Radical Rituals at Burning Man 2017: Part 9 (Afterword--Lessons and Takeaways)
This year I’m doing something different than my usual tradition of pithy punch list of lessons learned to wrap this series of entries up. I’m writing this last entry exactly two weeks after we got home from the burn, because it’s taken me that long to find the time and the energy to write all the previous entries and frankly, I needed a little time to let the lessons and themes clarify and precipitate out. People keep asking me “so how was Burning Man?” and my answer has been pretty shallow (“it was really great and really hot!”) because how it truly was and how I felt about it requires a much more complicated and layered answer and most people really don’t want to stick around to hear all that (but if you’re bothering to read this, maybe you do so I’ll tell you).
So how was Burning Man?
I enjoyed it overall, despite some discomfort with the heat and a few times of crankiness or upset with Josh. I spent some excellent quality time with familiar and unfamiliar PHamily members and felt I had a place and was valued, but didn’t get a chance to go transformatively deep with anyone. I was able to formally express my artist and musician identities by doing my Fly Your Freak Flag High workshop and the Radical Love Ritual and by performing on stage with my handpan at Center Camp, and those things were successful and made me feel recognized and appreciated, at least in a modest way.
I also did a lot of volunteering and a lot of moving from scheduled thing to scheduled thing, pretty much all of which was rewarding in some way (made me feel good about being of service and being able to use my superpowers, and led to some great interactions with interesting random people, which is one of the best parts of Burning Man to me), but it also made the burn feel more like work and like the way I usually operate in the non-Burning Man world, where I am constantly filling my time with things and running from thing to thing that past me has scheduled for future me. Upon reflection, I think I frontloaded my week with too much responsibility because I was trying to keep a couple days open at the end of the week, but that didn’t work out too well. It would have been better for me to break it up more so that each day had a little schedule and a lot of freedom rather than the opposite, so I could keep my time at the burn a little more open and available for spontaneous adventures and connections. I want there to be enough empty time for me to get kind of bored or restless and start looking for things to do and people to talk to, because it is those serendipitous moments that are important and meaningful to me. I did manage some of those this year but wish there had been more. Having some more empty, free time would also have been useful to help me re-learn how to prioritize (and celebrate) my own choices around what I want to do and who I want to be in the moment. That mode of being my authentic self doing what I want to do in every moment is usually something I really treasure about my time at Burning Man, and I think my enthusiasm for wanting to be of service resulted in my not allowing myself enough space for that. Since I know I really am a twinkly bright happy powerful Supernova, the reminder here is that like my astronomical namesake, I’ve got to pull in before I explode out. Here’s to the healing power of contraction and quiet!
Speaking of healing, related to all this is my slowly clarifying realization that healing and grieving both take a long time (longer than my impatient “why can’t I be normal now” self wants them to take, anyway), and that perhaps what I am facing now is another round of the challenge to accept and appreciate what is and where I’m at right now and to trust that “new normal” is okay, even when it’s a moving target. I think I was unconsciously assuming that last burn was the burn for processing all the cancer feels and that this burn would be for other things, and in some ways it was, but in some ways it wasn’t. It appears that I am still struggling with some existential angst around “I could have died but I didn’t; why did I live, and what is the meaning of my life now that I have it (mostly) back?” I didn’t process this angst much (or at least consciously much) at the burn itself, but it’s hit me really hard since I got back, especially when Josh and everyone else hit re-entry with so much to do and so much to take care of that seemed really urgent and important and impactful, whereas my workload seemed like mostly non-urgent parenting and household drudgery that no one really needed or appreciated. I’ll be honest, I had a few pretty bad depressive days last week where I felt pointless and valueless and couldn’t see my own positive contributions to the world, and even questioned whether anyone would really miss me if I were gone. The benefit of hindsight makes me wonder if the over-scheduled, tons of volunteering burn I set up for myself was an unconscious way to try to convince myself that I was needed or impactful. (I know, past me, you were just trying to take care of future me, and I appreciate that. But perhaps we need to be a little more honest and insightful about what’s really going on and what’s really needed. So here you go, future me.)
Which is not to say that I didn’t sometimes take it easy or engage with self-care, because there definitely was some of that (thanks, super hot weather, for reminding me). Resting when I was tired, giving myself water and electrolytes and shade and snacks, spending some time at the Temple, asking for a massage, going out on a few adventures, all this was important. Many of the experiences I’ve had lately (at Gaming Camp before the burn, at various points during the burn, and even during this difficult decompression period) remind me or reaffirm for me that self-care is a necessary, ongoing practice, one that is a blessing, not a burden or a guilt. Self-care leads to self-love and self-love is the foundation of and prerequisite to healing all the other things. (Hi, oxygen mask theory, you’re still here? Ok, fine, come sit down here by me and give me a hug.)
One other theme that seems to have emerged in the writing down of all that happened at this year’s burn is the theme of The Gift of (Perspective Shift). I spent a lot of time gifting perspective shifts to other people, and sitting here two weeks post-burn I feel like I might be finally ready to engage with some of that perspective-shifting gifting myself. Last year brought me new appreciation for “suffering cracks us open and lets the light in” and “no mud, no lotus”; this year (or at least this particular reflective moment) is bringing me “take it easy” (which could also be expressed with the classic Pink Heart saying “float more, steer less”), and “self care comes first”, as well as the related perspective shift reminders of “crap or cone” (e.g. you get what you focus on) and “blessings, not burdens”.
