Wednesday morning I got up pretty early because I had a Temple Guardian shift from 8am-12pm that day. I like being up in the relatively cooler, relatively quieter part of the day, but I also like staying up late in the night-time city; it’s hard to get enough of both experiences during the week of Burning Man. In any case, this morning I had plenty of time to get myself up and out to the potties, grab some breakfast and get dressed in one of my Temple Guardian white outfits. I made up some essential oil spray with one of our spray bottles and the essential oils people had brought for the Temple of Renewal, and brought my own staff, which I had borrowed from Eli (he helped me pick out decorations for it too, but we never got around to putting a crystal on the top of it). It turned out I was on shift with my new buddy Ron, which was fun. He had a shofar with him, and did a “wake up” blow outside our front entrance. We lit some sage and I walked around and smudged the whole front area of camp and the domes. Then I went back around and picked up moop and gently woke up people who were sleeping in our domes and stage area, so that workshops could start. After that I spent most of the time greeting (with bonus sage smudge or essential oil spritz) and/or saying farewell to visiting participants, and answering questions about workshops. One cool thing we saw while standing around the front of SSV looking out across the Esplanade to the open playa was a bunch of people parachuting in to Black Rock City (I can imagine that being a peak experience!) I tried to take pictures of them but really you can barely see the specks of people against the clouds. It was really fun being able to welcome people to our amazing space, and serve as a repository for the excitement and gratitude that visitors expressed. The time flew by super quickly, and I even stayed around a little bit after our replacements arrived.
After my shift I grabbed lunch and then spent the hot time of the afternoon chilling out at Yaboogie with whoever was there. One awesome memory from that afternoon was watching Golden Heart (Cory) introducing Larry to the pleasures of picklebacks (shots of bourbon combined with pickle juice, which I realize doesn’t sound yummy, but actually when you’re all hot and dehydrated, apparently tastes pretty good). I did not participate (I don’t like bourbon), but I must say it was pretty hilarious to watch. Also at one point someone showed up with news of ice cream being handed out at Spanky’s (the bar/dance club next door to SSV), so I went to investigate. I stood in line for a bit, chatting and people watching, and then oh bliss, I had ice cream! (I tell you, there is nothing quite so special as cold sweet treats when you are in the middle of the desert. It elevates something that is normally pleasurable to “super awesome”.) I took my ice cream back to Yaboogie, which sent another wave of people over to Spanky’s to get their own ice cream.
Other than that brief ice cream adventure, I laid low for the rest of the day, saving up some energy for the evening. Anji and I had made tentative plans to meet up that evening to try to find the “white party” put on by Opulent Temple (who didn’t have a camp this year, so their party was mobile, hosted by the Dancetronauts art car). I was already dressed in all white from my Temple Guardian shift, so I just added my sparkly silver top hat and some lights and I was good to go. We convinced some other Yaboogiers to come with us too (Josh, Eileen, and a few others). We weren’t totally sure where we were going (the party was supposed to be held at the “Control Tower” art piece, which we hadn’t seen yet), but thought it was across the playa at roughly 3 o’clock. First though we decided to go over to Osiris, one of the big sound camps, which was right near us at 10 o’clock, because one of Anji’s Pink Heart campmates was doing a DJ set there. Anji and I danced for a bit and had fun stomping around the dance floor with the crowd, but the rest of the group wasn’t that into it, so eventually we stopped and tried to figure out what next. Josh wanted to find an art car to ride over to the other side of the playa, but we couldn’t quite figure out where to catch one or how, so we decided to just set off on foot and see what happened. We saw some cool art on our way across the playa (you can’t go far in BRC without seeing some cool art), including a beautifully lit up sculpture of women dancing that was made out of stacked planks of wood, which I think was the regional effigy from Texas. Once we hit roughly mid-playa we saw the Control Tower off in the distance (it was really obvious, once we spotted it...a 60’ tall lit up control tower sculpture with fire belching out of it). When we got closer to it, it became obvious that we’d found the white party...there were thousands of people and tons of art cars and some super loud dance music. Anji and I jumped in and started dancing, but Josh decided it wasn’t his scene...he wanted something quieter and smaller. He said he’d eventually wind up back at SSV if I wanted to come find him, and then he bade us farewell and left us to rave as we would.
And rave we did! I was having a great time dancing with my Toroflux flow toys (I had one on each arm) and sharing them with people. At one point someone even took a Polaroid picture of me and gave it to me, which was cool. At another point, Anji and I were surrounded by a “bee swarm” (a bunch of guys dressed up in bee costumes). They gave us hugs and then handed us honey sticks, which was pretty random and funny. Eventually we got tired and decided to go sit on a nearby art car, which looked like a set of high-school bleachers on wheels. It gave us a great view of the white party and all the lit up art cars and the Control Tower. We sat up towards the back in the “Spectators Only” section (which was pretty funny, considering that one of the 10 Principles of Burning Man is “no spectators”), and as proper spectators, took a bunch of pictures. We met some people dressed up as a Nordic ski team drinking shots off a modified ski, and a cute teddy bear of a guy that Anji had already run into way earlier that day at her camp. She and he spent a lot of time talking while I had fun looking around at all the shiny blinky crazy “you can’t make this s**t up” stuff.
