Tuesday morning we were able to sleep in a bit thanks to our reflective silver yurt (it definitely kept the temperature more comfortable than our tent had the previous year, although it did get pretty stuffy as the outside heated up—next year, we figure out better ventilation). From what I recall, the morning and early afternoon was mostly spent working. I spent some time arranging our things and finding people who could help me hang up the altar hanging inside the Temple of Renewal while Josh and some other Yaboogiers put up the shade structures, table and chairs for our communal Yaboogie area. When I finally got the altar hanging in its rightful place, after all that time working on it and envisioning how it would be, I totally teared up. It was beautiful, and I was really proud of myself. It looked perfect there, just as I’d envisioned it, and totally “classed the joint up” just how I thought it would. (Now that I’m home, I wish I could hang it somewhere, but it’s too big! I’d have to dedicate an entire wall to it, and we just don’t have that many open walls. Too bad.)
Some time in the late morning there was a Temple Guardian (TG) meeting in one of the temple domes at SSV, led by Eileen (who’d taken over as TG lead just a few weeks before the event, when the previous lead had found out she couldn’t come to the burn for health reasons). We sat in a big circle and got to introduce ourselves and orient ourselves to the task of being Temple Guardians. The role was not merely ceremonial (though we were encouraged to wear all white or monochrome colors with subdued bling, and to carry staffs)—what it really entailed was a combination of mundane tasks like greeting visitors to SSV, cleaning and clearing public spaces, giving directions, and answering questions about workshops and performers, etc) and spiritual ones (holding space, protecting the “good vibe”, offering cleansing through smudging or anointing with essential oils, etc). I felt good about contributing to our camp in this role, and it was great to meet other fellow campers who were volunteering for this role, (for example, my new buddy Ron, who I’d interacted with a bit on Facebook before the burn, and who also happened to be a Jewish writer). Ron gave me one of the beautiful metal Cargo Cult pendants that his sister Tziporah had made, and we agreed to meet up later after lunch for an event we both wanted to go to: a potluck “meet and greet” get-together for Get Lit(erary) at Burning Man, which was a group of writerly burners that we’d both connected with on Facebook before the burn. (It was formed in reaction to a question that had been the subject of a blog post on the official Burning Man blog: why is there no literary culture at Burning Man? There certainly are well-established visual arts, musical and fashion cultures, but not so much with the literary arts.)
After lunch, I couldn’t find Ron, so I went ahead and left for the Get Lit meet and greet anyway. Turns out he couldn’t find me either, so he’d already gone over to the Bureau of Misinformation camp where the meeting was supposed to be. (It all worked out, as these burn things often do.) When I got there, things were just starting (with snacks and drinks and the passing out of gifts), and those of us (including me) who had ordered Get Lit pendants ahead of time got them (and got to wear them proudly). More people trickled in as we sat in a circle and introduced ourselves and shared some about what we wrote. After introductions, discussion turned to hypotheses about what a “burner” literary style might be and some “what next” ideas. We talked a bit about what projects and places were of interest to literary folks at the burn that year, and what we might do next year (including possibly make our own camp). It was a fun bunch of people and I wish I’d gotten to hang out more with them, but as is the way of all things at Burning Man, that was it.
I left the Get Lit meeting and went back to SSV around 3, as we Temple Guardians were all supposed to participate in a camp Opening Ceremony, but the camp wasn’t quite ready for opening yet (our build team was still feverishly finishing putting things together). While I was waiting, I got our friend Pat to help me get the crates containing the nearly 100 bottles for the seaglass guardian sculpture out of the under-bed storage in Eileen’s RV, and he and our friend Naomi helped me carry them across camp over to the Temple of Renewal, where Josh had already set up the sculpture’s base and “skeleton”. I strung it with lights for nighttime, and put all the bottles on, and it looked pretty good. (Actually, I was amazed at how relatively sparse it looked even with nearly a hundred bottles on it...I would have liked to make something even bigger, but I ran out of time and oomph to do so. Maybe next time.) I got to take some pictures with it, and with Naomi too since she was there, and we met and talked to our campmate Alex who was camped directly across from the showers. He gave us beautiful “Cargo Cult” laser-cut wooden pendants that he’d made, and we spent a bit of time in mutual admiration.
Eventually it was time for the Opening Ceremony. We Temple Guardians were supposed to wear our white outfits but I didn’t want to change into (or pre-dirty) an outfit I was intending to wear the next day so I asked Eileen if I could just stay in my mermaid outfit. She didn’t care, so I did. She and Kirby, another campmate, were the high priestess and high priest for our opening invocations, which were sort of made up on the fly. They invoked the elements of fire, water, air and earth, and invited anyone who wanted to represent a particular element to step up to the microphone and give an impromptu evocation. So of course since I was dressed as a mermaid I did water. I don’t even remember what the heck I said since I made it up on the spot, but I’m pretty sure it was something about water as emotion and mother ocean. We also invoked the God and the Goddess, and laid down and did a brief guided meditation, and probably a few other woo woo things that are pretty much lost to me now.
Tuesday evening after dinner Josh and I decided to go out on the town again, since it was Josh’s actual birthday. We dressed up in our tutus (it was also Tutu Tuesday) and took our bikes this time instead of walking. I finally got to really ride my new tricycle, and it was awesome! I especially loved the ability to stop to look at something or do something without having to get off my bike. For lack of anything more compelling to do, we decided that we would just cruise the Esplanade and head over to Center Camp. We stopped at Pink Heart to look for Anji, but she wasn’t there. We continued on to Center Camp, where we found a really cool art installation outside that looked like a big complicated lit-up star puzzle, “fenced” in by cut-out, light up panels that had different quotes and symbols on them. We found that the star sculpture made different noises when you touched different parts of it, and that multiple people could make a sort of cacophonous symphony by patting and banging on it in different spots. After playing with that for a bit, we parked our bikes and walked in to Center Camp to get some coffee for Josh and just hang around. We looked around at a few of the art exhibits and sat on a bench for awhile to people watch, but nothing else particularly memorable happened, and we were getting tired again, so eventually we got on our bikes and rode back to SSV. We snuggled up in our yurt and crashed for the night around 1am.