So there are my takeaways from this year’s burn, at least with having had “only” two weeks to process. If you’re still reading this I’m impressed with your powers of concentration and hope that there has been something interesting or relatable in here for you, maybe even something that shifts your perspective. Supernova out!
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Preamble and Prologue]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 1]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 2]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 3]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 4]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 5]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 6]
[Radical Rituals at Burning Man: Part 7]
Monday morning I woke up early and decided that I wanted to do one more personal ritual before we had to break down and pack up our yurt and load the truck and leave. So I took my handpan and one of our little chairs and walked out to the open playa, and played a sunrise set. A few people came out from both Pink Heart and Red Lightning and joined me, and watched the sun rise over what was left of the playa art. I’m so glad I did that—it was good personal closure to able to say goodbye to the playa and my experiences that week through making music. 
It was a fairly slow slog once we hit blacktop, with some spectacular clouds and rain squalls along the way between Gerlach and Empire (we were soooo grateful not to have been trapped in the line to get out by that rain, though I’m not sure if it ever even made it to playa). We got ahead of the rain and wind and stopped off in Nixon to get rid of our trash bags, where the weather caught up to us just as we were leaving. We did see some beautiful rainbows though. We made it to Reno by around 6pm if I recall correctly, and checked in to the Silver Legacy. It was really great to be able to take a break there and not have to drive all the way home. We called our kids and took that blissful first shower and dressed in clean soft clothes and went down to the lobby to meet up with a bunch of other Pinkies (including Doug and Elena, who hadn’t been to the burn but who came to Reno just to hang out with other Pinkies) who were also staying at the Silver Legacy. We hung out in one of the casino bars for a while and then there was a big group dinner at P.F. Chang’s, which I enjoyed the heck out of, especially since we really hadn’t eaten much that day.
After dinner we were hanging around the front of P.F. Chang’s waiting for our various Uber rides and taxis to get there when Ryan decided he wanted to climb one of the big stone horse statues that every P.F. Chang’s has outside it. I really tried to discourage him but of course other people were encouraging him and he’s a daredevil anyway so he didn’t listen to me. He climbed up just fine and was triumphant for about one minute. Then he started to climb down and slipped and fell and nearly whacked his head on the bottom of the statue but by some miracle missed and merely crashed onto the big cobblestones set around the base. He bounced right back up and was okay (though probably pretty spectacularly bruised) but he certainly scared the shit out of many of us. It could have ended so differently, and I am very grateful that it turned out okay. Whew.
Sunday is always a tough day at the burn because we have to strike camp—it’s tough physically of course but it’s also tough emotionally because it feels like the setting and the vibe we worked so hard to put together all year and so enjoyed all week comes apart so rapidly and irrevocably, and then is just gone, poof, like it was never there. (Yes, yes, we carry it in our hearts and in our memories, but at least for me, that dismantling always carries a shot of grief in it.)
I also remember at some point that day having a conversation with our campmate Lionessa and a few other Pinkies about the news we’d heard that someone had committed suicide the night before by jumping into the flames of the Man burn. Lionessa had been on the perimeter and close by. She watched the whole thing happen, including the heroic efforts of the firefighters who tried to get the guy out of the fire but were unable to save him, and she was pretty upset and traumatized. I don’t want to speculate on why someone would do such a thing or pass any sort of judgment except to say that his decision to do something so spectacularly and selfishly rash traumatized a whole lot of other people, and that is a bummer with a huge ripple effect which is still playing out in the burner community. (And once we got home, that tragic death was all anyone wanted to ask us about once they heard we’d been at Burning Man.)
Eventually we had all done as much as we were going to do for the day (which was most of the strike, it’s very true that many hands make lighter work), and we changed clothes and got ready to go out to the Temple burn. Kathy and Steve and some other campmates had hatched a plan to pull Mom (who still couldn’t walk much on her wrenched ankle) out to the burn with us on a wagon, which was super sweet and such a wonderful example of how our PHamily takes care of each other. So Josh and I and a big bunch of other Pinkies and Mom on her wagon walked out until we got pretty close to the perimeter of the Temple burn and settled down to watch it together. (As a side note, we saw the amazing giant marionette on the way there and back...I didn’t catch the name of this art piece but it was gorgeous: a big woman with words and images written all over her body, suspended from a crane on a truck, and apparently people could take turns moving her arms and legs and head. She was kneeling on one knee for the Temple burn, which was cool.)
It was a really beautiful and gentle burn, with a gorgeous contrast between the white hot flames and the patterned structure of the building on the lower level and a graceful slow slumping of the highest pieces into the lower ones as they burned up. The mood of this burn is always much more solemn and thoughtful (and often tearful). It was really great to spend this burn with such a large bunch of our PHamily, and there was a lot of emotion rocketing around. Every once in a while, someone in the greater crowd would start a wolf howl, and it was neat to hear it travel around the perimeter. Other than that though people were mostly silent and there was a lot of hugging (and occasional tears). It felt like a fitting ending to the burn.
