Blog (Irregular Reports From the Front)

I recently found out that a big hairy audacious dream of mine just moved one huge important step farther towards reality: my novel Ice Will Reveal has been accepted for publication by Hadley Rille Books, with a tentative publishing date of early 2013. I am, how can I put this...oh hell, why not: verklempt. It’s actually kind of hard to describe exactly what it feels like, but I kind of want to, which is why it’s taken me a week to actually blog the good news. I know...metaphors to the rescue! Ok, then: my feelings about finally becoming a published author are a spicy, complex goulash: there’s a good solid base of lots of “squee! I’m gonna be a REAL author!” type excitement, of course, and a decent amount of pride; but also a good splash of anxiety (will anyone buy my book? will anyone like it? will anyone even read it?) and a generous dollop of trepidation around all the new things I’ll have to learn (marketing, self-promotion, blablabla). Spicing it up further are a sprinkle of validation and relief that the next phase of this long journey has finally been achieved, mixed with a pinch of amazement and a bit of self-chastisement at how long the process has taken so far and how much longer it will yet take before the book is printed and in a bookstore or library (or someone’s e-reader). And I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge that there’s also a zest there of nervousness about going the independent small press route instead of continuing to try to break down the doors (or glass ceilings, or whatever) of the big publishing houses.

But enough about goulash, let’s switch metaphors, shall we? (It’s my blog, I can do what I want to!) It’s been such a long and winding road to get to this critical juncture of “yay, someone wants to publish the novel I wrote”, and it feels important to take a look backwards and see how I got from “writer” to “author”. So let me lay out some of the journey, both as a hopefully useful reminder for myself and in the vague hope that perhaps it might be useful to other people for whom this kind of project doesn’t go quickly or easily either. (I know I suffered at first, and still do in my more gloomy moments, from the “I must not be very good at this if it’s so hard and it takes so long” syndrome. It’s a sucky syndrome. Try to avoid it.)

Ice Will Reveal (which used to be called something else entirely until it was pointed out to me that I’d unintentionally used a double entendre as my title—doh!) is my first novel-length work. In fact it’s so long, it’s practically two novels, but that’s a whole other blog post. It’s my newbie novel, my MFA equivalent: it’s the project with which I learned how to elevate my craft from “unconsciously incompetent with the occasional flash of competence” to “conscious incompetence with slightly more frequent flashes of competence”. I started writing it sometime around the end of 2003, triggered by a series of entertaining emails back and forth with a friend of mine where we each recounted the ever more epically heroic and over-embellished achievements of our individual characters from a D&D game we were playing (yes, yes, I’m THAT kind of geek...but in all fairness I can say that this novel bears only the very smallest resemblance to either D&D or to that long-ago game). At that stage in my life, I had a fairly absorbing day job as a Licensing Manager for a calendar company and was the mother of a young preschooler. I didn’t write very often or very much at a time, but I was determined to try to produce a longer piece of work. I had always been interested in and good at writing (in fact, I started out as a Creative Writing major in college before getting wildly distracted by academia for oh, roughly a decade), but I’d never written anything as big as a novel before (though I’d read a half a zillion of them already.) In what I used to sarcastically refer to as “my copious spare time”, I started reading books about writing and participating in online critique groups. Eventually I found myself some in-person writing buddies too, all of which helped a lot.

This went on for a bit, then in 2005 I had another baby and most everything went on hold for a while until I regained some kind of equilibrium (albeit a precarious one). I still tried to write here and there, and continued to learn by critiquing others’ writing, but it wasn’t until I finally decided, almost as a dare to myself, to apply for the week-long Viable Paradise workshop for speculative fiction writers in late 2007 that I really began to make progress. That workshop, in addition to its really useful information and mentoring from all sorts of fabulous professional speculative fiction writers, gave me the opportunity to seriously (re)claim my writerly identity, and find a tribe that still supports me to this day (and which directly led to this publishing opportunity, as a matter of fact, but more on that in a minute). A few months before attending VP, I also decided to open a web solutions company with my husband, which then led me a few months after VP to quit my day job (at that point I was a salesperson for a financial education company) and spend most of my free time learning how to be an entrepreneur. It was hard to be both a fearless creative entrepreneur with two small kids and also find time to write, but I kept plugging away, even if it was only in bursts. I started going to cons (Worldcon and World Fantasy, especially), and tried to create writer retreats for myself and friends, and that helped keep the writerly identity alive, even if my pace of production stayed somewhat glacial.

Somewhere in early 2009, one of my friends from VP (hi Kim!) had started publishing with a small press (yep, this is where Hadley Rille Books comes onto the scene), and wrangled an invitation for me to submit something to an upcoming fantasy anthology: Renaissance Festival Tales. How could I resist that subject? I couldn’t. So I took some time out to plan and write what turned into a novella, “Cupid for a Day” which appeared in the Renaissance Festival Tales anthology from Hadley Rille Books in 2010. (I still really like this story and the characters, and have actually toyed with expanding some of it into a novel someday. If you're curious, you can now get that story for $.99 on Kindle by clicking here. But I digress.)

I finally finished the full draft of Ice Will Reveal on the last day of the World Fantasy Convention at the end of 2009 (two years after VP for those keeping score). Then I took a year to edit it. At the end of 2010, I sent it to Hadley Rille Books, because after we’d worked together on “Cupid”, the publisher (hi Eric!) had expressed interest in seeing the manuscript of my novel. While waiting to hear what Hadley Rille thought, I also got together a query letter and synopsis (a much harder process than it sounds), and started doing some sporadic querying. (I say sporadic because just like the writing, there were bursts of querying, and I was distracted by other life drama for much of this past year.) I got a couple of requests for partials but mostly got “no’s”, and then I got tired of the querying process and let the thing languish while I turned my attention to a new novel (because I wanted to see if I could do it again, but take fewer years to finish this time). I noodged Hadley Rille a couple of times (politely!), and was told to hang on, it was still in the “to read” pile.

