Saturday morning we slept in (me more than Josh, surprisingly), and then it was time for the Pink Heart Meats and Cheeses party, which we wound up hosting in our shade patio. In addition to the sharing of delicious meat and cheese-related food items (and those that go with them like pickles and fruit), there was a bunch of Pinkie fun and merriment. One particularly memorable highlight was our campmate Karpo dressed up in a hilarious “cock and balls” stretchy onesie costume, swinging the giant penis around. (Trust me, it was funnier than it sounds.) Like I said in the Intro, I really felt so much closer to and bonded with so many more Pink Hearters this year—we talk about being a “PHamily” but this was the first year I really felt it so strongly. It feels really good to be a part of such a loving, open, committed, conscious, positive group, even though each of us has our individual “warts” and issues, our moments of less-than-awesome, and our particular agendas that sometimes make connection more difficult. It also felt very harmonious in camp this year (at least to me, with full acknowledgement that I was not privy to all that went on and others’ experience might well have been different and possibly less positive). The only down side to all this PHamily love is that now I really miss everyone! I could have spent hours and hours and hours more making camp with and hanging out with and adventuring with other Pink Hearters. We are a pretty amazing crew of kind, silly, playful, raunchy, loving, caring individuals and an absolutely kickass collaborative team.
After Meats and Cheeses, there was a big group of Pinkies that wanted to go all the way over to the other side of the playa to visit the Dr. Bronner’s camp, where they gift a shower experience called “ReFoamation”. The idea was not only to go get clean (at this point I still had not taken a shower or done any more cleaning of myself than baby wipes...one of the benefits of having short hair this year) but also to give away some more of the boxes and boxes of leftover Headspace cookies that Anthony had made (and which never got given away on Headspace because it broke down and didn’t voyage through the playa). I had heard of the Dr. Bronner’s experience in years past but never been. This year it sounded good to me and I wanted to go (Josh stayed behind), although I was also feeling a little shy and self-conscious about being naked around other people given how red and obvious my scars still are. Kathy told me that she was going to wear a bathing suit so I decided to wear one of my sports bras and a pair of bikini bottoms that Anjanette loaned me. I’m really glad I did go though because it turned out to be super fun and pleasurable (because clean!)
Anyway we all biked over there and got to skip the very long line because of the cookie gifting we had arranged, and go in as a group. (There were other people in the dome with us too, but we were a large enough group that we went through as a clump.) The shower experience went like this: first you walked in to a big covered dome with a cool tree-sculpture (with a face on it!) and a DJ spinning upbeat but mellow music, and we took our packs and clothes off and put them on the side of the dome. The floor was covered with perforated foam tiles with a tarp underneath, so you could walk comfortably around (and dance) with bare wet feet. One side of the dome was the showers—so after getting naked, you walked with your group of about twenty people up some stairs and into a clear plastic-enclosed area with a scaffolding above it. There were people up in the scaffolding with foam and water sprayers. Everyone gathered in a clump on one side of the enclosure and they explained to us that the goal was to not wash yourself and to not use your hands, and then they blasted us with a ton of fabulous thick peppermint-smelling soapy foam while we all shrieked and yelped and giggled and wiggled around. (I have to admit that right beforehand I had a brief twinge of Holocaust shower PTSD but it was so clearly not the same kind of setting and so happy and fun that I didn’t linger in that thought.) Then the group moved down the enclosure to the other side where they sprayed us down with water (and there was more yelping and giggling). After that we all walked out and down a set of steps back into the rest of the dome, where there were people painted and costumed to look like satyrs and dryads and other fae woodland creatures who offered you oils and lotions (and later on, after we Pinkies got into the act, cookies). I have to say it felt blissfully great to be clean and moist and moisturized in a cool shaded dust free space while also dancing around and appreciating all the different shapes and sizes of naked bodies happily coexisting. Anjanette said to me at one point “you know, this is exactly what people who don’t go to Burning Man think we do out here the entire time” (e.g. get naked and dance around in pagan rituals). Giving out cookies to clean naked happy people was really fun too. I loved the whole experience and I will definitely do it again next year (and hopefully this time with no clothes on).
After the foamy fun, I biked back across the playa with Anjanette. We made a detour to go see the Temple one more time before it was to burn the next day—I was curious to see what had become of my plaster bust and also to see how much more the whole Temple had gotten built up with additional offerings and energy. It was indeed humongously more built up and very emotionally intense there, but I was feeling strong and happy and so this trip there was more of a sightseeing and honoring other people’s grief than a reactivation of my own. Though I did dust off my bust (especially the piece right in the middle with the words “I’M STILL ME” in a heart) because why not. Then we biked back to Pink Heart with a couple of stops along the way because again, why not.
Around 5 or 6 we got all dressed up for burn night (I finally got to wear the big pink scallop coat that I’d made) and gathered up a group of people (I think we wound up with me and Josh, Mom, Graham and Andrea) to go stake out a spot near where our campmate Lionessa would be performing with her fire troupe in front of the Man before the burn. First though Josh and I detoured over to the Space Whale to meet our friends Mary and Evan, with whom we traditionally spend burn night. It was the first time I’d seen Evan this burn and we had a lovely long hug but alas, he was too worried about the way the weather was going (it was super dust stormy and cloudy and even a little sprinkly) and didn’t want to risk leaving all his projection equipment out at Camp Question Mark with no one he trusted to take care of it in case it did start to rain. So we reluctantly let him go back to camp and Mary came with us. We had a blanket and huddled around for a while hoping the weather would clear (which thankfully it did). We saw Lionessa’s fire troupe perform (which was awesome, especially the crazy giant fire wing props they had specially made for this), and then finally it was time for the Man burn. It was a great burn this year, with lots of fireworks to start with and a quick, intense burn after, and the usual raucous revelry all around.
The Monaco was right behind us (which is where Anjanette was watching the burn from), so after the Man fell and the crowd started to disperse we walked back there and met up with her and hung out some. She wanted me to try walking the perimeter of the burn (which I’ve never done) but it was too hot and intense for me so I just stood at the edge for a while. It was still pretty powerful and amazing though.
I think after that I wandered back to camp, and then later around midnight Josh and I and a bunch of other Pinkies went out to watch the BRC Lighthouse installation burn at 1am. At one point Anjanette and I were walking together (everyone else had gone on ahead) and we were hailed by a passing art car in the shape of a little boat (actually it was a real boat, on wheels) called the Wet Dream. They said something like “hey you gals look so well lit up and purposeful in your direction, do you want a ride?” Well of course we said yes. There were three people on the boat car: the captain, Pasquale, his lady (whose name I forgot) and a guy friend (whose name I also forgot). We had fun chatting with them about the boat and its creation and the people they’d recently given rides to. They brought us to the Monaco (little boat to big boat!) where we met up with Rory and introduced Rory and Pasquale for some playa mariner geekery and bonding. Pasquale’s lady gave us some pretty clay pendants that she’d made and we all bid each other a fond farewell and went to go watch the lighthouses burn. That too was a spectacular and gorgeous burn. I got home and to bed some time around 3am or so but it was totally worth it, even though we all had to be up super early the next morning for camp strike.