iv_ever_dumbening_burning_man frAnk i read your responses and shake my head with wonder. we are priviledged to have you among us and i thank you for taking the time to share your wisdom and experience. burning man itself, (not even mentioning tibet, murchie's book, the silent language of rocks, the potola, or sharing hdrogens with cats) is cause for extensive consideration. oh, the things you must have seen there...please indulge us. tell us of people you met, other experiences you had, feelings, emotions, lessons, anything that stands out in your memory as landmarks of your soul. 020115 ... ever dumbening here's something totally unrelated (or not) until i can answer this question, this question as vast as the others, this question as vast as the playa is hot and dry and burning: danny gottlieb drawing squares in my ears with wood meeting metal, crisply ticking tic tic tic tic tic tictic tictic tic tictictic tic tic | | | || ||| | |||| || | a ceiling fan in new orleans with the fractal jazz rhythm of pull-chain bead on glass, riffing, i mean really riffing, lulls my tingled skin after a few hours of shared heat The desert will arrive soon. 020115 ... ever dumbening If I am brave enough and dedicated enough, this could become really long. It will come out in washes, shorter and longer. Thank you frAnk, for giving me this opportunity, for nudging me towards myself. I wrote a bit (scraps really) after my first trip to the desert in 2000, but 9/11 (one week after Black Rock City shut down for 2001) so spun me that I have yet to write from this year's experiences. Burning Man has changed me, has unleashed from "deep within [me] a beast shouting that the earth is exactly what it wanted." _____( * )_____ ______( *** )______ _______( * )_______ ________( )________ _________) (_________ ________( )________ _______( )_______ ______( )______ _____( )_____ -the man Let's start with a little self-indulgent map. How did I get to Burning Man? What really conspired to bring me to this spacio-temporal head of a pin? Moved to California in 1983. Went to UCLA undergrad. Met Marc and Christy there and then followed them to New Orleans, which is where I met Colleen. Colleen and I went to China together. Upon my return to the bay area from China, I learned that an old acquaintance, Kate, had been to China too. Kate and Patrick and I became strong friends. I BLAME THEM!!!! And I thank them more than they care to be thanked. August 31, 2000. Ripping up highway 447, about an hour from the playa, I have Tchaikovsky 5 (a symphony I know intimately from having played it almost 14 years earlier) blaring. Capriccio Italien follows and I get closer. The clouds and lighting above Pyramid Lake proclaim that, indeed, this is the correct path. My smile has gotten to the point of cliche, I am a high tension wire: crackling, buzzing. Pulling up along the last stretch, I can finally see the ancient dried bed of what was once Lake Lahontan. I see the dust trail left by a vehicle ripping across the salt flats. Soon I am on this dust; within seconds, a micro-fine silt begins to accumulate on every inch of my car. I am laughing out loud. [I've been laughing since halfway up I-80, in fact, from being able to spot my soon-to-be neighbors.] I haven't even seen or done anything yet. I purposefully did not look at photos or the descriptions of any camps before going. I walk up to a booth to grab my will call ticket. Standing there I am clobbered by the smell of sage, that sweet southwestern sage, so delicious it borders on cognac. Chemical! I mention my delight at the scent to the person inside who says that it was just given to him by a woman from New Mexico. He offers part of the gift that he just received; I accept. It sits in my car for the duration of my stay. I am immediately part of the community. I give a frozen juice packet to the man who takes my ticket. It is hot and dry. The chain continues. The greeters say, "Welcome home." You cannot know what this means until you have heard these words in this place. A stranger, two words, then goose bumps. And again as I type. I pull my car to the intersection of 6:30 and Knee. Dust swirls, I walk into center camp, get my friend's 'address' and return to my car. The winds are starting to gust to forty miles per hour. I can barely see the 'street' in front of my car, which is rolling at idling speed. The rains add their opinion, but it's the wind and dust that comprise today's big weather. I haven't stopped smiling and laughing for about the last hour and a half. I finally reach the spot where my friends are camped. The winds stop. The dust. It is a part of you for every second you