Halcyonian Current

 

I went to Burning Man.

 

This was my first experience out in the desert, and this was my first Actual Real Burn. I had been to smaller events; for two years now i've been to Critical NW, the regional burn. It's been great, and the fact it's so close is also excellent! But Burning Man is a fundamentally different beast. A week in the woods an hour away at an event of 1000 or so, compared to a week in the desert 12 hours away, at an event of 70,000.

 

Have I mentioned IT'S THE DESERT? While I had driven through some arid climes in my drive across the country years ago, i've never been to the desert. I'm a water elemental- the thought of being somewhere where water is severly scarce was...terrifying. But I still wanted to go-- there was some strange compulsion to go investigate. Partially out of awe of the art I saw sprout up in Critical- every so often one would stumble across some sculpture, often lined with lights, or the fact that most of the camp structures were similarly outrageous. Partially it was out of joy of the people there-- some of the friendliest and most open people I had ever met. One of my favorite parts of Critical was the ease of conversation: everyone was just...less guarded in general. It was totally okay to wander up to people and strike up a conversation, and that served my social stylings pretty well.

 

 

So, I managed to get a ride (after several snags), figure out my own shelter (after several snags), find a posse to go with (after several snags)...And this is all over the length of the summer. (do you see the theme here? How everything had some difficulty to it? More on that later.) And then at the end of August, with a neighbor and friend and furry, we drove down to Black Rock City.

 

It's hard to put things into words about the place. I can talk about experiences- and I will, to the best of my ability-- but it's also worth noting that it was a week long event. I could fit a lot of words out there if I wanted to discuss everything that happened. On top of that, there's something genuinely ineffable about the environs, the surroundings-- the general reality-bubble Burning Man erects around itself.

 

So, me and Niko out Friday night from Seattle, with the intention of picking up a third- a dude by the name of Golo, part of Niko's camp. (Much like furry, Burners often choose their names- or get bestowed them, based on Something Interesting in their experiences or personality. Y'know, a deed-name.) It takes an aeon to get from Seattle to Portland; It takes a while to find his apartment; it takes a while to pack the car; it's a nightmare to try to turn around to get to One Fred Meyer in the middle of Portland so people can have supplies they need. Seattle to Portland is about 12 hours with no delays, and it's strongly advised you pack extra snacks and supplies where they can easily be gotten, just in case. But all the same.

 

Head south to Eugene, turn east, drive through the forests to Klamath Falls, head south, skirt through the northeast corner of California, and then it's only two more hours around until you're off civilized road and onto The Playa. Even that had its difficulties-- after we had near-misses with more deer than I had seen any time in the last several years (like two dozen?), we park on a pullout to take a nap. It's frigid, the ground has started to give way from northwest's rich red forests and rockiness to /sand/. The trees were shorter. The stars were out and beautiful and vast. It was actually lovely, for being four in the morning and readjusting the bikes so they wouldn't fall off- and so the license plate was extra-visible.


 

 

Nevada's roads are wide and vast and almost never used except for this event-- and even then, we were coming in from a variant route; most people drove north from Reno. Either way, around a town called Gerlach, the highway splits off to this one little unused spit of road, as you see it off to the side.

 

The Playa. A white flat expanse of _nothing_, half-obscured with haze and clouds, framed on every side except the one you're driving in from by mountains. It was unnerving-- as we got out into a line on the playa proper, I kept trying to actually see the city and all I could see was dust. From the car, giant plumes of it floated overhead, sometimes blotting out the sun. Strange vehicles were mixed with the RVs and station wagons; at one point an ocean-themed double-length bus drove by, covered with a giant undersea mural, and my only mental response was 'oh jeez I want to do /indecent things/ to that bus'.