Saturday was my only day with nothing pre-planned and nothing I had committed to do. The burn was almost over and I was starting to feel nibbles of FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) so I was determined to go see some more art (especially the Temple of Gravity, which was wayyyyy out in deep playa), and cajoled Josh into going with me to ride over there before it got too hot. We eventually got dressed and geared up with water and chill neckcloths and scarves and hats and made it out by around 10am, and headed out the 9:00 side towards the deep playa (which is everything that is past the Temple and the circle of the inner playa). We started going from art piece to art piece, following the time-honored adventure ritual of “hey what’s that? Let’s go look.”
We did see some amazing art, including the incredibly impressive Temple of Gravity, which was a giant curved metal frame from which were suspended five huge multi-ton slabs of granite on metal chains—they were so perfectly balanced that you could push on one of the suspended slabs and it would move and sway. It was a trippy feeling of contrast to be a puny little soft monkey yet able to make a giant heavy slab of rock dance.
Another favorite of mine was the Flower Tower, a humongous central rocket-shaped tower with multiple smaller rocket towers around it, each made of steel and covered with hundreds of individually shaped and colorfully painted metal flowers. This was made by Reared in Steel, who are local artists just up the highway from us in Petaluma. When I was at the Rivertown Revival festival back in July they’d set up one of the small rocket towers and next to it a booth where you could make a flower or two for the towers—I had a lot of fun making one and of course I looked for the one I made when I saw the whole thing in the desert, but there were far too many so I didn’t find it. It was super impressive and possibly my favorite piece of art at the burn. Did I mention it also shot fire out from the top, and lit up in beautiful rainbow colors at night? Amazing.
We had a great time flitting from piece to piece, and eventually we made it all the way out to the fabled trash fence (the fence that the Burning Man org puts up to mark the boundary of the event, and which provides a kind of loose containment device for the windborne MOOP that inevitably happens). I’d been telling myself that I wanted to make it all the way out to the trash fence for the last 5 burns, and I finally did it. (On my tricycle no less! I was impressed with both of us.) I had had a somewhat romanticized, fuzzy idea in my head of what deep playa and the trash fence actually looked like, and now I have a real idea of what it looks like and what it means to adventure out there. I would definitely go do that again. It is far and it takes some effort and some preparation to go out there (you would NOT want to be caught unprepared in a huge dust storm, for example), but it’s fun and totally worth it, especially because it is so relatively uncrowded.
So after a while I went to go chill out in frontage, both because it wasn’t as comfortable in the yurt as I wanted, and because our new friend Marie (a super talented illustrator from Paris) was drawing something on our yurt and didn’t want us to see it until she was done. (We had invited people to come write and draw on our yurt walls, almost like a yearbook signing, although not too many people did so...mostly because we were too lazy, I mean distracted, to bug people to come do it.) Once she was done and showed us what she had drawn on the inner doorway, we were totally blown away. She’d made a portrait of me and Josh as a Viking bard and warrior (“I knew you guys liked role playing games so I thought you’d like this”) and it was fantastic! One of the things that happened at the very end of the burn is that we scored a new free yurt from an imploded plug-and-play camp so we may not be using our old yurt anymore, but we will certainly save that door panel as art.
I spent some time taking pictures with Kathy and some other Pinkies in the heart light and then I settled down to watch the burn, which was spectacular even from a distance, with sprays of fireworks and big roiling balls of fire. We not only shared the evening with a bunch of Pink Hearters, but also a cute couple (alas I have forgotten their names already) who had just met at Pink Heart earlier that day and were clearly having a lovely romantic burn night together. (Awww, Pink Heart romances are the best!) One of them was a guy who had been one of my best “salespeople” for the wooden heart necklace radical love ritual earlier that evening—it was really cool to see the ritual “catch on” with other people and the resonance they felt with the ritual.
Because I had actually gotten enough sleep, I woke up reasonably early on Friday morning. Josh was still asleep, but I wanted to take advantage of the relative coolness of the morning and go do something. So I decided to take my handpan and go play with the gongs at the Man base and see what serendipitous interactions came my way. I had a lovely couple of hours there people-watching, playing handpan and talking to people (and letting people try my handpan). It was fun and a bit frustrating trying to listen to and play along with the gongs (which were apparently programmed but in a fairly chaotic, random pattern that went from soft to loud and back again). In yet another example of playa magic, I was sitting there thinking “gosh I wish I had a picture of me doing this so I’d remember it later” when someone came by with a Polaroid camera and gifted me with a photo. A little later on another lovely soul named Jason wandered by and stopped to check out the handpan and talk to me, and he turned out to be a photographer with lots of equipment so he took some photos and video of me playing (though I was feeling kind of nervous and on the spot so I don’t know how well they came out, but I don’t care.)