spend at Burning Man. You carry it with you always; months and years later it remains, reminds. Within a few minutes of my arrival, someone has drawn the symbol of the man in the dust on my window. The smile won't go away. The last year and a half of my life began on that day. ---end of one--- 020116 ... ever dumbening sorry about the drawing at top i'm an eeeeediot should've known better 020116 ... ever dumbening A vague memory from my childhood, a year in Germany, has my bedroom filled with criss-crossing strings and my friends and I following the threads to the small gifts tied to their ends. The little thread--the self-indulgent map--I followed above leads to the gift of Burning Man itself, but once on the playa the gifts are innumerable, the threads too dense to untangle. The gifts on the playa take an almost infinite number of forms. I loan a pen to someone standing at the Mausoleum so she can name and release her loss to the imminent fire, and I am handed a flattened penny pressed with words and a picture to remind me of where I got it. I stand at the burning of the Temple of the Mind, the rain and wind conspiring, and _I_ am the gift, the only one with an umbrella that night. I am only passing on the nursing I received earlier. And this scene, repeated endlessly: lounging just beyond the persistent eye of the sun, I either give or receive something cooling, something life-giving: frozen sweet coffee, kiwi, grape, gaspacho, a jagged cube of cheese, runts candies (dextrose!), water, a shoulder massage, a finger from a third hand to assist the knot needed for tonight's costume. Another level is the level of service. People building and repairing things are assisted by complete strangers. The whole event, in fact, is a gift of labor that we all give to each other. Teaching: my campmates return with stories of creating absinthe; I return from two hours in a resonant yurt with my new found skill, singing two notes at once; the Mayor says, "Just follow my fingerings; you know these songs, right?" Washing: hands wash hands and feet and hair. Serving: here, have a sno-cone. This is a gift economy--there are NO sponsors, NO vendors--you give and receive. But the level beyond love is the gift-of-the-hidden, the gift-of-discovery. One aspect of this is simply following a dim light out into the blackness, the dustiness, and finding a beautiful or thoughtful or whimsical piece of someone else's heart and mind. The truly fantastic, though, is when you "get it," when you find and unravel the little hieroglyph placed like a land mine intended for a select few. One received, one given: Received: Sitting in a phone booth (remember, there is nothing on this dried lake bed until we bring it there!), tired, trying to allow my brain to collect the strays, I look out across the playa and see a red light about a half mile away. The light is tall and thin. Moving my head from its resting spot on the booth's glass I notice some motion in the light. Slowly my thoughts travel back to my knowledge of physics--phase, frequency, some damn something. But I'm just out of the moment because I know there's an image I'm not seeing. I give a bronx cheer, knowing that that is what always makes my LED alarm clock's numbers dance. No luck. I keep trying and think I see a dancing man. I give up and finally leave. The next night I'm walking with friends and telling them of this red light. They laugh at my foolishness. We eventually approach the red light, with me swearing there is something there. Steve is standing with his back to the light and turns quickly to look at it--that's it!--horizontal, not vertical. We shake our heads back and forth and see the image of the man spread out from the narrow red beam: caterpiller becomes butterfly. _____(____*____)_____ ______(__***__)______ _______(__*__)_______ ________(___)________ _________)_(_________ ________(___)________ _______(_____)_______ ______(_______)______ _____(_________)_____ [ had to try again :) ] Given: About six weeks after the event, there is an afterparty in San Francisco called Decompression. In 2000 the weather on the playa was cold and rainy, hardly what one expects from the August desert. But Decompression was a warm and clear indian-summer night in October. So I decide to wear the Roman senator costume. But I want a banner to go along with it, so I get out some particle-board and a jig-saw and carve a sign that has the letters SPQBM. Of the thousand or two who see my standard, three get it, and their reactions are explosive and priceless. I give and receive in one instant. _That_ is Burning Man. ---end of two--- 020120 what's it to you? who go blather from