I was scheduled to give a public freak-flag-making workshop at SSV bright and early Thursday morning, so I hauled myself out of blearily out of bed around 8:30am and got myself dressed and fed. Josh helped me schlep the big heavy box of 300 flag blanks I'd brought for the workshop over to the main SSV hall, where the workshop was supposed to be, but then he took off to go do something else. Mark and Angelique showed up for the workshop though and helped me recruit people to come make flags. We wound up with probably 20 or so people sitting down together to make flags (with a few more trickling in during the next hour or so). I did a quick intro about the project and how it started, and got people to pair off to talk about their freaky bits with one another, and then we sat around and made flags for awhile. I took pictures of people with their flags when they were done, but by the time we reached the point where we had to vacate our space, no one seemed especially motivated to do a freak flag parade, and I was pretty dang tired still, so once again, we scrapped the idea of a parade in favor of just doing what felt right in the moment. People who made flags seemed really pleased with them, though, and I felt good about the whole thing overall. I was even given a couple of really awesome necklace gifts by people who'd made flags, which was fun.

During the workshop, our friend Angela came by with her baby Liam, so after the workshop petered out, I went back to our Yaboogie camp and hung out with them for a little bit. It was great to see them in this new context, and Liam was probably the cutest little baby burner ever, totally at one with the dust and having his own awesome fun time in the eternal dusty present. After they left, Josh and I took our first official full shower (I'd washed my hair the day before, but not taken a full shower, because taking a shower out on the playa is a whole production number involving crouching under a solar shower bag in a dusty enclosed shower space and then trying to stay clean for more than ten seconds before the wind blows you full of dust again). It felt wonderful, even though literally minutes later there was a dust storm and I was full of dust again. Oh well. 

I had an SSV Temple Guardian shift right before dinner, which was supposed to be with Anjanette but she wasn't feeling well that day so she passed her shift off to Eileen. I was the outer guardian and Eileen was the inner guardian; I welcomed people to Sacred Spaces Village and answered questions while Eileen held space and watched over the inside Temples of Alchemy and other public spaces. We were asked to dress all in white, and we got to hold beautiful guardian staffs which had been decorated with beads, feathers and semi-precious stones and topped with crystals. I brought some incense sticks too, which I lit and waved around as people entered. It was a little goofy at first and felt a little like playacting, but overall I really enjoyed the welcoming role. I made sure to meet people's eyes and hold their gaze for a moment while I said "welcome", and most people just lit up with huge smiles when I acknowledged them in that way. I said "goodbye" or "farewell" to people as they left, too. It was a really fun and fulfilling couple of hours during which I really proved yet again for myself the incredible power that welcoming and acknowledgement hold in social dynamics. We all just want to be seen and appreciated--the wonderful thing is that it doesn't take much. The power of welcoming and acknowledgement is something I have always tried to keep aware of in "real" life, and I certainly will continue to do so, but this was a great little "booster shot" reminder to keep doing it and a challenge to try doing it a little more deeply. I was a little sad when someone else came to take over for me as Temple Guardian.

But not too sad, because we had another fun night planned! This was the night the regional sculptures would be burned, and our first opportunity to get a taste of some big fires. So a bunch of us (Josh, me, Eileen, Mark and Cory) got all dressed up and ready to go out on the nighttime playa on foot (at this point Josh’s bike had lost a pedal and was unridable). By the time we got out there, finally, most of the fires had already started and were down to relatively smaller piles of glowing coals, so we switched our plan and decided to try to find some art cars to ride around. There were a bunch of art cars that had stopped in a clump at one side of the burning sculptures. We hopped on one that seemed open—a relatively small one that you had to climb up to get to the canopied dance area up top. We danced and hung out and looked around for a bit but the car seemed to be sticking around its spot for awhile, so eventually we got off it and sought out another car that might be moving on sooner. We found one that looked kind of like a graffiti’d city wall, which again we had to climb up a ladder to get on top of. It was crowded with a bunch of Russian revelers but we squeezed ourselves in and after a bit the car did in fact take off. We rode it for a little while until it stopped near Opulent Temple, which was one of the giant sound camps not far from Sacred Spaces Village with huge speakers and giant flaming decorations and lasers and lots of people. No idea which DJ was spinning that night but it was loud and thumpy and sounded really fun so we hopped down and got sucked in to its vortex to gawk and dance for a bit.