After a couple of hours I had to leave and head back to camp because there was a group of campmates planning to bike across the playa to TransFOAMnation (this was the Dr. Bronner’s foam shower camp that I’d had such a good experience at last year, when it was called ReFOAMation—they change the theme every year) and hand out cookies. I also brought a couple hundred Pink Heart wooden necklaces to gift (we had so many, and it was clear that we would not go through them all just by passively leaving them on the Gifting Wall). I definitely didn’t want to miss the trip to TransFOAMnation, both because it’s such an awesome experience in and of itself to be dancing around with friends and strangers all clean and naked, and because it represented a kind of personal radical ritual to me to try appearing naked in public in all my modified, scarred-up glory. (This year I was determined to go through the whole experience naked, unlike the year before, when my reconstruction surgery scars were still quite fresh and I was feeling kind of shy about being naked in front of friends and strangers so I wore a two piece bathing suit.)
When we got there we once again got to skip the very long line and go straight in in a Pink Heart clump, and I took a deep breath and stripped down and climbed up the steps and got foamy with my PHamily. And you know what? It was great. Even possibly greater than last year. I really reveled in the feeling of being clean and naked and dancing around with a bunch of other clean, naked, happy people. I had fun connecting with people and giving out necklaces and love (I let other people give out the cookies). I didn’t feel self-conscious or have any negative body-image moments at all. I sort of expected that I might get comments (from PHamily if not from strangers) about my scars but no one said anything, and although in some small way that was weird (because this big important thing had happened to me was not acknowledged), it mostly felt great to have an experience where I felt “normalized” in my body again.
Our Pink Heart group met up again afterwards but then decided all to go our separate ways back. Josh and I decided to ride through the city to get back to Pink Heart (since this was probably going to be the only time we were over there). We were happily biking along when someone called out to us “hey, whatever you’re doing right now is not as important as coming over here and getting a snowcone”, and we looked at him and at each other and without hesitation said “yup, you’re right!” and made that detour. Again, playa magic—because as I’ve said before, pretty much one of my favorite things at Burning Man is being gifted with improbable cold treats in a crazy hot desert. There was a sign at the camp giving away the snowcones that encouraged people to cut to the front of the line by showing their tits or their junk, but having just had a naked ritual experience and its accompanying release, I decided I didn’t need to do it again that soon (and frankly, the line wasn’t that long so it didn’t seem worth it).
We eventually made it back out to open playa and detoured to see a few art pieces, including the fabulous big metal letters that have been there the last few years (this year they said XOXO), and a piece called “Maya’s Mind” which was a giant concrete bust that was a gorgeous tribute to Maya Angelou by the same artist (Mischell Phoenix Riley) who last year made “Inside the Mind of Da Vinci”. We actually saw a praying mantis perched on the backside of Maya’s Mind...I’m not sure what the message was there but it was kind of cool to see an actual big live insect out there in the mostly barren desert.
Towards evening there was some “meats-and-cheeses” PHamily hangout in the shade of our shared patio area (where everyone brings meats and cheeses and other snacks to share). I don’t remember what else I did on Friday evening but I’m guessing it probably also involved hanging out in the Pink Lounge with PHamily and random passers-through, which was something I did a lot this burn, so much so that all the time I spent there kind of blurs together.
I squeezed in a few hours of sleep on Thursday morning, and then blearily got up and changed into my pink outfit and tried to get myself together to go on the pink ride. Josh was anxious and bugging me about being ready on time and I felt rushed and cranky from the heat and the lack of sleep so we wound up fighting with each other in one of those classic playa breakdown moments. Unfortunately the Pink Ride wound up leaving without us and Josh didn’t want to go try to catch up to it so we stayed at camp and argued some more until we worked it out, and then decided to go out to the Temple. On the way there we stopped to see Mucaro, which was a big wooden owl sculpture that on the inside was an unexpectedly sweet tribute to teachers and education. Earlier in the week you could climb all the way up and look through the owl’s eyes out at the playa, but by the time we got there on Thursday the upper part of it was closed off, apparently because someone had fallen and hurt themselves. (There are a lot of potentially dangerous ways to hurt yourself out there at Burning Man if you’re not careful, and many people are, shall we say, not their most sober and careful selves while they’re there. It’s always a bummer when someone hurts themselves, but it’s also a bummer for those of us who then lose access because of someone else’s carelessness or disregard.) Still, it was pretty cool, and beautifully built.
Once we got to the Temple, Josh and I split up. He had some heavy processing to do about his Dad’s illness and decline, so I gave him some space and went wandering around feeling my own feels (not to mention those of the hundreds of other burners that were there feeling their own feels or the thousands who had already been there and left their emotional residue hanging about). I had a box of forgiveness letters that my friend Eileen (who leads beautiful workshops and retreats focusing on Forgiveness) had given me to place at the Temple to be burned, so I did that first and then I came upon a guy doing some sound healing with crystal bowls and hanging chimes, so I stood there for a little while listening to that. During and after that I let myself do some quiet reflecting about the time I’d spent at the Temple last burn trying to process my Year of Living Cancerously, and how far I’d come and how much better I felt since then—although I also had to reflect on how much was still hanging around messing with me, and how much more complicated and time-consuming both healing and grieving were turning out to be. I still wasn’t feeling totally comfortable with my new, “modified” body, and struggling with the ways in which parts of me still felt “broken” or shifted away from how I once was, and with how I wasn’t “done” with the cancer experience, even though I was supposedly physically healed. I wrote a couple more things on the Temple walls (“Fuck off cancer and never come back” and “Hey boobies, I still miss you”) and then I sat for a bit and just let the feels wash through me.