 

And then one of my friends' Early-access tickets had actually already been used by their camp, due to a allocation error, so we spent from about 4 to Midnight sitting in line waiting for the General Access gates to open. (We all had a ticket, but an additional one is required to enter before Sunday at 12:00- and if one person doesn't have it? Well that's too bad, the whole car's SOL. Mainly 'cuz it's another mile's drive actually TO THE CITY.) We finally get into the city by like 1 AM; thankfully it isn't too hard to find my camp and find someone to check me in. It takes much longer- a couple hours I think?- to find a space and get my tent set up and all my stuff together, as the car is about a ten-minutes walk away. So I'm not really paying much attention to my surroundings, other than the giant UV-purple light-rods about thirty feet in the air across the street from me.

 

My first wake-up to the world was 'OKAY IT'S HER BIRTHDAY TODAY, SO EVERYONE GET UP AND SING OR YOU'RE LOSING DESSERT'. I hurtle out my tent to wake up to Black Rock; bright and white and expansive. It didn't take too much effort to acclimate: There were porto-potties right next to our camp; two square meals a day, and a few shifts I had assigned myself to over the week, doing cooking and cleanup. Other than that...I had all the time I could want to just me. There was no obligation, no expectation, other than what I wanted to do-- and that I do at least /something/.

 

Burning Man is kind of weird like that. In comparison to, say, Saquatch or Bumbershoot or any music festival, there's no set schedule. It's like a giant game of show-and-tell, really: There are only two real constant structures, the Temple- a holy site for whomever needs it- and the Man itself- a giant wooden effigy with a lovely plaza around it. On Saturday, the Man is set on fire to revelry and fireworks; on Sunday, the Temple burns in dead silence. That's it. Everything else is based on what people bring with them. The ten binding principles of Burner culture are tied into it: You're expected to bring some kind of gift with you, and you're expected to _participate_, not just consume and observe. Not to say that you can't consume, but you may be expected to work for it!

 

Most of the time I spent exploring. Black Rock City is an actual CITY- I believe it measures out to be Nevada's tenth-largest during the week it exists. And like a city, you can find just about anything your heart could physically desire. Within one block of my camp, I had:

 

-a maritime-themed rave club, set in a giant chrome-looking fish (Darwin's Fishtank)

-a western saloon, complete with whiskey shots served out of a plastic shotgun casing (Hardly's)

-a ramen stand

-a 'slave auction' (consentual, obviously and the bidding currency being other acts of kindness, like breakfast in bed)

-an orgy-dome ('couples and moresomes only!)

-a grilled-cheese craftsgroup

-a karaoke bar attached to a giant chill-tent with hammocks

-A coffee bar and dream interpretation consultation

 

and probably a lot more i'm forgetting! But that's a small sampling. And that was just the city-- if I turned right at the corner and walked north, I got to the open playa: Where the city ended and the desert began. BRC was arranged like a clock, with the Man at center, and the length running around it from 2 to 10. The other four hours- and about a half-mile's radius around the Man- was open space, for art. Massive things, like a filigree-metal boar that people would clamber on, to shrines and temples, to lighthouses. Walking to the Esplanade- the innermost ring of the city, facing the Man- I tried to get a grasp on how far the playa stretched.

 

I failed. But it was still beautiful and fun. My wanderings took me by familiar things I had seen from Washington- like a giant toroid-shaped tube lined with lights, that pulsed with your heartheat when you put your hand on a plinth in the center. Or the furry camp filked off of a scene from Beetlejuice (Dante's InFURno, haaa.) Hell, even walking to there and back-- going from about 4:30 to 7 and back- felt like it had been several miles, and boy was I already pooped. Not that that stopped me from heading out. Again. And again. And again.

 

Not that one could be blamed-- there was so much to see! Every day felt like something new- there were new things to see, new structures open, new experiences, and every night....

 

Every night was a cavalcade, a rush, an overwhelming blur of light and neon and noise and it was _fantastic_. I'd go out to that Esplanade ring and stare out at the desert before heading out into it, watching structures of any type go by. There were boats, a fantasy-style airship, a structure looking like a forest of skeletal rainbow trees, a gay sheep...Again. I could go on.