Then finally, just a few weeks ago, I was doing that anxious writer chat thing with my friend Kim, who now works as an official (albeit wildly underpaid) fantasy editor at Hadley Rille Books, wondering if the long response time meant “no” and whether I’d get an answer by the time the World Fantasy Con rolled around at the end of October. Kim decided to use her special noodging superpowers to get the book out of the slush pile and into the hands of the other official (and probably also wildly underpaid) fantasy editor, Terri-Lynne (hi Terri!). Terri read the book in a week and had a pow-wow with Kim and Eric and then with what felt like supersonic rapidity, I finally had the pleasure of opening an email that said “yes, we’d like to publish this.” (I paraphrase.) SQUEE!

So all that took approximately 8 years, from humble beginning to gleeful SQUEE! Of course, this isn’t by any means the end of this book’s journey. Far from it. Still to come are a round or twelve of edits, ranging from major to nitpicky, and the fiddling with cover design and cover copy and marketing blurbs and all that. Plus copyedits and the creating of ARCs (Advance Reader Copies) to be sent out for reviews. Eventually, just over a year or so from now, there will be an actual book. Then there will be lots of other marketing hoo-ha (which I will need to get savvy with, stat), and eventually, approximately 10 years after starting the damn novel, then, maybe, oh how I hope there will be, THEN there might even be some sales and some appreciation from readers. I’m still dreaming of that day when I get my first fan letter or at least my first positive review on Goodreads from a stranger.

It’s been a long, winding road to get here, and there are still miles to go before I sleep (to paraphrase a couple of way more famous writers), but I am feeling pretty good at this moment. I like this feeling of validation. I have toiled, yes: but I have not toiled in vain.

Onward!

Once we bid farewell to the sunrise and the playa, we came down from the DJ booth and dragged ourselves back to camp and to the flurry of final camp breakdown and packing the car. I was exhausted by the time I finished packing everything back up again, but Isis really wanted to leave by 8am Sunday morning to beat the crazy exodus traffic. So we powered through, bolstered by a cool random hot air balloon sighting right above our camp and a final stop at Center Camp for coffee for Isis. Then we began the slow crawl out through Black Rock City and the dead zone between BRC and the highway.

We got out without too much trouble (Isis had been right), and stopped in the closest town (Gerlach) to get a preliminary carwash. As we headed back towards highway 80 and Reno, the euphoria of the previous night and the adrenaline of packing and leaving ebbed away and I started falling asleep at the wheel—so we pulled over in one of the other small towns en route and found a shady place to park and nap for a little bit. We slept for maybe an hour, and then roused ourselves to get back on the road.

The rest of the trip home was long and tiring but relatively uneventful. We stopped in Truckee for gas and lunch (we had sushi in an air conditioned mall restaurant, which was a bizarre contrast to what we'd just been living), and I think a couple of other stops to pee and stretch, and eventually made it back home around 8 o’clock at night. I unloaded Isis’ stuff for her at her house, and then quickly unloaded most of my stuff into a pile to deal with in the morning. The boys and Josh were away at a gaming con until the following day, so I had a lovely, quiet and relatively clean house all to myself, which was great. I took a long hot bubble bath (which I dozed off in briefly), then I finally got to go to bed in nice clean sheets in my very own comfy bed and even though I missed being at Burning Man, that made it a glorious homecoming.

Epilogue

It took me over a week to recover from my time at Burning Man—and by recover I mean get enough physical energy back to resume any kind of normal schedule. In the week or so that followed my return home, I was incredibly sluggish and sleepy, and took multiple naps when I could. (Yes, I am blessed to be the captain of my own schedule and able to do that!) I kept remarking on how tired I was, and how intense my dreams were, so I think it wasn’t just my physical self that needed some rejuvenation, but also my emotional/spiritual self that needed some quiet time to nurse the new baby inner transformations into strength. (It’s also taken me a really long time to finish this incredibly long blog post about the whole thing, but hopefully it’ll be a good record and reminder of not only things that happened, in all its chaotic story glory, but also of all the epiphanies, realizations and gifts I want to carry forward.)

Now, almost two weeks later, I feel like I am starting to settle into a new equilibrium, a new sense of self. It sounds a little cliché maybe, or a little “woo-woo”, but I do feel like I have experienced a rite of passage, an inner transformation from fear into freedom, from little to big. I feel expanded. I feel less bound up in fears and anxieties and old patterns and more comfortable with, understanding about, and appreciative of my own unique freaky fabulous and fun self. My energy is different, calmer, steadier and more joyful (and some people have even noticed and commented on it). In gamer terms, I’d have to say that this is what it must feel like to “level up” in wisdom. I know that as I get farther away from this self-precipitated transformative experience, things will continue to shift and settle and present me with even more opportunities for reflection and pattern-identification and wisdom, and I look forward to that.

So in summary, and for those who were too impatient to read the whole long detailed ramble of my recollections, I present:

My Top 10 Takeaways from Burning Man

1. Set Your Intention(s)
2. Welcoming Is An Important Piece of Community
3. Appreciate Others’ Self-Expression Loudly & Often
4. Women are Awesome, and I Need More Women More Consistently In My Life
5. Think Big
6. Release Fear and Mediocrity
7. Be a Supernova
8. Serendipity is On My Side
9. Everything is Equally Delightful
10. Fire is Really, Really Delightful

Saturday was really our last day at Burning Man, since we were going to try to leave really early on Sunday morning, so there was lots to choose from to do. I chose to go off on a bike ride on my own in the relatively cool morning hours, leaving Isis to go do her own thing for a while. I biked around the playa for a while and saw some more art, but found myself really drawn back to the Temple, so I biked over there. (Side note: It was at this point I decided to name my bike “Shifty”, since it had the temperamental habit of randomly shifting into a new gear without provocation. But since everything there was so flat, I didn’t really mind, and in fact found it kind of entertaining.) I found a bench on one of the walkways connecting the main temple to one of the smaller outbuildings and sat there for a while, hanging out and being quiet with myself, trying to process some of the things that had come up over the last few days. I wrote in my journal, and eventually on the Temple itself. This time I wrote on the Temple “WE ARE ALL CONNECTED” along with a little drawing, and “NO ONE CAN MAKE ME FEEL INFERIOR WITHOUT MY CONSENT...AND I DO NOT CONSENT”. I wanted those concepts to burn up and send opposite messages to the universe—one was a wish for something that would come into being (the communal realization that we are all connected) and one was a wish for release (from the hold that others’ expectations have had over me). I also tucked one of my little freak flag cards into a crack in the wall, so that it would come into being in a big and hot and flame-tastic kind of way.