While I was sitting there I was noticing a lovely older woman with a massage chair not far away from me giving out massages to people, and I started thinking about how I would love to have a massage (which is one of the regular tools I use for self-care at home) and maybe if I went closer she would notice me and offer me one. Then I thought to myself “hey, if you want to take care of yourself, be proactive. Don’t wait for others to see you want or need help, ask for what you need.” So I went over to her and asked her if I could be next. And she said “sure!” I felt pretty good about that (and it was a lovely massage). Josh came by and found me just as I was about to sit down on the chair, and he patiently waited for me to be done. After it was over I thanked the masseuse (whose name I am forgetting) and we left the Temple in a solemn, quiet mood.
So I joined Josh again for another shower (I had more showers this burn than I think I’ve ever had before) and changed my clothes again and spent some fun time fooling around in frontage and taking some pictures with Anji, Mom, MissyKat, Aimee and other friends at various art installations in front of camp like the Playa Barbie box and the heart arch.
I don’t remember much else that evening but I suspect there was a lot of hanging around with campmates in both the front and back of camp. I do know that I was still pretty tired so I went to bed fairly early but set an alarm so I could wake up and go sit in the frontage and see Mucaro burn at midnight. That burn was gorgeous--fast and beautifully executed (it was clear that whoever had built it had been aware of how it would burn...each part of it easily slumped down into the next so that it stayed compact and controlled even while burning bright and furious). After that I went back to bed, though Josh and some other people went to go see the Phoenix Rising burn at sunrise. I knew I needed the sleep though, and I was trying to be good about self-care, after all.
Wednesday morning started off pretty mellow, though I still woke up early (at least I once again scored on a clean-ish potty). I stopped off and saw a few bits of nearby art on my way to and from the potty, and then wound up sitting in the Pink Swing with Anji for a little while to talk to her about some of the things going on in her burn. While we were there we saw a really amazingly all lime-green and black costumed guy trudging by, looking like he was on his way home from a crazy night out, and called him over so we could look at his costume more closely. He told us he was “En-Ki” (a Sumerian god), and he really made me want to up my costume game!
I spent some time thinking about Josh’s dad and his imminent physical transition, and wrote him a little note on the Temple wishing him ease and grace during it. I also took off the embroidery floss bracelet that I’d been wearing since Gaming Camp started earlier in the summer and tied it to one of the wooden hearts that Anji had had someone make (they said “YOU ARE LOVED”) and bring to the Temple for people to use for their own messages. I wrote myself a couple little encouraging messages on the heart: “you are enough/self care comes first” (which is one of the big lessons that working—and breaking down—at Gaming Camp had reinforced for me) and “thanks past me for taking care of future me...I love you!” (which has also been a kind of ongoing theme for me this year). I didn’t drop down too deep into reflection because I knew my time there was limited—I had my Handpan Jam gig at Center Camp to get to by 10:30. So I left Anji there and biked back with Mel to Pink Heart to collect Josh and my handpan.
We were running a bit late and I was a bit anxious but everything turned out fine. When I got there Judith (my handpan teacher) and her friend Arsenic were already there with their handpans, and even though I was hoping that other handpan friends would show up, it turned out to be just the two of us (Arsenic didn’t want to be on stage). So the kindly volunteer stage technicians set Judith and I up some cushions on the stage floor and gave us a couple of mikes and we took all three handpans out there with us. We had no real plan about what to do and our handpans really didn’t coordinate well, but both of us were pretty comfortable with each other and with improvising so I think it still turned out pretty well. (We called it “extreme handpan sports” because it was so hard to get the pans to work together.) We started by trying to play pans together but quickly switched to taking turns playing one pan each and playing four-hands-one-pan together on each of the pans. I was nervous about playing on stage and I think that made me a little over-enthusiastic at times but Judith was very gracious and overall we had a really fun time playing with each other in that setting. Amazingly enough, there was a fairly big crowd listening to us, and every time we stopped or talked to them they seemed interested and appreciative. I wish I’d gotten video but Josh got caught up in the coffee line and didn’t make it back in time to get my phone from me (he didn’t have his phone on him) so it will just have to live in my memory. I did get a few pics from Mom though, for which I am very grateful. At the end of our scheduled half hour, the stage manager asked if we could keep going a little longer as the person after us had not shown up yet. So we said “um, sure” and kept improvising and playing for probably another 15-20 minutes or so. The handpan jam experience in general was a good reminder that things generally work out pretty well if you just flow with it, and trust yourself.
Unfortunately I didn’t have a lot of time to stick around Center Camp after the handpan jam, because I had another Pink Heart water bar shift to get back to and we’d already run late. So I hugged Judith goodbye and biked back to Pink Heart with Josh. I had another pretty fun couple of hours interacting and slaking the thirst of dusty burners, and at some point in there Halcyon came by and I got a chance to go walk him through the Radical Love Ritual with the wooden heart necklaces on the side of camp, which he appreciated. After the shift I was pretty dang tired and it was still blazingly hot so I went to chill out and nap in our yurt.
