Tuesday morning a group of us Pinkies (me, Josh, Mom, Anjanette and Deron) put on our tutus (for Tutu Tuesday, of course) and decided to go on a playa art adventure, spurred in part by reports that the Space Whale baby (more on that in a minute) was wearing a giant tutu in honor of Tutu Tuesday, and in part by Anjanette’s desire to go say hi to our mutual friend Chris (Chrispy) at her camp (ASS camp) a few time zones over. We hopped on our bikes and headed for Center Camp, which is where the Space Whale was located. The Space Whale was an ambitious and amazing project: a life-sized diving blue whale mama made of ball-and-joint metal skeleton skinned with over 1800 panels of gorgeous stained glass designed by Android Jones, with a baby whale rising to meet her. (The baby whale was not skinned with stained glass, but it was, as we’d been promised, wearing a purple tutu that day. Later in the week we spotted a narwhal horn on the baby whale.) We ooohed and aaahhed and I took a bunch of pictures but then we got restless (as you do when you’re on an art adventure) and kept going to ASS camp. We stopped in their lounge and did indeed find Chrispy and hung out with her and some other folks for a bit.
Then we got restless again and went to go look at more art. Highlights included a gorgeous wind-powered kinetic sculpture (made by the same artist who made the Olympic torch for Rio, apparently), a giant spinning metal warthog called “Lord Snort” that you could climb on (though we didn’t at the time, because it looked too intimidating...in fact apparently the spinning got to be too dangerous so they shut that part of it down later in the week), an incredible huge orange and blue octopus made out of concrete surfaced with a mosaic of round ceramic tiles (we met the artist, Peter, and some of his crew out there...they were giving away ceramic stamped octopus pendants and leftover bits of the mosaic tiles, and it was really hot out there with no shade so I told them I’d come back to them with some ice cold cucumber water from Pink Heart), an incredible 12-foot tall bear with “fur” made entirely of pennies pressed edge-way into concrete, and a giant friendly-looking metal robot called “Mechan-9” sprawled out on the playa as though it had just collapsed and been partially buried there, which we climbed all over.
Eventually we headed back to Pink Heart, but as soon as we got back I went to our water bar and filled up two Pink Heart water bottles full of cold cucumber water and convinced Anjanette to come with me to give them to the Octopus crew. We gave them the bottles and they loved them, and we had a bit more chatting and took a few more pendants to give away, but then just as we were getting ready to leave the dust got worse and worse until it was a total white out so we had to stay put for a bit. (Anjanette and I seem to have a particular gift for getting caught in white-outs together.) By the time we got back to camp we were completely frosted gray with dust. But dust is something you learn to live with and appreciate out there so we just wiped down and then we went to go serve ice cream (Pink Heart also gives out vegan coconut milk ice cream on three different days, and as previously mentioned, free frozen treats in the desert are AWESOME). I spent a fun hour or so dancing up and down the line giving people ice cream while Josh and Alex scooped. Just like at Arctica, I loved being able to make a quick positive connection with a cross-section of amazing burners. Some people just take the ice cream with a smile or a thank you, but some you get to talk to for a minute or flirt with or make them laugh with a joke.
When that was over, Kathy convinced me to go over to our neighboring camp, Red Lightning, to see our camp-mate Karpo (who is a “Happiness Coach”—what a great job!) do a “Happiness Workshop”. We had a good time listening to him and participating in the workshop, and we committed to buddying up and being accountable to each other in starting a new happiness habit—a “savor journal”, in which you record something every day that you have particularly savored and enjoyed. (As you can probably already tell, “savoring” was another one of the themes of this burn, so it seemed appropriate.)
Tuesday evening a bunch of Pinkies got all dolled up and chemically enthused and hopped on Headspace for a “roam around the playa” party, and that was really fun. Headspace was packed with people, not just Pinkies, but there were a lot of us on there. We wandered all over the playa while appreciating the music (our camp-mate Aanshul DJ’d, as did Jonny Quest), the constantly flowing parade of blinky lights and the night-time art. I especially remember how fun it was to be dancing on the top floor of Headspace where the DJ was and the way the whole floor jumped and bounced like a trampoline when the bass dropped and people started hopping and stomping around in unison. It was a little scary at first (I kept thinking “will this thing hold if we all keep jumping up and down like this?”) but ultimately I let go of the worry and it was exhilarating. One of the coolest things we went by was the Sonic Tunnel, which was a series of LED-light hoops set into the playa so that it made a super long tunnel that people could bike or walk through. The lights on the hoops were programmed so that they formed a pattern that shot down the “tunnel” in various configurations. They were sound-activated too so various art cars were parked around it having fun trying to change the patterns.
At the end of the night I also remember being upstairs leaning on the back railing with Anjanette and our camp-mates Jessie and Phil and laughing about how a lot of our Burning Man philosophy could be distilled into two things: the good ol’ “You just can’t make this shit up” (aka life is weirder and more amazing than one can ever anticipate or imagine, and that’s why it’s awesome) and “that’s a hell of a lot of shiny shit” (aka there is so much more out there shining for us and calling to us than we can ever absorb at one time). Jessie added her own take on the latter, which we then decided to adopt: “that’s a giant fuck-ton of shiny shit!” It’s so easy to make experiences at Burning Man into metaphorical life lessons...they practically write themselves. I also remember having a silly flirty conversation with Anjanette and a couple of random guys up there on the second floor of Headspace, one of whom was a bald guy in his 50’s named Czaba, from Hungary, about ethnicity (“oh you Russian women”) and astrology and all kinds of other random stuff.
We got back from the Headspace adventure probably somewhere around 2 or 3 in the morning. Josh was tired and wanted to go crash and I went with him but then I wound up not being able to fall asleep. I laid there in our yurt for a couple hours hoping to wind down but the only thing that happened was me getting increasingly conscious of my unhappy digestive system so around 5:30 or 6am I got up and got dressed and went out to the porta potties. When I got back I was still feeling awake so I decided to go out to the Pink Lounge to see the sunrise. There was no one in particular around so I actually headed across the Esplanade to go sit on the bench next to the Tetrahedron and take some pictures. After a few minutes of hanging out there, there was a tap on my shoulder and I heard someone say “I should have known I’d find you here.” It was Anjanette, who also hadn’t been able to sleep. We hung out and talked and watched the sun rise (which was GORGEOUS) and took some pictures. Eventually Mama Doody came out and joined us (she was just coming home from dancing the sunrise set at Robot Heart) and we had a nice little hang out with her.