After that I came back to camp and shifted into work mode—we broke down and packed up as much of our camp as we could, and organized things for a quick getaway in the morning (put things in the car, moved our car, made sure the way was clear, etc.) That took most of the afternoon, though of course we took chillout breaks. Then we had dinner and got dressed in our final costumes (Isis was dressed as Isis with beautiful gold wings, and I was the Silver Supernova with my fabulous silver cape and silver sequin-and-fringe skirt). Then we headed out to go see the Man burn—the one big event that the whole city was built around, and that (most) everyone was excited about.

As we headed to the Man, I looked around and saw a really cool effect—practically the whole city was heading towards the Man, and since everyone was lit up in some way (both pedestrians and bikes, in addition to the art cars of course) there was this interesting kind of arterial pulsing effect, where from all sides rushes of light and movement were moving together, converging on the same point. There was a palpable feeling of excitement and anticipation but generally everyone seemed pretty peaceful and calm about the whole thing. Isis and I found a spot to spread out a blanket and sit down to watch, and though we chatted a bit with our neighbors, we mostly spent the pre-burn time appreciating each other (I feel like we have a super close and supportive bond now that we never would have had if it weren’t for Burning Man) and appreciating the transformational week we’d had so far, and talking about what we wanted to release and burn away (fear, anxiety, safety, smallness, expectations, and other stuff I don’t remember) along with the Man.

 A ring of empty space surrounded the Man, with a perimeter guarded by lots of volunteers (presumably to make sure none of the crazy or drugged-up participants decided to do something crazy like charge the fire). In that ring, before the big burn, there were a bunch of fire art performances, which were beautiful and amazing to watch. The most amazing and impressive part was watching several people in full head-to-toe fire suits dancing around—I did not see how they could breathe in there. At some point there was a big cheer, which we only belatedly realized was because someone had activated the pulleys to make the Man raise his arms (we only figured it out because at some point after that we looked up and said “hey! The Man has his arms over his head! It wasn’t always like that...”). I loved that even the Man had his own transition, his own rite of passage from one state into another.

Eventually the burn began and it was truly spectacular and moving. It’s hard to describe it, because it wasn’t just the burn itself, it was also the surges of energy and emotion going through the crowd and within my own self as the burn went on. There were gorgeous, spectacular fireworks, big bunches of them, that went on for what felt like a really long time—longer than any firework show I’d ever seen (and easily rivaling Disneyland’s, which in my admittedly somewhat limited experience had set the previous record for the Best Fireworks Ever). And yes, there was an incredibly huge and impressive conflagration. I thought I’d seen a lot of fire when the Trojan Horse burned, but this, this was even yet more above and beyond—NOW I can safely say I have never seen so much fire in one place (and never hope to see as much anywhere else, as it would probably mean I was about to lose my life in the middle of a disaster zone). It was, and I don’t use this word lightly, epic. Epic and symbolic and mysterious and beautiful and powerful. It was awe-inspiring, in the sense that other kinds of big impressive natural vistas or forces of nature are. I felt very small and unimportant, but in a good way. But I also felt connected with everyone around me in some way, and that was comforting and uplifting.

We watched the Man burn and eventually fall down (with huge cheers every time a piece fell off or crumbled), and finally the people guarding the perimeter fell back and allowed the crowd to surge in and get close the fire. Isis was particularly drawn to the fire, so we spent a goodly time right at its hot-coals perimeter (though I hung back somewhat and talked to other people nearby.) Isis kept asking me what I wanted—get close to the fire? Go back to camp? Go elsewhere? And I was able to honestly reply that actually, I found everything was delightful. I realized then that this apparently was one of my super-powers (the ability to be interested and delighted by anything I chose to focus on, no matter what or where.)

After glutting ourselves on fire, we wandered back to our camp, where there was a big dance party going on once again. We danced and talked and danced some more. We watched our camp neighbor Christopher spin his fire swords (beautiful!) I granted a wish using my blinky star wand for a man we’d been dancing with, and he gave me a button that said “exhale fear/inhale love”. We danced some more. We stayed up all night and eventually, exhausted but delighted, Isis and Christopher and I wrangled our way up to the DJ booth to watch the sun rise over the mountains and light up Black Rock City. It was beautiful, and we were feeling pretty light and serene and had that kind of dizzy, expansive giddiness you get when you’ve been up all night and the light comes again. I was sated, and satisfied, but also sad, watching that sunrise—because I felt the transition upon me, and I knew my burn was coming to a close (and I’d loved it so!) I would miss this wide open, starkly beautiful place, even with all its dust and heat. I would miss the unique, beautiful people we’d met and gotten to know (including those I’ve mentioned in addition to our truly wonderful camp neighbors Jerry and Christopher, Eric, Dina, Amy and even Left Nut and Right Nut). I would miss living at a different pace, in a world full of appreciation and art, exploration and discovery, creativity and joy, fire and fun. I was determined to hold on to what I could, but I knew that the vividness of experience would fade into memory, was already fading, and that made me wistful. I was already grieving, but grief is a rite of passage too, and nothing to be afraid of.

[To Be Continued and Concluded in Part 7...]