 

And so compared to all of these things, all of these shining jewels that had been brought out for everyone to admire, share, and adore-- what had I to offer? What gifts did I bring?

 

Mine was a mite humble. A lantern, entasseled and lit with a single LED- a prayer-charm to give out to those who were missing light at night. (Actually, a very important thing- on the open playa, without a light you could easily get run over by an art car, or by a drunk bicyclist!) I had set a goal to myself to wander out with so many every night, and not return until I had given them to those who needed them. I had spent a good amount of time before the burn, I admit, concerned that the gifts I had to offer wouldn't be sufficient: 'Here I am, just this twenty-something with some lights, compared to all of these wonderful people. Is this Good Enough?'

 

It turns out the answer was yes: my first night, two things in particular had a tremendous enough impact on me to break any doubt of that.

 

Once, after stumbling onto a cider bar- and getting pulled away from the group I was trying to do an art-tour with (as almost invariably happened to me), and after the bartender takes a picture or two of me in the deer-mask for posterity. Another couple of women ask for my picture, and we talk briefly. Upon my realizing they were both short light-- and then giving such-- the gasp of delight was...actually really astonishing! They were the first to get one, and I was not expecting the reaction. Nor was I when one of them mentioned how she had been a Burner for 20 years, and how she had never seen a gift as both useful and pretty as that! Which actually got me choked up.

 

 

The second happened at the end, and is one that will stay with me for a very long time. At the end of the night, I had made it back to my tent-- but still, there was one thing I wanted to go see, this giant dome covered in triangles tesselating rainbow patterns all across it. But i'm tired as hell. But I still want to see it. So I plod off. About a third of the way, I wander across a conversation happening at a corner, and just sidle in to take a second to grab some water. A girl sees the jellyfish plush I was hanging from my backpack and responds in enthusiastic excitement. Obviously, she needed a light of her own-- she was interested, why not give her one? Except they were back at my tent. Turn, power-walk my tired ass a good twenty minutes around, and return with a light. I share a story, because I had seldom an excuse to. And then we talked. She told me of her own story: She used jellyfish as a totem; something to fixate on to help combat stress and anxiety (this was her second burn; the first she had spent half the week hiding in her camp from sensory overload). A friend who was close to her had keyed her into this: He had gotten her to the playa to begin with, he had helped her a lot in the past, he had even offered to buy her a live jellyfish tank!

 

...And three months before the burn, he died in an accident. The whole event had taken this tone of catharsis and mending, as a result- trying to get past that pain...And that's when the realization of the impact of this gift meant. And we both kind of just hugged and cried for a few minutes. After, she led me off another block or so to her car, and gave me a bottle of wine the father of the man had prepared in his honor.

 

There's a saying out there- 'The Playa Provides'. It means to comfort someone who's stressed out about every last fiddly thing, and a reminder that Things Will Work Out. If you forgot a hammer, odds are someone around you- or in the next camp over, if need be!- will be willing to let you borrow theirs. Serendipity may bring you a conversation, solace, or what you really Need...and in that moment, I had been that girl's serendipity. That was one of the most overwhelming feelings of my life: this sensation that I had done _good_.

 

 

Things get a little harder to piece together after the first night. It was like a string of moments, strung together on a great beautiful bead necklace. And there were always moments waiting to be found. I got my hair did. I found a dome doing craft projects and got myself a pair of rainbow goat horns that I could then customize! I attended a training course for a shift with a group called the Temple Guardians. One lass there I struck up a conversation with went out of her way to help me with some grounding-- and some validation. It's a lot easier to hear 'You Are Good Enough' when it's someone else saying it, but...it was starting to stick. That, mixed with most of my campmates responding to me emerging in the full glow-deer-outfit with varying forms of 'holy crap you look awesome'.

 

But I remember finally making it to the Temple by the time it opened on Tuesday night. And it kind of...well, it prompted some difficulty. Like I mentioned, the Temple is a holy site: it sits at 12 o'clock with the Man and inner playa. It's beautiful, to put it honestly.