Once I got up from my nap, it was time to go celebrate with our campmates Cat and Andrew, who were getting married at the Heart Arch in front of our camp, and then there was camp dinner. After dinner Josh and I got dressed to go out to the White Party, which was all the way across the playa at 2:00 and E so we had to bike there. It was, as usual, a big fancy fun dancy time, but we only stayed a couple hours before we got tired of it and decided to head back to camp with Anji and House via a few side adventures to see some art. Among other things, we stopped by the amazing Tree of Tenere, which was a several stories tall tree with tens of thousands of LED leaves that continuously changed color and pattern. It was breathtakingly impressive but we did not stick around to climb up into it (which I now regret). We also stopped to play with a lit up rope that stretched up into the sky for hundreds of feet and was attached to a big floating weather balloon—trust me, it was more fun than it sounds.
We also stopped by the Man base to check it out. Right outside the base there were a variety of art pieces in a circle surrounding it, which we unfortunately didn’t spend a lot of time looking at (you get very overwhelmed by art sometimes and you have to pick and choose what you have the energy to pay attention to, especially late at night when you perhaps aren’t at your most attentive.) This year the Man stood on the ground but was enclosed inside a sort of pagoda or pavilion, which had self-playing gongs and chimes on the sides (reminiscent of the Temple a few years ago that played itself) and an altar next to his feet in the middle. You could walk around the inside floor, and you could go up stairs and walk around a wide wooden balcony that was approximately at the Man’s chest level.
Eventually we wandered back to Pink Heart and Josh went to bed but I stayed up because I had a sunrise shift on Headspace from 4-8am. I brought my pink heart fleece throws and my playa coat and wore my pink Headspace hat and I was ready to go. It turned out to be a lovely experience cruising the deep playa in the wee hours, even though I was pretty tired. There were several other Pinkies hanging out on Headspace during that shift, and I have fond memories of cuddle time and conversations with Alex, Anshul, and Sup, and some fun banter with Ian at some of the stops we made. Sup especially will always be my sunrise buddy...we had some great conversations and smiles and hugs all night long.
One moment I particularly remember was cruising across the playa as the light was brightening and the DJ was playing a cool mix of “Here Comes the Sun”. The combination of beautiful light, sound, and temperature was perfect and the feeling of freedom and happiness plus the realization that there was nowhere else better to be than right here, in this moment, with these people, in this place, was one of those peak Burning Man moments.
After the ritual and hugs were done we all climbed back on Headspace and headed back to Pink Heart. I was pretty wrung out at that point so I went back to our yurt and tried to catch a few hours of sleep before I had to get up and change for the Pink Ride, which was at noon.
I got up early enough on Tuesday morning to ride out to the playa-side potties (which had just been cleaned, great timing!) put my tutu outfit on and eat some breakfast. Then I got my self and supplies up to the frontage, where one of my favorite art flunkies (aka my mom) and I laid out some supplies and blank flags on one of the “mushroom” chairs in a shady part of the pink lounge. There were already people hanging around interested in the flag making, so I gathered up a group of people and explained the project and then sent the first batch off to color. People kept wandering in to the frontage and wanting to do the project so I found myself doing the same thing I do at Maker Faire, which is to grab people as they come in and make a group to which I explain the project all at once. After explaining the project concept and handing out blank flags I would remind them to use newspaper under their flag, encourage them to talk to each other while they were coloring, and tell them to come see me afterwards for pictures, and then let them go off wherever they chose in the frontage. Mom was also really helpful in explaining the project and encouraging people to make flags, and in helping me clean up all the newspapers and sharpies that got left about. Yay for art flunkies!
For the last hour or two of the workshop there were clumps of people coloring all over frontage, which made me really happy. I believe we went through almost a hundred flags, which is significantly more than in past years. I’m not sure what made the project so attractive this year other than mere serendipity and timing (10am-1pm on a Tuesday seems to be a good time for people to come hang out and make art) but I was happy to see that everything worked out so well and that I had been able to touch so many people with the FYFFH project this year. I met some wonderful people and had a lot of fun talking to people about their flags (I asked each person to tell me a story about or explain something they’d put on their flag), and sometimes the timing worked out so that those stories could be told in a group setting, which I think was a great innovation. One of the important points of doing this project is not only to see and appreciate our own freaky bits, but those of others as well, so showing other people our flags and talking about our own freaky bits in a non-judgmental, supportive way with other burners (who are already mostly operating in a spirit of radical openness and appreciation) was really great. I also encouraged people to talk to each other while they were coloring, and to introduce their freaky bits to each other as a way to connect and to reclaim the word “freak” as a compliment (e.g. “hey, that’s really freaky!” or “you are such an interesting freak” or “hey I’m that kind of freak too!”)
The only hard part about the FYFFH workshop was taking pictures, because the place where I was taking pictures was in the direct sunlight and it was HOT, especially early on before the shade spread to cover the whole frontage. The direct super hot sunlight not only made it difficult to see the camera screen (I just pointed my phone in the right general direction and hoped for the best), but I actually got a little woozy and had to drink a ton of water and be vigilant about staying in the shade at all other times. I’m not positive I got all the pics I tried to take (because I couldn’t even tell if the camera app was on), but those I did manage to take turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I didn’t pass out any moo cards or flyers, but I told people that if they could remember the instruction to “fly your freak flag high” they could find the web site and see their pics later.
