Tuesday morning I was supposed to do a freak-flag-making workshop for SSV campers, but I wasn't sure if anyone actually knew about it or would come (none of the leadership announced it at dinner the night before and I'd been too shy to stand up and announce it myself). Regardless, I got myself up and got my flag stuff and brought it to the dining hall, where it was supposed to take place. Anjanette and Eileen came with me, but not surprisingly, no one was there. We put some flag stuff out on the tables anyway, and invited people who came by to make flags, and a few people did. Eventually we got kicked out of the dining hall by the kitchen boss, who wanted to use the tables for feeding the serving shift, and moved the flag-making back to the coffee table under the shade structure in our Yaboogie pod. A few more people came by to make flags, and we had a nice time hanging out. Eventually I realized that I'd have to change the batteries in my art piece before my kitchen prep shift later that day, so Anjanette and I decided to go out on a playa walkabout adventure with the eventual goal of winding up back at my art piece.

We set out on our bikes across the playa, figuring that it would be the fastest way to get to where my art piece was set up, but of course we found ourselves distracted by all kinds of cool art as we went. One of my favorite experiences at Burning Man is the random walkabout, in which one just wanders around and serendipitiously encounters amazing art installations and people--and often they wind up being deeply, personally meaningful (or at least memorably entertaining). After visiting my flags and changing out batteries, we found ourselves drawn back to the giant pier and sinking pirate ship since it was relatively close to where my art piece was, and stopped to investigate. I fished for attention off the pier (with a fishing pole that had a naked Barbie doll at the end of it as bait), and we climbed around in the pirate ship marveling at the amazing amount of detail put into all the ship's various nooks and crannies. It truly felt like a real ship, and given the angle of the installation, like a real shipwreck. The combination of ocean and desert cues was really trippy. While we were there, a dust storm started, so we hung around there for awhile until it was safe to move on. Once it cleared, we were drawn farther into the playa to visit the Man himself, since he was not far away now. The Man this year stood on a giant, two story, Italian-villa looking base, inside of which was supposed to be a giant wooden climbable "flower/pistil" sculpture made with no metal (just interlocking wooden parts). We definitely wanted to check that out, so off we went on our bikes.

When we got to the Man, we heard the sound of drums. There was a marching band drum ensemble inside the building, wandering from level to level and playing some kickass fun world beat kind of rhythms for the pleasure of everyone within hearing range. We bopped our way inside and started to climb up the stairs surrounding the interior pistil sculpture, which turned out to be incredibly intricate and beautiful, with panels that had bees and other designs carved into them. The wooden panels and the way they fit together reminded me fondly of a toy from my childhood, which was a building set with colorful, flat, notched disks, except that those were made out of plastic and these were made out of wood and laminate. As we climbed we realized that built into the pistil structure there were little "pods" where you could sit and hang out, and we found an open one and crawled into it. It turned out to be the perfect resting/people-watching spot, and we had great fun kicking back in our little pod, sipping water from our Camelbaks, listening to the music and watching all the people come and go. As we sat there we realized that the dust had kicked up again outside, and we couldn't really leave even if we'd wanted to, so we settled in for awhile. At one point another woman joined us and we chatted a bit with her and swapped stories, and then she left. Eventually the marching band stopped, and the dust lessened, and we decided it was safe to leave, so we bid the Man farewell and set off back towards SSV, because we knew we had another kitchen shift coming up that we should get back for.

The kitchen food prep shift was a bit chaotic, but eventually I settled into a job making dolmas for the raw food menu (yes, our camp had a raw food menu) under the tutelage of B. Love, a sweet, calm, and incredibly talented chef who had brought his special gift with raw food to our kitchen. I was working with Josh and another man, Gregory, whom Josh had met earlier in the day and who turned out to be one of the best friends Josh made there on the playa. The three of us had a good time putting together the dolmas (which were made with raw cauliflower and sesame butter and lime and scallions and pine nuts and other tasty things and then wrapped in collard green leaves) and eating the leftover bits afterwards. After our prep shift was over we had dinner with everyone else and then afterwards, we decided to celebrate Josh's 40th birthday a little more by going out into the city. Josh had made a tentative plan to meet up with Gregory and some of our other SSV campmates (Siri, Walter, Cory, and Pat, and maybe some others I’m forgetting) out at a place near Center Camp, so we got ourselves dressed up and hooked up with Ian and Mark and then trekked across the playa on bikes to the place we were supposed to meet up. As we traveled I found myself feeling grumpy and physically uncomfortable, but I tried to just be with it and eventually the feeling passed and I felt better.

We spent some time hanging out in Center Camp with a group of people, getting to know each other and just kicking back and watching the scene, which was low key at that point but enjoyable to be around. Siri was excited by and enamored of the Toroflux toys I had brought with me, and he and Cory wound up taking them around Center Camp and having fun showing them to people. Eventually we got tired and it was also getting quite cold and we hadn't quite dressed for it, so we motivated ourselves to head back to SSV and after a brief scoping out of what was going on at SSV (which wasn’t a whole lot), we crashed out for the night.

[To Be Continued in Part 3...]

[To see more or full sized pictures, click here for the full set on Flickr]