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

On Friday we had sort of a slow start to the day because of our late night the night before, but eventually I got myself together to go bike over to Center Camp to fetch us the ice we never got the day before. It was the first time there that I’d ridden my new beater bike (bought specifically for Burning Man), and it was pretty fun just cruising along the Esplanade with everyone else. The day was still relatively cool and it wasn’t particularly dusty, so riding was pleasant and I liked the feeling that I was getting to know my way around and recognize certain landmarks, as well as the people-watching.

As I was locking up my bike in the giant bike racks outside of Center Camp, a woman with a little cooler approached me and asked if I’d like a popsicle. Well of course I wanted a popsicle, even though truthfully it wasn’t all that hot yet. I like popsicles pretty much any time, but it especially made me happy to receive such a pleasant gift right at that moment. So I sauntered over to Arctica (where they sold the ice) while sucking on my popsicle, and yay there was no line so I just breezed in and out. Everyone at Arctica smiled at me because I was clearly in such a great mood. Then I went over to Center Camp to get iced coffee (once you start it’s hard to stop) for both me and Isis. I drank mine down pretty quickly and then I went and got my bike and rode back to SSV while carefully balancing a shopping bag full of ice on one shoulder while holding a full travel mug of iced coffee in the other. I made it back safely and deposited the ice in the cooler and the coffee in Isis’ paws, then headed over to the SSV office for a shift as an office coordinator. 

The office shift was quiet and mostly uneventful, although there was pretty much always a trickle of people to talk to (and Isis came by towards the end of it to keep me company). I organized the space a little bit, took some random pictures of myself, trained the guy who was after me, and then I was free. Isis and I grabbed our backpacks and I grabbed my bag of freak flags and freak flag-personalization supplies (sharpies & newspaper) and we headed out. We loosely agreed that we would aim for Center Camp so that I could hand out my freak flags and have a place for people to personalize them, but first we wanted to walk a little bit in the other direction down the Esplanade, because we hadn’t really gone that way yet and Isis wanted to find some friends at the Deep Heaven camp.

We did make it to Deep Heaven, but no one was home. We wandered a bit more, but Isis was feeling tired and starting to despair about walking back, so we hooked up with an art car that had stopped nearby. It was a converted VW van painted in sort of a blue camouflage pattern, and it had open sides, a platform on the top, and four sky chairs suspended at each corner of the van from big wooden beams. We asked if we could have a ride, and if they might eventually be going to Center Camp, and they said yes, but that they were going cruising first. So we jumped on for an adventure. Isis sat inside with all our stuff and I got to sit in one of the front sky chairs, and off we went into the playa, grooving to some dance music and checking out whatever art caught the drivers’ eye. It was really a peak experience: I was sitting so comfortably and feeling so fine, swinging along with my butt just a few inches off the playa and my feet up in the sky chair foot sling, and mostly even in the shade since the car was between me and the sun (at least at first). People gave me lots of thumbs up and “nice!” and “oh yeah” as we rolled by. At one point I was tapping on the side of the passenger door of the van along with the music, and the guy sitting in the passenger seat was thumping the top of the door in syncopation with what I was doing. It was really fun, and satisfied at least a little of that drumming urge.

We stopped at the Temple at one point, beside another art car that was built on a semi-truck chassis, but which was all painted up to look like a giant VW van (albeit one with gargantuan steer horns). People took pictures of the two cars next to each other, and we listened to someone on top of the horned car read a poem about the Temple into a microphone so that everyone could hear it. (They were apparently doing some sort of mobile spoken word performance.) We eventually got going again and cruised by some more cool art, which I attempted to take artsy pictures of as we went by. Eventually we wound up somewhat near Center Camp, so we bid farewell to our ride and the other passengers (and I gave them all freak flags) and got off to go walk over to Center Camp.

At Center Camp, we got ourselves another iced coffee (because really, how can you resist?) and then found a good place to set up the coloring station for the freak flag giveaway. This was a nervous moment for me, because I really wanted to put my little baby project out in the world and yet I was a little afraid that no one would really care much about it. But I screwed my courage to the sticking point and took a bunch of flags and started approaching people to ask if they would like a freak flag...and almost all the people said yes! I invited people to personalize them too, and quite a few people took me up on it. At one point I had a small group of people all standing around at the same time, coloring and chatting and laughing and appreciating what they were doing, and I felt so great, like this project really was having an effect on people in a positive way, just like I had hoped. I was having fun waving all the flags around, they were having fun playing and drawing, everybody was happy. If only I had brought another 40 flags, I could have easily given them all away...and next time I will! I asked a few of them if I could take pictures of them with their freak flags, and you can see the results over on the official Fly Your Freak Flag High website.

After all that freaky fun, we were ready to go back to SSV. On our way out, we saw the lamplighters in their beautiful white-with-fire-trim robes lined up in their solemn rows ready to bring fire from the eternal flame around to light various street lamps. We tried to find another art car to ride, and we did, but they only took us one block so we wound up walking most of the way back anyway. One highlight which I had to take a picture of was passing the circus camp (I forget their official name) and seeing a convocation of stilt people all walking around, and bellying up to the stilt bar (you could only reach it if you were a tall stilt-walker).

After dinner at SSV (which I haven’t really been mentioning in detail but I will say it was all vegetarian and mostly delicious and it was great to have someone else do the meal prep) I finally screwed up my resolve and went to go take a shower in our camp showers—not an easy thing to do at all. I had already filled my portable shower bag with water earlier that day, and it was still relatively warm from being left out in the heat. I had to figure out where to put my clothes (the dirty ones I took off and the clean ones I wanted to put on), what to do with the lantern, and how to hook up the bag to the pulley inside the shower stall (I mostly failed at this and wound up taking a squatting shower, which wasn’t easy). Then I had to figure out how to soap up my hair and body with the minimum amount of soap and rinse with the minimum amount of water from the shower bag hose, and then get my clean clothes on without getting immediately dirty again. Then I had to empty the bucket of gray water into an enormous gray water box outside the showers, and finally I was done. It was really a pain in the butt, but I must admit that after I had showered off nearly 4 days of playa dust, I felt a whole lot better.