Eventually we found another art car to ride: a giant yacht. And I do mean giant. Yacht. Someone had literally taken a decommissioned boat and plopped it down on top of a cement mixer or some other giant truck-like thing, lit it up pretty and given it a big ol’ sound system, and now this huge two-story mobile party was sailing around the desert as though it were still the lakebed it once was. We found ourselves a comfy spot near the railing so that we could look out at everything going on, and spent some time enjoying the craziness passing by (including another visit from our friend the giant flaming octopus). Josh and Mark and I had fun spinning our light up poi (hopefully it looked cool to the people on the ground who were looking up at the boat), while Cory took my Toroflux and showed it to people on the boat. We rode the boat around for a while until the wee hours of the morning, and eventually it got back to our side of the playa, at which point we disembarked. Mark and Cory wanted to continue adventuring on the playa but Josh and Eileen and I went back to SSV.

When we got back to SSV, we decided to take a moment to investigate and appreciate and perhaps even chill out in one of the domed side temples before heading back to our Yaboogie spot. We randomly chose the Citrinas Temple, which was the gold/yellow temple of union. As we entered, I saw a man sitting at looking at one of the many gorgeous paintings that were hung around the walls of the dome, with a woman sitting beside him. I recognized them as people I’d interacted with briefly earlier that day when I’d been doing my Temple Guardian shift. They were an older, grey-haired couple with awesome mad-hatteresque costumes and Russian accents. The man acknowledged me and I sat down to talk to him. His name was Leon, and he told me how pleased he was to be in this space at this moment with this painting, because the painting he was contemplating was called “distillation” and he’d just been spending his whole last semester of alchemy school (!) studying distillation. I was intrigued and started asking him about alchemy school and what he was learning there and he started telling me about his specialty, which was making absinthe. Did I want to try some? At first I was hesitant because I’ve never really liked absinthe, but Leon began describing how what he did was different than any sort of commercial absinthe I might have encountered, and how one would interact with his special alchemical potion, and I was intrigued. I also knew that Josh, with his own background in mystical study (not to mention appreciation of all things handmade and homebrewed) would totally get a kick out of this experience, so I stopped Leon and got Josh to come over, and then asked Leon to tell Josh what he’d told me. Josh was all gung ho to try the absinthe, so Leon gave him a little vial and a straw and we all watched Josh appreciate the brew for a bit. Then I tried some too and I have to say—it was amazing. There were so many flavors and sensations waiting to be experienced if one just paid attention properly and respected the intake process rather than just taking a swig. Right then and there I totally revised any sort of prejudice I’d previously held about absinthe—it’s like saying you don’t like beer after only ever having tried Coors Light.

Josh and Leon got into more detailed conversation about how the absinthe was made and the larger alchemical lessons Leon was working on, and Leon then brought out his “special” brew for Josh to try (he said “this is the one *I* drink” so of course Josh was totally intrigued). Josh loved it and they talked and talked, with Leon recommending all sorts of reading for Josh, and they totally bonded, mystic to alchemist. (I have to say I found it seriously amusing that we’d met an actual alchemist, who was so similar to the archetype of the Alchemist character class in the Pathfinder game we play--at one point Josh and I totally geeked out on that idea.) It was so beautiful to watch them connect. Leon’s wife, Rita (I think that was her name), fell asleep on the cushions behind Leon, and Eileen dozed off on her own pile of cushions, and I just sat and appreciated the space and the conversation (which I occasionally participated in here and there). I stayed aware of the people going in and out of the temple dome, feeling somewhat protective of the space and wanting to make sure that it stayed positive. At one point it actually started to rain (it had been cloudy earlier that day, so it wasn’t a complete surprise), but we were protected in our snug little dome and although I was a little anxious about what would happen if it rained a lot and things got muddy, it turned out that it was just a brief, light, dust-damping, fresh-smelling gift. (Leon the alchemist looked at the rain and said something about how he and his wife, who both had asthma, had been hoping it would rain and damp the dust down, and intimated that he’d helped it happen with some sort of mystical encouragement. Make of that what you will.)