After serving ice cream for an hour or two, we were relieved by other Pinkies and had a little bit of a break where I went and laid down in our yurt. Then it was time to go work at the Pink Heart water bar from 4-6. It was still super hot and people were really thirsty and appreciative of our water bar, so that was fun gifting as well, but it also meant that we had to keep the line moving and there wasn’t much time for interacting with each person, plus I was constantly filling (or convincing other Pinkies to fill) and replacing the water coolers. Still, I had some nice conversations and was able to give out a few water bottles (sometimes in a semi-scolding way, where I’d tell people “hey, Pink love is tough love and I’m gonna give you this now but you’d better take care of yourself better from now on and bring a water bottle everywhere you go”). While we were at the water bar, there was a huge dust storm that blew in. Pink Heart got lucky and wasn’t really hit by the storm and was kind of protected, so it was kind of fun to watch it from a relatively safe place, and to see everyone so frosted with dust afterwards. After the dust storm there was also a bit of a rain (and a rainbow!), but luckily not so much that things got muddy.
After the water bar shift I believe there was some sitting around and some camp dinner, and then I rallied for one last push to go put up the laser-cut wooden heart necklaces and the accompanying sign and larger hearts that we’d made for the Gifting Wall. (Which I really think we should have renamed the Radical Love Ritual.) Michelle, Alex and Bella all pitched in to help, which made the whole thing go a whole lot faster and made it more fun, of course. The idea was that there were a bunch of blank heart necklaces on one side of the fence and you could walk up and take one off and write a couple words of love, compliment or encouragement on it with a pink sharpie also attached to the fence, and then hang the one you made on the other side and take one that someone else had left. So you got to make love and take love. You could also write additional words of love and positivity on either of the two larger laser-cut wooden hearts we attached to either side of the necklace area, and these would be taken to the temple to burn and release all that love and positivity into the world. Anyway we seeded the ritual by writing a few things on the heart necklaces and the big hearts and then just left it set up there to see what would happen. (More on this later).
I woke up a few minutes before my alarm went off at 2:30am, and changed into the “space babe” superhero outfit that I’d packed to wear for my Greeter shift. I had found the base of this costume at a playawear sale in Berkeley a week or so before the burn. It was a zip-up, silvery black spandex bodysuit thing with short sleeves and super short shorts, with a long red spandex cape attached at the shoulders and six large round turquoise plastic “buttons” down the front that each had a circular infinity light inside of them. It was something I originally pulled out of the rack and looked at and went “naw, I can’t possibly wear that, it’s too small, too revealing, not flattering to my big butt and thighs”. But some other little voice inside me said “aw come on, just try it on and see...besides, every time you think some piece of apparel or accessory is just too outrageous, you wind up loving it later.” So I tried it on and it did fit (yay stretchy spandex), and it was in fact revealing but I decided to experiment with it anyway. I added black, fringed fingerless gloves, black thigh highs, sparkly silver UGG boots, the silver and turquoise crown I made at Gaming Camp and big star earrings. And thus was the superhero version of Supernova born. As it turned out, the night was mild and I wasn’t even cold so I didn’t have to put on a jacket over the outfit, and the light ups in the bodysuit were perfect for the night part of the shift. I wish I had some pictures of the moment but I will always remember how good it felt to be standing tall and proud at the Gate at sunrise with my cape flying in the wind behind me.
And being a Greeter turned out to be super fun! Anji, Kathy, Michelle and I rode our bikes out to the Gate and got there early for our shift, so we sat around for a bit in the Greeter station and got oriented by the very nice shift leads, and then when it was time, we all sort of randomly picked a spot in the Gate lineup to get started. We overlapped with the previous shift for a few minutes and watched how it was done, and then we were on our own for four hours. The Greeter before me gave me some great stickers that he’d made to keep handing out to people along with the usual What-Where-When guide, map and other materials. The traffic was pretty slow (it being so early in the morning) but pretty much everyone who came through was super stoked to have finally arrived and happy to chat and talk and do some ritual if they were first-timers (virgins).
Anji was in the Greeter line next to me and she and I had fun playing around with trying to get incoming cars to come to our own line and not the other person’s. I would gesture towards the car or RV like I was trying really hard to pull it towards me with invisible ropes and then tell them when they got to my line “did you see that? I totally moved the car with my mind!” It made people laugh and it certainly entertained me. I asked people if they knew where they were going to in the city, and I gave people some PSAs about the heat we’d been experiencing and warned them to take it easy and watch for dehydration (and come by and get water from Pink Heart if they wanted). Other than that I answered any questions they had, gave them their materials and then sent them on their way. I particularly remember greeting an entire RV full of 7 guys both young and old, who turned out to be a rock band called “Daring Greatly” (isn’t that a great name?) that was coming to perform all over the burn. Many of them were virgins and they had a fun time doing all the rituals. I told them about Pink Heart and our water and ice cream and encouraged them to come by.