After the shower, we changed up our outfits yet again--I went for a comfy sparkly purple-trimmed wizard robe over jeans and a warm sweatshirt while Isis wore her blue furry kitty outfit. Then we headed out to hunt down another art car for night-time playa cruising. We did manage to find another art car, this one a bizarre sort of seahorse-looking creature. It was full of drunk party people who all seemed to know each other, but we squeezed ourselves in a corner and mostly ignored everyone else while enjoying the tunes and cruising around the nighttime playa. One sour note (and there really weren’t many of these during the week, so I mention it here just for flavor) was that at one point when we stopped for a break, I stumbled over my wizard robe in climbing down from the car and fell and whacked the hell out of my thigh, ribs and shoulder/collarbone. I was able to shake it off though, and surprisingly enough, the next morning I could feel where the bruises were but it really didn’t hurt anywhere near as much as I’d feared it would. After getting on and off a couple of times and cruising around the playa, we eventually wound up at the Trojan Horse, along with practically every other art car and half of Black Rock City, because it was going to burn. (A lot of the big art pieces are intended to be burned, but apparently there’s often one big one that gets its own big burn party, and the Trojan Horse was this year’s big one.)

The Trojan Horse was pretty much exactly what it sounds like—a giant wooden horse on wheels, big enough for an army to fit inside (but at this moment it was all packed with fireworks and explosives). We’d heard that earlier in the day it had been dragged by hundreds of people (whoever wanted to help, showed up) out from its camp to the open playa, and then supposedly it was going to be lit on fire by people firing flaming arrows at it from some distance away. We couldn’t see the arrows from where we were, all packed in with all the other people and art cars, but we did see the moment it caught on fire and the fireworks began to go off.

It was an enormous fire, bigger than anything else I’d seen so far (but of course not as big as the burning of the Man). Every time something big happened, like the crumbling of the horse’s limbs or a big bunch of fireworks, the crowd cheered like crazy and people celebrated. It was wild and fun and beautiful. I kept marveling at how I’d never seen so much fire in one place before, nor would I probably ever see that much in any other place without being in fear for my life. Fire is so satisfying on a primitive level. It moves with such mystery and grace and deadly power—it is mesmerizing even in small amounts, and let me tell you it was even more so in such vast quantity.

After the horse had crumbled to a relatively low bed of small flames and coals, our art car took off again, cruising around the playa. We got off at one point to go visit the Temple again, and spent some quiet time listening to the bells again and walking around, reading what people had written and just generally soaking up the sacred energy of the place. I found a ballpoint pen someone had left behind and used it to write “I WILL RELEASE FEAR—I WILL BE A SUPERNOVA!” I liked the idea that the giant fire of the Temple’s burning would burn away the bindings of fear and anxiety that were keeping me small so I could be big and bright.

We were prepared to walk back to our camp from the Temple (which would have been a pretty long walk, but doable) when we saw the same seahorse art car we’d been riding earlier parked on the outskirts of the Temple. We scampered over to it and there was still room, and even better, they said they were heading home for the night—and their home was right next to our camp. So we rode all the way back home in style, and after a good wipe-down, it was sleepy time for Supernova.

[To Be Continued in Part 6...]

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

Wednesday night was probably the one night that I actually got a full night’s sleep the whole time I was out there, and it was a good thing too because I had had such a mind-blowing, epiphany-full day the day before, I really needed to recharge. When we got up on Thursday morning it was lovely and cool and quiet (not what I had expected in the desert, but at such high elevation, the nights are actually quite cool and it takes awhile to warm up again). We eventually got ourselves together and decided that this was the perfect day to be sparkly purple fairies and go visit Center Camp, both to check it out as its own interesting environment and to get ourselves some coffee and some ice, which are the only things actually sold as opposed to gifted at Burning Man (and only there at Center Camp or at the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock plazas). So we got all dressed up and wandered over to Center Camp.

On the way there we checked out the general neighborhood, and saw some more cool art—giant metal sculptures on the playa, all different kinds of theme camps (Space Cowboys! Circus people! Thunderdome!) and people doing a wide variety of whatever their own freaky self-expression was. There was also all kinds of interesting art on the outside walls of Center Camp as well as inside it—we could have looked around forever but in what I was coming to experience as the general serendipitous flow of the Burning Man experience, we didn’t push to go see everything, just appreciated what came our way as we moved about on our way hither and yon. We got ourselves some iced coffee (now *that* was a fabulous sensual treat in the middle of the desert, plus a general treat for me since I’d been mostly off caffeine pre-Burning Man) and sat around a bit. I really liked the art around the coffee bar, which was a variety of cut-paper shapes collaged with images, combined with thought-provoking past-tense questions written all over them (questions like “What did it feel like to break free?” or “What was your desire?” or “What was it like when you finally arrived?”). 

After looking at the big long line, we decided that we would skip the visit to Camp Arctica to get ice, and instead wandered around the Center Camp neighborhood for a bit looking for the Artery (the central place for information about Burning Man artists, art tours, etc) and the medical tent (Isis wanted to pick up some more bandages there). At the Artery, I met a gorgeously costumed pink bunny person—we were so delighted with and appreciative of each other’s outfits that we had to take a picture together.

While wandering we also saw lots of awesome art cars (since I actually had my camera out and it wasn’t too dusty, I was able to take a few pictures), some fun camp art, and some people parachuting into Black Rock City (apparently this is a popular way to arrive for those with money and arrangements for someone else to bring all their gear in). We did find the medical tent (air-conditioned!) and got Isis what she needed, used their port-o-potties (score!) and then tried to get an art car to give us a ride back to camp. We found one but they were only going a block, so it wasn’t much help—still, it’s always fun to ride on an art car. We were able to walk the rest of the way back to camp without trouble.