 

And it was so tremendously sad. The walls of it, the first time I passed through, were already starting to gather with statements of loss: The son who missed his father, the mother who was saying goodbye to her kids. Mementos, trinkets, tokens were all there, as well as posters of smiling faces that had drawn their last breath. Even some posters for Prince and Bowie.

 

That night prompted a question out of me, in my altered state (oh, yeah, i wasn't actually sober that night): Which is a stronger force, Love or Pain? Joy or Suffering? And I had to spend the night kind of...mentally chewing over that. It ultimately boiled down to me having a protracted talk and...existential discussion with a dude at a group called the Zendo- people who volunteered to tend to and help run a safe space for those dealing with heavy trips.

 

After that, things felt bit by bit...better. I spent most of wednesday treating myself. A few different places having me write letters to myself. A breakfast egg-mc-muffin style sandwich (yet homemade, and soooo good.) Craft soda! A nice decadent hair-wash, some light snacks, indulgence. Attempting to get more clean, only to get a dust storm denying me. And then Wednesday night was a goddamn adventure.

 

so, my camp- the Black Rock Center for Unlearning (an apt theme for me, this week!) had mentioned arranging a plan to raid an art car and go on a tour of deep playa-- the REALLY far-out stuff. Past the Temple, out in the middle of nowhere, all the way to the Trash Fence (a simple red plastic mesh fence, the Absolute Boundary of the event). There's still art out there, but it's needless to say a bit too much of a hike for most! So obviously it sounded like a great idea. Go raid an art car, listen to music, check out glowing stuff.

 

...And then it turned out to be the very first art car, the Nautilus X, that I had saw on the way in. Yeah, that ocean-themed bus. So I kind of lost my shit, haha. And the art!:

 

-A shrine to street-art and hip-hop in all its forms, with several murals in a small plaza-like place. (there was also someone making s'mores!)

-The Catacomb of Veils, a pair of giant wooden pyramids; you scaled the outside of one and slowly descended into them down a massive spiralling slope, leading to a huge vaulted-open chamber lined with candles.

-A forest of neon trees, that when you physically blew into flowers along the base, trails of light would spiral from up from the base to the leaves

-A group of rainbow-glowing mushrooms; when a pressure-pad was hit at the base of each, they curled and unfurled, from button-caps to wide fungi, to back again

-A massive mirrored-metal Medusa head (that from the back just looked like a nest of stone-and-metal snakes

-Something that looked like a puzzle out of Myst; a ring of high-set golden sconces that one could stand in and grab some levers-- and doing so shot a beam of light towards a pillar in the center. Get enough people to light them all up, and the center lights up too!

 

-A tapestry suspended about fifteen feet up, strobing with rainbow lights to beautiful patterns as classical music played

 

-A several-hundred-foot-long loose sort of tunnel made of ten-foot high pvc half-circle ribs...that pulsed in all kinds of patterns, like going down a warp tunnel

 

-An interplanetary apothecary way, way, way out in the middle of nowhere, condemned and covered in graffiti (like 'REMEMBER OCEANUS'), the inside full of all sorts of strange trinkets and things

 

-A cluster of lighthouses, climbable and tall, looking out over the playa, right as the first hints of dawn came up...

 

And right about then I realized I had actually spent _all night_ on that bus, and was late for that shift with the Guardians. It was only by about fifteen minutes or so, but I still had to run a good mile to get to the Temple again! ...And on top of that, the lights were out in the temple, so I almost ran the wrong way...

 

But that shift- even though I spent a good deal of it handling check-in for others, due to my being late- confirmed this feeling that had grown in me: No matter what I was doing, I was exactly where I needed to be. I arrived just in time to help the person in there off his shift; I had time to rest and savor some beautiful conversations; I had time to watch the sun rise. It was the White Procession, by sheer coincidence- a unspoken ritual that people show up to the Temple on Thursday morning wearing white.

