Ok, even though it’s not quite technically Fall yet, the Parentheticals summer hiatus is now officially over! (What, you didn’t know there was going to be a summer hiatus? Well, neither did I. Sometimes things come as a surprise even to the creator.) After spending a summer full of travel and family time and “filling-the-well” activities, I’m ready to get back into the rhythm of experience-reflect-share-repeat.
Nu, so what kinds of activities and epiphanies have I been blessed with over the last few months? Well, lots and lots. But let me start with the most recent and most affecting experience, because it’s gonna be a doozy of a writeup: my first trip to Burning Man. (Warning: since it’s been so long and there’s so much to share about this experience, I’m going to break this up into several blog entries. If you really only want highlights, you can look at the selected pictures throughout and/or skip to the “Top Ten Takeaways From Burning Man” section at the very end, or you can view the full set of pictures on my Flickr page .)
So: Burning Man. Maybe you’ve heard of it: that crazy amazing alternate universe of participatory radical self-expression where everything is a gift and a party, in which a temporary city of 50,000 people is built up in the empty desert for a week and then disappears literally without a trace. Well, after years of hearing about it in my peripheral friend circle, and thinking “hmm that would be cool to go check out some day, maybe when the kids are older”, I was gifted the perfect opportunity to go experience Burning Man for myself. I had always imagined that Josh and I would go together, but this opportunity was just for me: I was able to accompany my friend Isis (yep, that’s her “playa name”, I’ll get to that in a minute), a Burning Man veteran whose recent health issues had made her uncertain as to whether or not she’d be able to go, and whose original traveling partner(s) hadn’t been able to go either. She’d floated the “let’s go to Burning Man together” idea somewhere back in May or June, but given all the travel and activity that I’d already packed into my summer, and the distractions they created, I didn’t make up my mind to go until July. But there was finally a point (after a few key conversations) where I realized that this event could serve as an excellent catalyst for all the personal transformation I’ve been working towards for a couple of years now, and that the only things preventing me from going were my own fears (of the unknown, of logistical hassles, of what might happen if I really did put my own needs first, of true transformation).
So I said “YES”.
Isis and I then launched into a flurry of logistics (interrupted briefly by my trip with Josh to Reno for the World Science Fiction Convention in mid-August--which is the subject for another post, assuming I get to it). Everything came together pretty smoothly once the “yes let’s go” decision was made—we found a group to camp with (Sacred Spaces Village), pulled together all our camping gear, dug out costumes, and made our plans. I also was determined to bring some version of my Fly Your Freak Flag High project out there, so I wound up creating approximately 40 flag blanks to bring with me. (More about that later on.)
Let me be clear—the logistics of attending Burning Man are not for the faint of heart or the generally flaky. For those of you who don’t know (and I’m guessing that many of my friends really don’t know, because hell, I didn’t really know what I was getting into until I started actualizing this trip), Burning Man takes place in the Nevada desert about two hours past Reno. And when I say desert, I mean DESERT. There is literally nothing there except flat, baked dust ringed by high rocky mountains—everything that Burning Man encompasses is brought in by some person or group of people. Very little is provided by the organizers of the event—chiefly port-o-potties, the general organization of the city and funding for the major art installations. You have to bring in all your own water, food, shelter, and everything else. You can go it alone, or you can hook up with other people who have already figured out how to bring their own infrastructure (as we did with Sacred Spaces Village, who had a giant “theme camp” which included an outside dance club, a central performance/workshop/chill space, 4 small sub-spaces for additional workshops/events and a communal kitchen that served meals twice a day.) The truly amazing thing is that over the space of approximately a month (a couple weeks before, a week during, and a week after), an entire city of approximately 50,000 people is created out in the middle of this harsh, inhospitable nowhere, and then it vanishes literally without a trace. And such a city! Totally self-organized, self-created and self-governed, prioritizing art and communal experience as well as personal expression of every flavor and stripe. As they say in the 10 principles of Burning Man, there are no spectators, there are only participants in this event.
Anyway, back to my own personal expression and the story of how I got there and what I did. So after much logistical hoo-ha and a modest amount of emotional preparation (mostly involving talking about the impending trip with friends and family and going “squeee! It’s going to be so much fun!”), the big day arrived and on the Tuesday before Labor Day Weekend, Isis and I set out on the long day’s drive to the desert. On the way there we had a lot of great conversation. We talked about what we wanted to do at Burning Man--I mostly wanted to just experience things as they came, and I was counting on serendipity to bring me whatever experiences I needed to have, but I did have a couple things in mind that I wanted to try to find. I wanted to see if I could find my friend Trey, who in addition to being an old friend and the person who was responsible for getting Josh and I together at the Renaissance Faire way back when, is also a longtime Burner and a great DJ (I knew he would be spinning on Wednesday night at his camp.) His writing about some of his revelatory experiences at Burning Man a few years ago had given me the true itch to see it for myself, which I was finally now able to scratch. I also wanted to find the WDYDWYD? (Why Do You Do What You Do?) project and get my photo taken with my answer to that question (not that I was sure what the answer to that question even was yet, but I suspected Burning Man was a good place to figure it out.) The WDYDWYD? project had been a direct inspiration for my Fly Your Freak Flag High project, and I knew they’d be doing portraits on the playa.
Isis and I also talked about where we found ourselves at this moment in our lives, what kinds of personal transformation issues we were both working on, and what we hoped to find or experience or bring about at Burning Man. Without losing the thread of the story by going into TOO much solipsistic detail here (if there can even be too much given the name of this blog!), I’m sure it will surprise no one if I say that the place I found myself was at a crossroads as far as identity work and self-(re)construction goes. I have been struggling to let go of old, no-longer-self-serving identities and patterns, and make room for even older or more primal identities to come through. (For example, letting go of the “intellectual/academic”, “businesswoman” or “selfless-helper-girl-who-puts-others-first” identities, in favor of the “artist/writer”, “solipsistic storyteller” or “welcomer/group integrator” identities. Yeah, it’s more complicated than that, but those were a few that came to mind while I was writing this.)
The theme for Burning Man this year was “Rites of Passage”, which seemed particularly appropriate and personally meaningful for me, feeling as I did that I was in transition between identities and between activities. I was hoping to experience and create some personal rites of passage for myself, and find some additional perspective(s) on my identity and self-valuation struggles. I also really wanted (and thus opened myself up to bringing about) a kick-in-the-pants into true transformation. I trust it will not spoil this story too much by saying up front here that that is exactly what I got. (Yay for setting intentions ahead of time!)