After leaving Isis back at our tent and swapping out some supplies, I went out again to check out something close to our camp that I’d noticed the day before: the “Playa Name Help” booth on the other side of the Esplanade. I was intrigued with the concept of a Playa Name—since identity work was such a big part of my Burning Man mission, I really liked the idea of finding a name that might be able to condense and succinctly express at least some of the gifts and attitudes I was trying to bring to the fore in my life. But I didn’t want to just name myself—I wanted there to be some sort of external input too, something that could perhaps serve as a reminder or as a marker of the transformational experiences I was having/would have there at Burning Man. I wanted something I could relate to now as an expression of the “true” me, but which might also serve as an inspiration and a signpost towards something I could grow into. And look, here were some people whose gift to the community was just that—help figuring out the right name which could hold all that identity work and yearning. Sign me up!

There was a line in front of the Playa Name Help booth. I found the end of it and tried to engage the people in front of me in a conversation, but though polite, they didn’t seem to be all that interested in talking to me. I almost despaired at the size of the line and the lack of entertaining interaction (not to mention the heat of being out in the open with only my little Chinese parasol for shade), but then I decided to just chill out and watch the ever-changing pageant of people walking and bicycling down the Esplanade towards me. (Burning Man provides a more-than-usually-interesting, constantly shifting people-watching experience.) I was still dressed in my sparkly purple fairy costume, so people started to smile and nod at me as they moved past. Then I started to purposely catch people’s eyes and smile or wave at them as they came by. It was fun, and it felt like a good gift to be beaming out enthusiasm and delight at people for no specific reason. And you know what? People just lit up at the offered connection, and gave it right back by smiling or waving or commenting on something as they passed by. The culture of appreciation and the general culture of Burning Man made that easy to do, but it’s something to think about trying in other places too...just as an experiment to see what would happen. (Can enthusiasm save the world? Tune in tomorrow to find out!)

Eventually a few other people wandered up behind me, and we got to talking, so I stopped beaming at random strangers and fell into some fun banter and conversation with those folks. There was a gorgeous Ph.D. from New Zealand (by way of Germany), a sassy redheaded guy from Denver, and a lovely young woman from Israel, all of us first time Burners, plus a zany veteran Burner guy named Banjo Billy from Boulder who stopped by to see what we were all standing in line for, and when he found out, offered to save us the trouble of the line and name us himself. (Which was a generous offer but the name he came up with for me—“I think you should be ‘Six Flags’!”—didn’t quite resonate on all the levels I wanted it to.) We all had a good time laughing and bantering and talking a little bit about ourselves to each other, and I was able to put my cute little parasol to good use to provide shade for at least 2 or 3 other people while we were talking.

Eventually, I made it to the front of the line, and found myself face to face with a tall, thin, kind-faced, 30-something man who welcomed me and then proceeded to ask me a few questions like “what do you do in the default world” and about what my Burn had been like so far, whether I’d had any rites of passage already, and if there was anything I’d learned or found or wanted. I can’t remember exactly what I told him, but I did tell him that in the default world I was an artist and a writer and that I was in transition from owning my own web solutions company. I said that in the past I’d also been a teacher and a marketer, and that I had lately been in a process of figuring out my own gifts and super-powers and was now trying to figure out how best to bring my gifts to the world. I told him something about feeling like my lesson right then was to stop being afraid and keeping myself small, and giving myself permission to be the big bright star I knew I really was—and that if I could do this, I would hopefully be an inspiration to others who would then see what being a big bright star was like and want to be big and bright in their own ways.

He stopped me then and said, “aha! I think I have it, just from what you’ve told me. How about ‘Supernova’?” And I looked at him, and let that word sink down in me for a few seconds, and it felt good. So I said, “ooh! I like it! That’s perfect!” and he smiled and I smiled and it was decided, just like that. He gave me a stamp on my arm that said “Hello, My Name Is ________” and wrote “SUPERNOVA” in the blank space, and then gave me a little metal bugle and told me to blow it and to announce my new name. I grabbed that bugle and pursed up my lips and blew a stunningly loud and long blast on it (it sounded like a shofar and for a moment I was tempted to blow TEKIAH or something, but didn’t) and then shouted “I AM SUPERNOVA!” and everyone around me laughed and clapped. I was giddy with excitement. I really liked the name—a supernova is something huge and hot and powerful, and it can be seen (and have an effect) from a distance, so it captured that ache I felt to bust out and be BIG and BRIGHT. The “super” part also connected with super-heroes and super-powers (both metaphors I’ve been drawn to lately) as well as the larger sense of community/the whole/the WE that I’ve been trying to actualize.

I stuck around for a little while to see what my new friends’ names turned out to be, but it was taking an excruciatingly long time and I was really excited to get back to Isis to tell her about my new name, plus I was due for a work shift back at camp helping to do snack prep, so after a little while longer of watching the process for a couple other people and congratulating them as they got their names, I finally bid everyone farewell and headed back to SSV.

I met up with Isis back at our tent, and showed her my new name. We didn’t get much farther because we were interrupted by a visit with our neighbor Amy, who needed help with some costuming. I went to go check in with my snack prep shift, but no one was around, even though I checked back several times over the next half hour or so. After some chilling out and journaling and snacking (as a good hobbit does), eventually I gave up on the shift and Isis and I made our way out to the main SSV space. We decided to look around in some of the other side temples. The Temple of New Beginnings (water/Spring) was mostly empty, so we sat ourselves down to talk and enjoy the misters that had been set up in there. I told her about the Playa Name Booth experience, and we wound up sliding into a conversation about Judaism and our individual relationships to it. I realized as we talked that I was pretty comfortable and happy with Jewish values, rituals and recommended ways of being a good person (or at least with my own selective interpretations and applications of same). I felt good about being a link in the chain of “chosen” people who had kept alive specific traditions and ways of being, although sorrowful about the ways in which persecution and victimhood had led to specific kinds of group neuroses and counter-persecutions. We talked about going to check out the various Jewish-themed events over the next few days (e.g. the “Burn Mitzvah” or different kinds of Shabbat services)—sadly, we never did get to these. (Next time!)

As we were sitting there talking, a woman came in, and appeared to be looking for something or someone. She said that she was a Yoga teacher and had signed up to offer a class at this time, but apparently no one was there to take her up on her offer. So she sat down to talk to us for a little bit. We introduced ourselves, and that was the first time I was able to use my new name. She said that someone had recently told her something interesting about supernovas that she liked—that before a star went into its supernova BOOM, it contracted first, hugged inward and gathered energy in order to then bust back out. So first there was silence, and inward focus and gathering of energy, and then there was an outward pulse, spreading everywhere. I thought that particularly applicable considering the amount of inner journeying I’d been through lately, and the increasing need I was feeling to go BOOM and be big and bright. I laughed and thanked her for bringing me just what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. (Serendipity strikes again!)

After dinner we switched to night-time costumes and went out to wander the open playa again for a bit. We’d heard that they were burning the regional art that night (the medium sized art pieces that formed an inner ring around the Man at each of the o’clock radials), but we didn’t get there in time to watch the fires start, only once they were half burned. Still, it was really interesting to be around these big fires and watch as they burned down. We then wandered back to our camp to see if we could catch the Electronic Awakening movie—it had already started but we sat down in the main SSV space to watch it anyway, and wow, was it fascinating! It was a really well told and well put together look at how a part of the electronic music movement had evolved into a kind of new tribalism/shamanism where both music and dance led to a feeling of greater one-ness and connection (to each other and to the divine) and therefore to a spiritual awakening not unlike what happened in the 60s. I’m probably not even describing it that well, but you can see a preview here and luckily it will be premiering here in SF in October. I regret not seeing the whole thing, but I will definitely go and see it in October.

After the movie screening, several of the DJs featured in the film were spinning there at SSV, so we went out to go dance and feel the connection ourselves. I got to see Jeronimo again and appreciate him to his face with great enthusiasm, which was fun. I had a great time dancing and playing with my blinky toys and just generally getting lost in the music and the movement along with a bunch of other people. It was energetic, peaceful, grounding and expanding all at the same time. There was a guy with a doumbek who was playing along with the music some, and I got kind of excited about that and asked him if I could play with him too. He said sure, and I ran back to get my doumbek out of the car, but by the time I got back he was gone. Oh well. (One of the things I never quite actualized during this Burn was participating in some drumming, but I suppose that’s as it was meant to be and I’ll try again next time.) I stayed to dance for an hour or two until things started to slow down and I was too tired to keep going, then I went to bed (luckily bed wasn’t far away!)

[To Be Continued in Part 5...]

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

Wednesday morning we got up around 8 and looked around Sacred Spaces Village a bit and then finished setting up our camp. We put up a big EZ-up shade shelter in front of our tent, and under that we put the hammock on a stand that Isis had brought with her. I also staked everything down, and arranged camp chairs and boxes so we had a sort of sitting area under the shade. The final touch was duct-taping up a couple of freak flags on the top of the shade structure. Although we’d initially envisioned having two tents and more room to set up, our camp setup actually worked out to be quite cozy and pleasant—we spent a lot more time at our tent than we’d thought we would! While I was puttering around camp, Isis went to an energy healing session she’d signed up for. When she came back, we figured out the day’s costumes (I finally got to wear my custom-made shiny red lace pants!) and set out to explore. Isis wanted me to meet Ammo, the guy who’d done the energy healing for her, and he introduced us to Jai, who was running one of the spaces affiliated with but just outside the main Sacred Spaces Village: the Sacred Spaces Pod.

Jai showed us the pod (which much to my regret, I never got to spend time in—apparently it was a sort of spiritually-focused isolation tank experience) and the Rites of Passage Game experience he’d built around a deck of divination cards. He encouraged us to try the first level of the game: we each chose a card from the deck. Mine was “Mental i-Soulation”. The message in that one that appealed to me was that it was time to retreat from mental stimulation in order to reflect consciously on my own thoughts and the patterns and unconscious habits and conditioning that occurred there.  I also liked that it emphasized that “thought is creative” (in other words, your thoughts create your reality) and counseled “rethink your destiny”. It made me question what kind of reality was I choosing to create for myself? What had it been in the past, and what did I want it to be in the future?

Isis and Ammo left for lunch at that point, but I was intrigued and wanted to stay around a little longer. I tried the first level of the game, which required finding a word with a spinner Jai had made and then reading about the “gene key” that it related to. I found myself totally caught up in reading about the particular gene key that I’d chosen: in my case, the gene key was “Diamond of the Self”, which seemed appropriate. Each key has certain concepts related to it, of “shadow” (the human/ego level), “gift” (the soul/spirit level) and “siddhi” (the source/oneness level). In my case the shadow was “mediocrity”, the gift was “style”, and the siddhi was “exquisite”. I’m not going to bore you with the specific details, I promise (though if you really want to check out this or other gene keys and other trippy stuff you can go look here), but what I will say is that this touched me in that pinched, uncomfortable identity work place, where I was feeling blue about “oh sure, what’s so special about me anyway? I should just stay small and mediocre and safe so I don’t disappoint anyone.” Being told that the gift I was embodying was “style”, that unique, creative expression of individual spirit, well, that was right in line with the kind of reality I wanted to create. And bringing that gift forward into the “siddhi” (source/oneness) level of “exquisite” tapped right into my desire to be a conduit of divine creativity. And that’s all I’ll say about that for now (not because I’m trying to hide anything but because there’s still so much to talk about.)

I moved on to the second level, which was themed around the question of “What was your first experience on this planet?” I found myself thinking about how excited and joyous my parents were when I, their first child, came along, and how deeply I must have been loved when I appeared. I know that in some very important ways I was their “little ray of sunshine”, and that led me to thinking some more about ways in which that light which I’d initially brought with me had been disguised or dimmed or hidden in some way, and a resolve to get rid of some of that in order to let my light shine better.

