Sitting in my new favorite café in SF: The Blue Jay café. I waited till it opened for breakfast, which if you know me, you know is a great feat of will power and possible death for all parties in my way.

 

I arrived to the temperate climate of northern California yesterday morning at roughly 5 in the am. Exhausted and dusty we unloaded the leftover wares of a week of life. We did our best to leave no trace on the playa [the name of the dry lake bed where 40,000+ people call home for a week at the beginning of each September; the concentric circles that surround an effigy 12 stories in the air of a man, arms raised to sky, waiting for his eventual immolation] but we have no qualm of leaving a trace on the streets of San Fantastic. Our trajectory can be mapped in the dust lines that we leave behind at each step. People in the know ask as they pass how the ‘burn’ was. Though there was few of those walking around the steep streets as the sun rose except for the few dog owners that start their routine with a jaunt and a scoop. Our motley crew was haggard and sustained injuries in multitudinous ways.  With a little flare for hyperbole we could be portrayed as a band of heroes and heroines returning victorious from some adventure saving a princess or slaying a dragon or something else of valor. Dave had battled sickness and old age… I mean back pain, Strider had a toe laceration that seemed to have gained a gravitational pull all of its own, Haley had various bumps and bruises along the way that would suggest we were living in a sitcom with a penchant for physical humor, and your narrator had a not so narrow escape with a sign post avoiding another biker with less panache for driving leaving me prone in the make shift street with a ankle injury that laid me up for the remainder of the week.  This all on top of the usual dry skin cracking and crusty shower less week of blind rushing around an impromptu city, I would love to see us from an outside vantage out of context. I think I would raise both eyebrows.

 

In an effort to describe the event I should start with my own personal intention:

This was my second year at burning man. The first was as a result of a relationship, and the second was the polar opposite. This year was about me finding a niche for myself, finding a community with out precedent. Like making friends in the line to pay for groceries I chose to be thrust into a community of strangers [some more so than others [strange that is]] I am one for comfort and safety, so this is a leaf turned over. I must admit that I wanted to grab that leaf and turn it right ways and hide under it at times, but there was no shelter to be had and my leaf was metaphorical so there I was in the dust self imposed arms open and wincing at the possibility of what would fly into the orbit of my span or what wouldn’t.  Like a poem Burning man is what you make of it and what you allow to penetrate or project. This year was different than last, because I am different and because nothing stays the same no matter the intention of conservation.

The event is 22 years old and is now reaching its cap at 50,000 people. The event is named after the huge wooden man that is burned on the Saturday night of the event. Slowly the bureaucracy of litigation is filtering through the protective embryonic membrane. The joy of the event is the freedom of expression, in an environment that is barely able to sustain life. What this creates is an open forum for all things imagined on a human level. There is no system of checks and balances except for “does it work?” There is no exchange but mutual interest, that of art or human. Hierarchy is gone. Monetary prowess is gone. The town has an architectural intention that works. Concentric circles with connecting streets at the half hours around a clock with the ill fated man at the center open to infinitum between 10 and 2; High density with plenty of accessible open space. The intention of each person is to bring a gift to the community, some just for their camp, some for the entire BRC; thousands of people more concerned with giving rather than receiving or capitalizing. What is left is people.

I spent my days between dust storms alternately making friends and hiding in my tent, between riding around the playa on my bike of doom and remaining sedentary trying in the heat to sleep off the fact that I arrived home some time after I saw the sun crest the mountains.  My nights were similar [only more clothed]. Some nights my new wife & BFF Maddy and I traversed the grounds drinking absinth and being amused at our same taste in womens focused on the outside world, and others I walked with Glenn soberly talking out our lives and concentrating on the inside world [microcosm vs. macrocosm], and yet others alone, willing manifesting and watching.   I met some people that I shared a single dance with, and yet others that I shared entire evenings and short lives with.  My tent [the Taj Ma-haynes] became my only vestige of control. Only there could I spend the entire day by myself with my foot propped up, asleep on my virgin Mary comforter, or with all my mesh windows zipped open to allow both the breeze and my camp to visit or just pass through, stopping to play cards because they need solitude or wander through taking with them some of the heat and solitude.

There is no possible way to peruse everything and meet even a percentage of the participants.  It’s like a big city built and torn down over night [eat that Rome]. Black Rock City is the only temporary zip code. Only one time a year can one send and receive mail from this location. For all intents and purposes it is a city. 

One time, exhausted Miranda and I tried to cross the playa, and ventured to jump an art car, in the hopes that it would at least bring us closer to our destination, from a hammock at the 9 o’clock hour to sleep at the 4:30 hour. In the stead we ended up in the desolate vacancy between 10 and 2. Like hands on a well driven steering wheel taught to me by the DMV the vacant zone between my thumbs was an empty space containing art installations and impromptu parties. We ended up at the later. A party convergent around one of the greatest art installations I have ever seen, but far from our eventual destination. “Art cars” are the vehicles that are made for this event. Motorized transports that assume any shape that can be envisioned and covered with EL wire. From couches on wheels to full sized schooners with a house DJ.  Miranda and took to the ground, feet becoming our art car this evening on the journey back to USDA [Ultra Stunt Danger Academy, the name of the camp I called home for the week]. What began as a crossing of space to an eventual destination became a journey. Each walk throughout the week is fraught with obstacles and people sharing their life and passions and talents with you [if you want, and sometime if you don’t]. This event is an adage manifest; the journey becomes the experience much more than the destination.  [For me this is a good exercise because I am quite goal driven, to have some of my ‘power to accomplish’ taken by choice helps me to learn to trust.] 

 

I think that every architect and architectural student should go to burning man. This is a testament to what people need to live. My synopsis gets jump started every year. I return to the world renewed in the vigor to change the paradigm of living. Homes no longer react the inhabitants, but to other homes. Give me a space that I can use over “4 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms in a ranch style” any day.

 

I could spend pages relating stories and interpersonal reactions, but I think that should stay with the people. I chose not to bring my camera, so too I will chose not to capture for any one else what I saw, all I can offer this time is what I have gained and lost.

 

Thanks to my whole camp!!

 

I have new bruises and new loves and new reservations and new stories and new perspectives, I will not trade. In the still of the night all we have is the slight upturn on the corners of the mouth pointing towards the pillow. Thanks to each and every one I have gained fodder for tranquil thanks and contentment.

I started with out close friends, and ended with people that I would dash into a burning building for.  There were rough times for me on the playa and through certain people I grew from it rather than sank further into my subconscious behind a smile.

 

Names and hand shakes are moot.

 

Let’s end with an admonstration of love.

 

Thanks. 

 

 

 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 5th, 2007 at 9:47 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow responses to this entry through the Comments RSS Feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your site.