The four hour shift went by pretty fast, and all of us agreed it had been super fun and we’d do it again next year. After we were relieved we sat around the Greeter station for a bit waiting for the porta-potties to be cleaned so we could use them before we headed back. I will admit that the Supernova superhero bodysuit was particularly difficult to use the potty in, but I eventually managed. (You also just get a lot less fussy about cleanliness and hygiene when you’re out there in the desert. You kind of have to.) We went by Center Camp on the way back to get some drinks (I had a lovely iced Yerba Mate), and ran into Mom and Mama Doody and her friends Kathy and Katherine there, which was a fun coincidence. We didn’t stay long since we were pretty tired, but we did manage to see a few cool art pieces on the way back to Pink Heart.
I changed into a unicorn outfit for our Pink Heart Arctica shift (I figured white was appropriate for Arctica) and headed over with Josh and a bunch of other Pinkies. Just like last year, I was a Greeter for this shift also (greeting and welcoming people is one of my superpowers, after all), and also just like last year I was stationed right at the entrance to the Ice Dome. So I fell into the same shtick as last year, where I would welcome and joke and tease and ask people if they were “ready” (really I just had to make sure they were ready with their order so that they wouldn’t hold up the line once they got to the cashiers, but as is my way I wanted to make it a metaphorical question and a perspective shift as well). I would say “Are you ready? Are you clear? Clear as crystal? Do you know what you want? Are you focused, prepared, and confident? Because you know, ready people get what they want. And I want you to be successful here and get what you want.” People would laugh and say they were ready and I would say “okay, ready people cross the line!” and invite them to step over the threshold into the dome. At a certain point there was virtually no line and I would greet people by saying “guess what? I have an awesome gift for you. Check it out: no line. Savor this moment and remember that sometimes things really do work out in your favor.” (Again, the gift of awareness/perspective and assistance appreciating a moment.) We all had a good time “pinking up” Arctica and we got lots of tips and ice to bring back to camp when we were all through.
After we got back to camp from the Arctica shift, there was a camp dinner and a camp meeting, where we all squeezed into our kitchen/chill area and talked about All The Things. Anji and I had planned on doing a “newbies orientation/ice breaker” afterwards but the meeting had so much info and went so long that we said never mind. After that Josh and I took a shower in our newly remodeled Pink Heart shower (I didn’t really need a shower yet but Josh hadn’t had a shower since he’d been there for build, and it seemed like a good opportunity and experience to share), then we changed into night clothes and went and hung out on Headspace for a bit for the Headspace Homecoming dance, and hung out in frontage for a while too. I think I made it until around eleven or midnight and then I went to bed because I had a workshop to lead the next morning at 10 and I didn’t want to be cranky tired.
I’m trying something new this year, and pushing to get my Burning Man reflections and wrap-up blog posts done in the first few days after I get home, instead of weeks later. I didn’t keep a journal at the burn like I usually do (because reasons, none of which are particularly compelling), so I am feeling some sense of urgency to try to remember and set down as much as I can while I still have a little dust left around me. Not letting it sit and stew for a few weeks may mean that the lessons and themes from this year’s burn are still a little unclear, but perhaps doing this write up will help to clarify them.
Anyway...Saturday morning Mom and I packed our coolers and the few remaining things that didn’t go on the truck with Josh and Anji into our trusty minivan and left on Saturday afternoon to head up to Reno to stay at the Silver Legacy. We met up with our Pink Heart friends Ari and Mel there on Saturday evening and had a fun dinner and hangout time with them. We all decided to get up at 4am on Sunday morning (the gate had already opened at midnight) and have breakfast and get on the road by 6am. We caravanned with Ari and Mel and stopped at our traditional Love’s travel stop in Fernley for gas and last minute snacks and then got on the road to Black Rock City by around 7am. The traffic in to Black Rock City was surprisingly light (took us about 2.5 hours from Fernley to the gate, including a brief potty stop) and we were all super excited to hear BMIR (the Burning Man radio station) announce that the wait time at the gate was “only” about 2 hours. As it turned out, it took us closer to four hours from pavement to camp, but it wasn’t a bad wait. For me the real start to the burn is always in the gate line, where we all get to “practice” the kind of interactions we want to have and identities we want to inhabit for the week while we are still relatively free of other distractions.
So as it turned out, right as we pulled up to the end of the line of stopped cars after jouncing over the dusty gate road at 5 mph, I was gifted with my first taste of playa magic: one of the people in the car in front of us turned out to be my handpan buddy Reid. I asked him if he had brought his handpan, which he had, so we sat down right there in the dust and jammed on our handpans. Ari even joined us for a bit on his djembe. It was awesome!
Even though the heat and the dust and the pinkness and of course the people made it feel like Burning Man, it took me a while to really feel like I had arrived. That whole first day I’m usually all discombobulated from switching modes (not to mention switching climates). I finally started to feel like I was really there late in the afternoon on Sunday, when I was standing on top of Headspace (Pink Heart’s amazing art car) and looking out over the city (the Headspace folks had a bunch of us come on board and jump up and down a few times so they could do some weight testing). Kathy and Anji and other sweet friends were there with me and I was able to look around me at all the familiar/unfamiliar dusty places and people and really arrive.