Shortly thereafter, a young man came into the dome who was clearly troubled and having some sort of bad trip or psychotic episode or something. He was mumbling to himself and trembling and crouching and grabbing cushions to his chest as though he were scared of something. Josh and another guy who was in the temple started trying to talk to him and find out what was wrong. The guy said he was tripping and hadn’t slept in 4 days (!) and was afraid that police were going to arrest him or something weird like that (it was hard to follow). Josh and the other Good Samaritan tried to talk him down and get him to rest and maybe sleep there in the temple, but he kept freaking out and eventually scooted out of the dome. That sort of broke up the vibe, so to speak, so we bid farewell to the alchemist and his wife. They left and we went to go look for someone who could maybe find a Black Rock Ranger or someone else who could help the poor guy. We got someone to go for a Ranger, and then realized that sheesh, it was almost 5 in the morning, maybe it was time to go back to camp and go to bed.

But then Eileen had the idea that since it was so late it was early, we might as well stay up a little longer and go see the sunrise at the Temple. Josh declined but I said yes so she and I went back to camp to get some water and food and our bikes, and we headed out to the deep playa to the Temple.

Burning Man has a Temple every year, and they always look different, though they are always incredibly gorgeous and awe-inspiring structures. The Burning Man community treats the Temple as a sacred space for remembering lost loved ones, releasing grief and trauma, and focusing on spiritual growth—it’s a really powerful place that just gets more and more powerful over the week as people visit it and add their own energy and prayers and memorials and bits of things they want to burn away. I had particularly loved the Temple last year, so I was eager to go see it this year, despite being totally punchy and discombobulated from an exciting evening and lack of sleep.

We got there just as the sky began to lighten, and went inside. The Temple this year was called the Temple of Juno (named after the Roman goddess of fertility), but it had a sort of Asian design flavor—it was surrounded by a courtyard with smaller sculptures at each corner, and the whole thing enclosed by a filigreed fence connecting four beautiful open gateways, one in each wall, which one could enter through into the courtyard. It was really, really, spectacularly beautiful, and made even more poignantly lovely by the various writings, pictures, and other memorials people had left behind. Even at sunrise (or maybe especially, I’m sure it was a popular time) it was crowded with people, and the mood was hushed and respectful. When we went inside, though, I found that in the mental/emotional space I was in right then, I was uncomfortably overwhelmed by all the grief and loss energy built up there in the main room, so I didn’t want to stay inside. I told myself I’d go back again another time for a “proper” Temple visit and appreciation, but I’m sorry to say I never did. (Ah well, no regrets, everything happens the way it happens for a reason.) We wound up sitting at the base of one of the courtyard sculptures, where we had a perfect view of the beautiful full moon setting to one side and the pinking sky on the other. As the sunrise grew stronger, we moved out of the Temple’s courtyard onto the open playa, facing the rising sun. There were a lot of people all facing the same direction, all watching the same thing, and it felt really warm and communal, even though we didn’t talk to anyone else. I took a bunch of pictures but had no good way of really capturing the grandeur and gorgeousness of the experience—you’ll just have to trust me, it was awesome.

Eventually we were done with standing and watching the sunrise, and began to bike back to SSV, although I kept stopping to take pictures of the sunrise, which kept getting more and more vividly colorful, and some of the art we passed by, which was so gorgeous in the morning light. I have to say, it was great fun to be a night-owl on the blinky-blinky playa, but I do regret missing most of the mornings this year at Burning Man. I love mornings and morning time in general, and in the desert mornings are cool and wonderful and the light is amazing, but the way things went all week I sadly wound up sleeping through or blearing around camp during pretty much all of the morning times. So I treasure the memory of this one morning especially.

[To Be Continued in Part 5...]

[To see more or full sized pictures, click here for the full set on Flickr]