Eventually, the bleacher car decided it was going to take off and adventure back across the playa, and we decided to go along for the ride. It trundled off, stopping occasionally to say hi to other art cars and let the passengers switch out or dance a bit or whatever they wanted. We saw El Pulpo again, and a huge double decker bus all done up like a magic treehouse. While we were hanging out and dancing with the magic treehouse, a dust storm came up. We put on our masks and goggles, and decided that we were done with dancing for a while, and that this might be a good time to leave the bleachers and strike out on our own. We were fairly near a clump of regional effigy sculptures, so we walked over to investigate.
My eye was caught by one sculpture in particular I’d heard about and had wanted to see: a giant hamsa hand, all lit up with beautiful scintillating lights and a huge eye in the middle of the hand. When we got up close to it, I discovered that much to my delight, there was a whole area in back of the hand with what looked like a ready-made drum circle: a semi-circle of big and little hand drums surrounded by a bench, so you could just sit down and play. Now, I love me some drumming, so of course I sat down and started playing. As soon as I started noodling around, I realized that the lights responded to the drums, and then it got even more fun! There were a few other people there at the same time, and we all started playing. More people came up and started playing and dancing, and we eventually got quite the super groove going. I had such fun drumming at that sculpture—I could have done it for hours (and in fact we stayed there for about an hour, according to Anji...I was so in the flow of the whole thing that I only noticed it had been awhile when my hands started hurting from all that enthusiastic drum banging). For a while there I was definitely the leader of the drum circle, which was something I’d never really gotten to do before. I must say it felt really satisfying to be able to suggest a beat (mostly Middle Eastern, since that’s what I know best) and have people follow it, and to “solo” when I felt so moved. It sounded pretty good to me, and since others had started dancing, it must have sounded pretty good to others as well. My experience at the hamsa was everything I love about Burning Man, all neatly encapsulated into one experience: serendipitous discovery, friendly interaction with interesting strangers, collaborative artistic expression, creative flow, beautiful sparkly lights and an infectious beat that makes you want to boogie all night long. It was a peak experience, and I was sorry to stop, but eventually I did stop and let other people take it from there.
After the hamsa, Anji and I decided it was time to wander back home. It was getting on towards the wee hours, and we were both super dusty and exhausted (though happy). On the way home we found ourselves passing by a big sculpture that spelled out “INSANITY” in huge, color-changing letters, so of course we felt we had to stop and take a picture with it. We also met a man there dressed in a big Native American feather bonnet and fringed pants, who turned out to be Turkish (we met a lot of international folks this year...apparently they were about 25% of the participants this time). He took a picture of us and we took a picture of him and then we went our separate ways.
We oriented ourselves using the beacon of the bright pink neon heart on top of the swing outside Pink Heart, and trudged our way home. When we got back to Pink Heart, we decided to swing on the swing. Someone was already in it, but Anji very politely went up and asked them if we could have a turn, and they said sure. So we sat in the glow of pink neon and swung ourselves around for awhile, laughing about our adventures of the night. Then I started fading, so Anji went to get her playa coat so she could walk me the block or so to SSV and then continue on. We stumbled back into SSV’s front area looking for Josh, but he wasn’t on the dance floor any more. I said goodbye to Anji and wandered back to our yurt, where I found Josh already crashed out.
Even though I was exhausted and the idea of falling into the oblivion of sleep sounded really attractive, I first stripped down and tried to wipe the worst of the dust and dirt off with some babywipes (which was harder than it sounds, but I managed to at least get a layer or two off). Then I got into bed and laid there for awhile, but I couldn’t quite sleep yet. I tossed and turned and cursed the loud thumpy dance music endlessly booming from across the way, but still I couldn’t do more than doze.
Then came the downer part of the wonderful evening I’d had. Sometime in the early morning, after a few hours of tossing and turning, my stomach started feeling upset and much to my dismay, I realized that I would have to go out and visit the porta potties a few blocks away. I really didn’t want to; I was already feeling pretty low, physically: exhausted and footsore from dancing and walking all over, filthy and itchy and covered in dust, bruised hands from drumming, and sad and grumpy about not being able to sleep. But I screwed my courage to the sticking point and made myself get up and get dressed again. I grabbed my backpack and hat and flashlight and trudged down to the portas in the dark. It was a long, uncomfortable walk and visit, but I survived it and made it back to camp feeling better. I went back to bed and managed to doze a little longer until it was officially morning and I could go hang outside and distract myself by talking to other people. Eventually I started feeling better and was able to take a short nap.