 

And when I was in the Temple, it was still a little hard for me. I had already confronted the sadness there, but seeing a group of friends huddled in a circle, listening to music honoring someone they'd lost...It's hard not to cry to that. To all of it. To all the sadness gathered there. But through that morning, I finally understood its necessity. That sadness was real and present, true, but it was there specifically because that place was meant to bury it. The woe was being released, so that they could go out into the world and not carry it with them...and when the Temple burned, it provided closure. And as much as I wanted to intercede, to try to pull them out of the sadness, I realized how important it was they have it. The space was for them, and I was a caretaker. That isn't to say I didn't provide support to others, 'cuz of course when people asked me for a hug, I gave it.

 

Later that day, after a little rest (oh god I was so tired), I went back there. I realized that I needed to let go of something, too. So, I took a block of wood and a sharpie and wrote. I took that sliver of me that genuinely hated myself-- The one who hadn't let go of the fact I had dealt deep cuts to people I loved. The voice from when I was 13, that said: 'You are a tool for change and nothing more. Your worth is only gained through the impact you make; if there ever comes a time that you must throw yourself into the gears of the world to hold them together a little longer YOU WILL DO IT.' I took the part of me that was afraid, that was scared I Wasn't Good Enough, that motivated myself towards the future by fear out of all the beautiful things that were going to die...

 

I took that shard of myself, and I buried it. The spear is gone.

 

And you know what? yeah, it...it really is gone. All that hate can't touch me anymore. There's room now, for new things to grow.

 

The rest of the week was rewarding and fun in its own way. I wandered out without breakfast in an attempt to get to a space that specialized in energy-healing, and then not only found all-you-can-eat bacon along the way (the only requirement was I had to get naked to eat it!), but when I got there, the person being tended next to me was also a healer. It was really pleasantly validating-- being reminded that even healers need healing too. I made a loincloth! I watched a trippy art film based off of Android Jones' work! I got blast-washed with firehoses full of foam and then water, and then danced off to a giant naked dance party while Alex Grey was finishing work on a mural.

 

I walked out into a dust storm Saturday Night to a party at the edge of the world. And then I reveled and just...lived. Danced, mostly.

 

Sunday was packing, more partying (even though our campsite was half-deconstructed, a random passerby brought DJ equipment, so, instant rave), and just...watching the world one more time.

 

Sunday night, the Temple burned to the ground. I turned and left as it finally collapsed down on itself, and I felt that pang deep inside...And I knew I was purified for it. In that moment, I think I finally understood fire a little better.

 

Mind you, I should say this: None of this shit was _easy_. The ground felt like concrete and my hips screamed bloody murder at me for my hubris after the fourth day. The sun was relentless; by wednesday it was cold enough at night to merit a thick coat. We ate well, but you ALWAYS had to be aware of how much water you had on hand (a resource that was constantly scarce for most everyone!). I walked. A lot. A llllLLOOOT. (You'd do pretty well if you had a bike, admittedly!) The dust sometimes got so bad that you couldn't see ten feet in front of your face. We got stuck in line for most of a day going in, and ALL night going out.

 

But was it worth it? OH MY DEAR WORDS YES IT WAS.

It's going to be hard not to go back next year. One of the first things people say when you're new is 'welcome home', and y'know, by Wednesday or so, it really felt like it.

 

It was- as the collossal serendipity-engine that is Black Rock City likes to give- Exactly What I Needed. For life. For existing. For being the brightest light I can be.

 

Thank you to Niko and Golo for an awesome ride.

Thank you to Sky Chick, Kayle, Pheromone, Dario, most of my camp, and so so so so SO many others for being supportive and reinforcing of that newfound selfworth.
Thank you to Charliegirl, Carousel, and all the other Temple Guardians who reminded me that I Am Enough.
 

Thank you to all of you reading this, for supporting my weirdness over the...well, for a while.

 

So, I suppose, a closing benediction- to the people I would give a light to, I always gave a few words as I placed it in their hands: