from the communal Loth camp boxes. It was construction day, and I got to know my campmates. I helped build our kitchen dome (a massive parachute thrown over a tall pvc pipe structure) and our living room dome (a geodesic dome made from steel pipes). dave, rob, and I also started on our project: a NYC-style front porch stoop. It was to be a tall platform with 8 broad stairs, each broad enough to sit comfortably on, descending to the ground. The sun was blinding and the heat made me feel like a prune after 15 minutes. It was hard work , and i covered my green mohawk in a broad-brimmed conical hat. We stopped often for water. Curious souls stopped and helped us build the stoop, drilling the light steel beams together, and finally attaching pieces of plywood to make the walls. rob left on his own adventures, but one woman named Brigitte, a brunette who liked to get in there with the drill and get dirty, helped us most of the day. But we still weren't quite able to finish before exhaustion set in, and it was soon time to call it a day. Some Loth souls had put together a bar in the outer playa (beyond Vision, which is the last concentric street), so we biked all the way out onto the outer playa and gazed at the sunset from seats on the sand, sipping fruity cocktails, and sitting on scraps of astroturf.
Brigitte and I walked around, from one amazing camp to the next, soaking in the bright lights and enjoying the feeling of each other's closeness. we danced at a massive dance spot in a camp called the Irrational Geographical Society, with lights pulsing all around us and into the deep blue desert sky. With the stars above us and the thousand of like-minded souls around us, the night felt fresh and young, and anything seemed possible. We smiled into each other's eyes as we danced. She was a bare-footer, one of the brave ones who walks the playa barefoot. I was worried she'd cut her feet, but she just laughed at me. And all was fine as we rode an art car back across the vast expanse of the central playa (the face of the clock). But when we got back to my camp, she promptly cut her foot on a bit of cable we had used to secure the geodesic dome. We took care of her (good thing I brought a first aid kit), and snuggled a little bit in my tent. We kissed, but it didn't seem to be the night for any more than that, and I pedalled her home to her camp on the seat of my bike.
3. wednesday - metamorphose I awoke sweating again, but feeling divine. The sun and desert looked beautiful and the feelings of love and trust that permeate BRC were beginning to work their ways deeper into my consciousness. I was adjusting to the environment. Brigette had to work in the cafe at center camp (she had gotten a discount on her ticket), and Rob again disappeared just as the serious work on the stoop was resuming. But Dave and I and a few others finished the stoop anyway. And we all celebrated with drinks and drumming on its steps. People showed up from all around, and we moved the bar from the outer playa onto the top of the stoop. From the communal work and eating, i was feeling closer with the Loth camp folks and i took out a guitar and played, and together we improvised marvelous songs about life on the playa: the "black rock city blues" lamented the parched landscape and the amount of time our parched bodies had to wait for a real drink of cool water. i was in a thin white mexican muslin shirt, and Lara, one of the Loth women, gifted me a green bead necklace that matched my mohawk. Alex, another Loth woman, gifted my feet an oil bath. and Kristina, to me the prettiest of them, danced with me on the playa to a funky argentine folk song. After lunch it was time for more exploring. Dave and i had heard about a camp called Siberia that was nearby. Evidently Siberia had brought a working refrigerator truck up and a dj was spinning inside of it. so we walked over in the midday heat and entered the refrigerator trailer, entering a paradise of cool air. I felt extraordinarily relaxed and calm, watching the beautiful people dance in the cool air. every molecule of my body tingled in the cool vibrations. when we left, the sky and the desert looked more vivid and amazing than ever before. black mountains that rose at the edges of the playa and cut into the sky looked sublime, and something about the extreme intensity affected me deeply: the playa's perfect flatness, oppressed by the sun and the heat, and then the mountains rose almost perpendicularly at its edges. and all the amazing people and exhibits around me put me in a state of utter wonder. dave asked me about brigitte and I said, as if I was deciding at that moment, that I wasn't crazy about her. I didn't miss her. Yes, she was cool, and even a massage therapist, but there just wasn't a spark there. I couldn't say much more. An art car, a house, passed by and dave said we should go for it. he rushed after it and got on, but i just waved as he dashed off. And away he went, over the playa, and across towards the man in the center.
Bored, I left the game and continued on, feeling ever more at peace with all creation. A man in a white arab headdress came up and took several pictures of me, posing me at various angles and complimenting my mohawk. he didn't seem like a voyeur, more of a participant, and i liked him. soon i got thirsty and had to go to the bathroom, and entered into one of the negative aspects of burning man. if you don't take care of yourself, you won't make it. And it's not easy to find water and bathrooms at a moment's notice. But i finally found a row of portajohns (which I later learned are located on Dogma at every radial cross street). I ended up at Center Camp, and, without thinking about it, entered the big Cafe, where brigitte was working. The cafe is the only place in the city where anything is for sale, but of course i wasn't carrying any money. i left my watch and wallet in the car on monday night and never retrieved them. the center of the cafe is a large stage and people practice fire dancing there. spinning staffs and torches and chains with fire on their ends. it's an amazing sight. I sat and watched, mesmerized for quite some time. I actually didn't want to run into brigitte, and i couldn't explain why i was in the cafe. on my way out, i stopped by a smaller side stage, where there was an open mike and people were taking turns haranguing the crowds about world religion, politics, sex, philosophy, or whatever struck their fancy. A man dressed like a soldier from saturn with a glowing silver staff and massive silver helmet shouted the fierce new prophesy for our time: it was time to awaken to the forces of mars and rise up. I felt a hand on my mohawk, and when I turned it was Kristina, the Loth woman I had danced with earlier and whom I'd been unable to ignore since the first day. She was beautiful and it was odd how happy I was to see her. She asked how I was and if I wanted to take a walk. Nothing sounded better. She even offered me some water. We walked out, across the open center playa, together, arm-in-arm, seeming to marvel at the same things at the same time: the clouds; the way the playa was a perfect canvas for art, almost like a perfect museum wall. It was delightful. We stopped at a white door set all alone on the open playa. On it was written a single word: FEAR. She went through first. I waited a minute, gazed upon the door, then made the conscious descision to enter. I stepped through my fear and went in after her. On the other side, there was no Kristina, only a door with the word TRUST on it. I went through that door too, and then found FAITH, but a sign said "faith is broken, please proceed to LOVE." So I went around the faith door, which was hanging off its hinges, and found love. I went through that door too. I found Kristina and soon we were back at Loth camp. I returned to the stoop stairs with my guitar, and Kristina and I sat there, singing songs. She told me about the work she does in San Francisco for a nonprofit legal assistance group helping native americans in Colombia. I told her about my travels in China, and then at once we remarked that sunset is the best and most beautiful time on the playa. We could feel the entire city of 30,000 let out a collective sigh -- in relief and amazement that we all made it through another brutal desert day. At sunset, the temperature mellows and the excitement builds for another insane night of glowing fire, dancing art, and loving creativity. Sitting there, playing guitar with Kristina and whomever else stopped by, feeling the divine anticipation and relief, I thought to myself this might be the best moment of my life. The Loth dinner was delicious bean burritos (we ate vegetarian the whole week) flavored liberally with playa dust (as everything was by that point). After dinner the whole group decided to go to a party a few blocks away, but, as always, the group left in twos and threes, and somehow I ended up alone again. It's one of the mysteries--and great liberties--of burning man that you never seem to be with the people you plan to be with. You end up with the people you thought you disliked, or with strangers, or all alone in the desert. It's great. There are also of course no car trips, so there's no "missing your ride" or anything. Everything is walking distance down an interesting road. I ended up alone before long, visiting scene after scene around the playa. The playa suddenly reminded me of Tatooine, the planet in Star Wars where Luke Skywalker grew up: there were all manner of funky-looking creatures roaming the desert, and land speeders and other vehicles zipping to and fro. I walked into an Irish Pub, set right there in the desert, and had a beer. Later, I ran into Daniel, a friend from San Francisco whom I didn't know was going to Burning Man at all. I also ran into Leah, a Loth woman, who was looking for the Dragon, a massive art car on which supposedly DJ Laurin was going to mix that night. I biked alone out on the playa to the exquisite temple of honor, a marvelous 3-story structure of black and white paper sculptures and gothic paintings. As many others were doing, I wrote wishes to some of my friends and family on its columns and stairs; amid the thousands of other messages, I scrawled my own, knowing all would go up in flame in a matter of days. I biked further out onto the playa, to the realm of random art structures, where I stopped to marvel at a massive chandelier that had simply fallen from the sky (or at least was made to look like it).
4. thursday - die The next morning I skip breakfast and bike with Dave and Cindy (Dave's closest Loth friend) off to a camp that supposedly has a swimming pool. We get there, but the pool is closed, so we bike to the Man. We climb the stairs on His pedestal, and enter his temple. It's full of carved wooden sculptures and shrines to creativity and beliefs of all kinds. From atop His pedestal we enjoy a marvelous view of the entire playa in the brightest and broadest of daylight. The heat feels oppressive. When we return to camp, I finally have some food and water, but I'm feeling a bit light-headed. I lie down in the big dome and begin to see all manner of interesting images on the inside of my hat: people running and dancing, cars speeding on a highway, images from football cards, fists punching random faces. The heat is penetrating my brain, even through the dome and my hat. The evil sun is after me, chasing me like a monster. I stumble into the stoop, where, luckily, both Rob and Dave are hiding from the afternoon heat. "I think I'm feeling a little sick," I say. They look at me and nod. They don't get it. I collapse into a chair and drink a bottle of water as fast as I can, though I can only take a single sip. I gaze at the ceiling. "Do you know you just passed out?" asks Rob. I open my eyes, but his face is so close I can't recognize it. He's spraying water with his spray bottle all over my body. Pouring water on my head. I hear voices outside the stoop, out on the street, out by the mountains, miles away. Maybe I should go there, out by the mountains, where I could lie down and give in to the heat. I shouldn't trouble my friends. My body is preparing to die. I should let everyone else be. And at least it's Burning Man, a cool place to die. I've had lots of good adventures. Sure, I'm stupid for not drinking enough. Next time around I'll do better. "Tony! Do you hear me?" comes Rob's voice. I mumble he should keep spraying me. Maybe pour water on my head. It's a good thing I found him. He's been gone so much of the time so far, but here he is when I need him most. Of course it's too late. The desert is a vast dry mouth waiting for any thing moist to consume - and it's found me. There's not enough water in all of BRC to hydrate me here in the desert. It all just evaporates, every drop. Deserts kill people. Like me. This is what it's like at the end. Apathy. You just see the end of the tunnel. Then the candle goes out in a final sigh. "Stay awake," orders Rob. "Dave went to get somebody." Suddenly my body shivers. All over, a huge spasm. "My body's cold now," I marvel aloud. Rob stops with the spray bottle, but maybe he shouldn't. Maybe I can trouble my friends, I think, and it's a marvelous epiphany. Maybe I can let someone take care of me! Maybe after all this lonesome life I've led, I can finally depend on someone. I cry, but there are no tears because I'm dead. "Hi," an angelic woman in white arrives, "how do you feel?" She suggests I throw up, and almost immediately I feel the need. Dave hands me a bag and I let go, throwing up in a warm disgusting stench. And some demon leaves me as I vomit, and my limbs give another delightful shiver, as if my body's shouting it isn't dead yet. Only my mind has given up. It's a battle of wills. Mind vs. Body. I'm amazed I have a body with such a will to live. "Oh my god, look at how the color just returned to his face!" Rob says. They all laugh. "He was pale gray just a minute ago, now he's purple." "Keep drinking," the angel tells me. "You're going to be fine." She leaves and then I throw up twice more, mostly into the bag. They move me to Dave's bed, and I start to feel like I actually might not die, at least not for another minute or two. I need to be moved to a jungle though--to somewhere I can really rehydrate. It's amazing people can survive in deserts at all. We humans are 83% water, and this desert sucks wet socks dry in minutes. "When you throw up, your face turns purple for a minute," says Dave. "Then it's gray again." Death takes me again, and Dave gets a different woman. This one disagrees with everything the first one said, and also starts lecturing me. She seems to want me to die, and I can't believe she even exists. She's the devil. She says I should stop drinking, that I've had enough, that I'll just keep throwing up. Is she joking? That's the only time I feel OK. It's my life she's playing with. "Maybe she's right," says Rob. "You could be getting paranoid." "Paranoid?" I cry. "But if I'm right, I die. Do we take that chance?" Maybe Rob just wants to preserve the water for himself. They all just want me to die! "You might still be dehydrated, but don't you think she probably has more experience with this than you?" asks Rob. His patience penetrates my brain. Maybe I am paranoid! My mind reels in summersaults. But if not, I'll die. But wait, if so, if I am paranoid and I have to trust these people with my life. I have to relax. No! I seize the water and drink more. Only my body can be trusted. It knows what it needs. It will ensure that I live. I drink deeply. And then I throw up again. "See?" Dave asks. "There's nothing in there. You're not throwing up anything but water anymore." I lay back and the ceiling of the stoop spins. I sigh deeply and take my first deep breath in forever. OK. I'll relax. It occurs to me that I probably won't die. My body stretches delightfully, like a cat, and I drift off into sleep for a moment. When I wake up, Alex, the Loth woman who gave me the foot bath, is sitting beside my head. She's so beautiful and kind. She strokes my forehead and tells me I'm going to be OK. I sigh again. I wonder if maybe I can even possibly endure a few more days on the playa. But it's only Thursday! We don't leave until Monday. I wake up a while later, unable to believe I'm still alive. I pinch my cheek to be sure. My body amazes me. Dave gives me some water with emergenC packets and bits of protein food. He also helps me to the bathroom four times in the next hour, then, as night falls, they move me to my tent. And other than four more trips to the bathroom, I sleep through the night.
5. friday - rise I rise late in the day, feeling 75% OK. I'm alive. I resolve to thank my body, to care for it, to eat and drink more, always, better, conscientiously. If I only drink when I'm thirsty I'll die again. I eat a full breakfast, and drink enough water for the whole day. I live in the shade, reading and sleeping. In the afternoon I pull out the guitar again, and the sounds of it are the most magical I've ever heard. The faces of the beautiful Loth communists look lovely, and we improvise more songs about the playa, love songs and blues songs and ballads about getting sick and almost dying. Halfway through a song, I feel a hand on my mohawk. It's Kristina, and we smile at each other. After the music, I find her half-napping and half-reading on a mattress in the dome. I lie down next to her and she asks where I've been. She didn't even know I was sick. "I would've taken care of you," she says in shock. We give each other massages and nap a little bit together. For the first time, I kiss her and she kisses me back gently. We get up and drink together on top of the stoop. It's our night to cook, so Dave, Rob, and I make a big vegetable stew and rice. Kristina and other Loth folks help us, and then we eat the delicious meal together. But we somehow are all separated again at night. I wait back from the group for her, and find her, and we're all set to leave together, but she still somehow escapes without me. So for most of the night I hang out with some of the other great Loth people; at other moments of the night I walk with strangers from all over. Great feelings of spontaneous love and spontaneous trust seem to be consuming all of BRC, and I've never felt happier to be alive. I cross the playa on foot, speaking to the night sky: "I'm more alive now than I was before. I died to my past and I'm more alive now than I was before."
6. saturday - love Kristina and I find each other early and promise to finally spend the day together. And we stay together all day, reading and talking. I tell her about the enneagram and Garlic & Grass and some of my other interests. She thinks it's cool that I was on the math team in high school. And when I say I even did a 6-week intensive Latin program the summer after my senior year, she says, "That's hot!" When I catch her casual but geeky reference to the schwa, we decide that we're both geeks and both like geeks. "Girls couldn't even take Latin in my school," she laughs. "Only the boys could, at the boy's school across the street." She was raised extra-conservative Catholic (and rebelled hard). It's the day the Man burns, and when the sun sets, the evening feels even cooler and more electric than normal. The whole city is palpably buzzing with preparations. I decide on a white toga that I brought and a green agate necklace, and I make a wreath for my head from the electron lights. Kristina and I walk to the Man together, along with Andrea, one of Kristina's best friends, and Andrea's boyfriend Chris. As we approach the center playa, we see most of the city's 30,000 people ringing the Man. There's an empty 200 feet between the man and the people -- apparently to protect us from the heat when the fire starts -- and we all kneel to watch. Kristina and I kiss and enjoy each other's closeness. First, the fire dancers come out -- hundreds of them, dancing around the Man with torches and staffs, juggling and twirling fire in a hundred ways. The whole scene is mesmerizing, like a primordial dance around the god of fire. The staff twirlers impress me the most, their flames dancing in expanding and shrinking rings. The whole scene looks like thousands of flames - not people - dancing with each other.
Then the fire begins in earnest, and the heat scorches our faces even at this distance. Kristina and I kiss and, knowing we'll be separated in the coming chaos, promise to meet back at camp. And then I'm off. I run in circles with everyone, dancing around the immolation. "Burn, baby, burn!" I shriek. Everyone is smiling at the thrill, the destruction of the symbol of authority. Evidently every year the man gets shorter and His pedestal gets bigger - so that authority becomes less important and the community more essential, as each year of Burning Man passes. Round and round we go, giving spontaneous embraces, and thanking the firemen who stand between us crazed fools and the raging inferno. We thank them and they thank us. We are one. Running around I decide to burn something, and looking down, I rip off my toga. I wave it above my head, pass between the firemen, and dance at the very edge of the fire, laughing and feeling an intoxicating freedom. Then I toss it in. After several more laps, I kneel beside several others who are watching the fire solemnly. A woman next to me is crying at the simplicity and beauty of the fire, and at the wonderful sense of community and commonality that pervades the desert air, and she cries about all the stupid hate and fear that goes on back in the other world. I embrace her, and pray with her for a moment - for greater wisdom, love, and truth for us all. And I also pray on my own, for some of my own blockages to be freed and burned in the flames. I want to engage more fully in my feelings in life, in the vitality and life force that flows through me moment by moment. If I had been more aware and alive to my feelings instead of living in my head, I might have taken better care of myself and not gotten sick. A naked man with viking horns and large tattoos stops before me. "What inside your soul would you like to burn?" he asks. I say something abou the blockages that keep me from my feelings, and he repeats my words again and again, and massages my chest harshly, then it feels as if he reaches inside my chest and grabs something, and hurls it onto the fire. I close my eyes and tears run down my nose. Then I open my eyes and watch the fire again. Bidding the Man a peaceful rest and my fellow burners more delight, I strike for home. It's time to find Kristina. Of course without the Man, it becomes difficult to navigate, and I get lost. Something good there is about authority sometimes! And I begin to feel cold without my toga. But then I find my way, and I stride home in anticipation. And Kristina is there, and we fall into each other's arms. Finally we are together at night! We hold each other and I suddenly become aware of the tenderness of her heart, and I whisper something about it to her and we share a beautiful moment of closeness and awareness of each other's deeper, inner life. "I'm so excited to get to know you better," she whispers. "There's so much more for us to learn." I could say the exact same words back to her, but I just nod and smile, enjoying the happiness of finding her. For now, it's burn night, and we set out with 3 other couples: Andrea and Chris; Dave and Hannah, who are actually married; and Lara and a guy she's been hanging out with named Chris. As we cross the playa, someone comments how ridiculously heterosexual we are, with our little couple-units, and we all laugh and promise to faithfully assault all forms of authority, heterosexuality included. But we're just delighted to be together. And the most amazing thing happens: we stay together the whole night. It's remarkable in the wondrous, scintillating world of Burning Man, especially on burn night, that we never get separated, but all eight of us stay together, checking out miraculous place after miraculous place and splendid artistic device after splendid artistic device. Gyroscopes and lasers and kaleidospheres. We witness Thuderdome, based on the Mad Max movies, where actual fighting goes on between people (usually friends) suspended from the top of a geodesic dome. We check out Bollywood and Bunnywood and the Temple of Initial Attraction, as well as several small fire rituals going on under the wide open night sky. We hang out for a while in a gigantic pink lounge. We also greet strangers who cross our path with kisses and fawning praise. Finally, exhausted, Kristina and I return and sleep together (platonically) in my tent.
7. sunday - burn The next day is the day of a more solemn fire: the great black-and-white temple of honor. After a day of walking the playa together, Kristina and I attend the burn together. There's a quieter freedom in the air, a feeling of lightness that comes with the lifting of burdens. The fires have burned, the offerings have been offered, and I sense a peaceful cleansing. Something is gone that was here in all of us before, and it's good that it's gone. Afterwards, having missed dinner, Kristina and I pick through Loth camp's dinner pot. We laugh, discovering we both like to eat whole cooked cloves of garlic. We also learn that in high school we both read ridiculous amounts of fantasy books -- including some of the same books. She's tired and goes to bed early, so I wander out and have a last farewell stroll through the beautiful Burning Man night. Through the lasers and throbbing dance domes and endless creative uses of light and heat and the human body, I walk, imbibing the open playa wind and standing beneath the stars. I stop and dance around a small fire with a group of strangers, engaging in their rituals and falling in love all over again with the playa.
8. monday - leave The whole amazing city returns to thin air. The Leave No Trace ethic is strong: camp by camp, everyone packs up with meticulous care. We spend an hour picking up every iota of matter on our Loth camp's quadrant of playa. As I pack up my personal things, I realize that everything is covered in playa dust -- even things that never left the tent. And not just covered in playa dust, bathed in the stuff. Nothing precious returns; the playa is the great equalizer. I also discover that the cheap camera I brought (to save my real camera from the dust), with which I took two rolls of beautiful pictures, is broken. All of those poses and moments taken for the perfect shot -- wasted. None of it will ever be seen. And so it is: transmissions between this life and that one are not easy. I just smile. And you should smile as you read this. You should know that my words, like butterflies flying around the mouth of a cave, cannot actually enter the experience of Burning Man and describe it from the inside. How can I describe with words the feeling of vitality and creativity that overcomes a weak human being in the desert when surrounded by fire? The only way to know is to go. Kristina and I exchange addresses, and then Dave, Rob, and I finally depart the wondrous Black Rock City and return to the other life. It's a long drive, and I realize, with another beatific smile, that I am changed. I have seen the life of spontaneous love and trust. And as I return to the other life, I don't know which life is real and which life is a dream.
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"The world is not made up
of atoms but stories."