At that point we took a break because Jai had to go look for a fuse part for the space pod. I lingered around helping tape some drawing paper to a table, and wound up in a conversation with an interesting guy about social change and the spirituality of electronic music. He had something rolled up under his arm; I asked him about it, and it turned out to be a movie poster for a movie called “Electronic Awakening” that was premiering at SSV the following night. (You can see more about that movie here, and I totally recommend you check out the SF premiere and dance party on October 2^nd—I’ll be going!) I told him I’d try to go see it because it sounded really interesting to me, and then finally I headed out to go find Isis somewhere in SSV.

When I found her, both Isis and I were feeling pretty beat, so after a few snacks we went looking for a chill space in SSV where we could sit for awhile. The main space was full, so we poked our heads into the Temple of Manifestation, one of the side spaces that led off the main space of SSV. (There were four of these—each was a geodesic dome temple dedicated to one of the four elements of air/earth/fire/water, as well as a particular kind of energy: ancient wisdom/manifestation/passion/new beginnings, respectively.) The space was mostly empty, except for a couple of women and a bunch of pillows and rugs. We asked if we could sit for awhile in there, and one of the women told us sure, but that they were about to start a workshop in a few minutes: a women’s circle. We looked at each other and said “women’s circle? We’re women, sounds good!” and sat down. Little did we know that this serendipitous decision was about to lead us to an incredibly powerful experience.

Other women trickled in, and the women’s circle began. The facilitator asked us to introduce ourselves with our name and one word about how we were feeling right in that moment. (I said “present”.) Then she opened it up for a little more discussion. I was impressed that so many of us were able to drop straight into deep feeling and truth-telling. Someone said she was having a hard time feeling connected to others or to their Burn experience; others were already dealing with some uncomfortable epiphanies about self or others or life. We talked about how we had connected (or not) to women in the past—for example, had we been competitive with other women? I realized during this discussion that I had once been much more connected to groups of women than I currently was. Yes, I have dear women friends now who are deeply important to me, and without whose friendship and attention I would be totally lost. But not since probably grad school (when I was working on the graduate women’s survival guide) had I explicitly associated with groups of women in order to explore the issues unique to women’s experience. And I missed that.

After that discussion, we did some breathing exercises and movement, and then the facilitator had us do a guided meditation. During that meditation, I felt a really strong presence visit me—yeah, ok, I know this sounds so crunchy-touchy-feely, but I’m gonna share it nonetheless. I don’t know if it was just my own higher self (the one that had just been thinking about how to create reality through positive thoughts and about the desire to let the divine creative energy flow through me) or some version of my own connection to sacred source, but I very clearly felt something telling me that I was a big bright star, and I had to stop binding up the light with restraints that I’d created out of my own small fears. It reminded me that “no one can make you feel inferior without your consent”, and at that point, lying on a cushion with my eyes closed in a dusty tent with a bunch of strangers, I burst into tears.

When the meditation was over we shared what we’d found, and there was a lot of strong feeling and realizations that came out for everyone. Many of us had been feeling restrained and afraid, not true to ourselves, and many of us (myself included) spoke about the need to conquer fear with courage, and to surface and encourage our true inner gifts. Some spoke about needing to heal relationships, heal ourselves, connect more deeply with others. There were tears, and smiles, and gratitude for this place of deep feeling we had created together. We ended feeling really open and connected and reluctant to leave, but eventually everyone did trickle out. Isis went back to our campsite but I stayed and talked with the facilitator for awhile, and then when I went out to the main SSV area I found there was a whiteout (dust storm) going on outside—I could see it when I looked at the openings in the main tent, and I was reluctant to go out in it. So I stayed in the main chill area for a while, writing in my journal and listening to some people perform energetic and beautiful Hare Krishna music and watching the ecstatic dancers that were grooving to it. Eventually the dust died down and I made my way back outside to our tent.

Isis and I were chilling out in our tent area when Dina, one of our camp neighbors, came over to ask if we had any plastic wrap that she could use to protect her camera. We started talking, and she said that she had to leave soon to go take a shift as a photographer at a project she was involved in. What project was that, we asked? “It’s called Why Do You Do What You Do?”, she said. I was flabbergasted and thrilled at the serendipity of it. I told her that one of the things I really wanted to find on the playa that year was the WDYDWYD booth, and she said “oh, I can take your picture right here, right now! Let me get the form.” So she gave me the official form to fill out, and then I made myself a sign that said: “Because by knowing ME I can help actualize WE” (I hadn’t yet assimilated all the epiphanies I’d had or that were yet to come, or I might have said something different. From where I stand now, a few days past the end of Burning Man, I’d probably say something like “Because I’m a freaky supernova”—but more on that later.) Dina took my picture right there in our campsite, with me waving one of my freak flags and holding my sign. You can see that picture here (along with some other great pictures from Burning Man this year.)

That night, after dinner, we dressed up and went out to visit the night time playa. We decided to walk to the temple (Isis hadn’t brought her bike so we mostly walked places), with stops at whatever shiny interesting things caught our attention on the way. We did see some really cool art along the way (one of our favorites was an open dome that you could walk into, and above you were a bunch of lit up white umbrellas, and dangling from the umbrellas were strings of white lights that flashed in a way that made it look like it was raining), but it was the Temple that really drew most of my attention that night. It was such an amazing thing—a temporary, meant-to-be-burned construct, that was nonetheless huge and solid and well built and incredibly lovely. It was in some ways set up like our Sacred Spaces Village was—there was one big central room, which went up several stories and was capped with a dome, and then there were four smaller temples that surrounded it, each connected to a side of the main Temple with a covered walkway. Each of the smaller Temples had its own theme--I’m not sure I really experienced any of the smaller spaces enough to name them, but I know they all had specific themes and their own altars and decorations around that theme.

The floor of the main room of the Temple had several steps down, but was otherwise empty of furniture or big pieces of art. People sat or stood around that empty main area, and one cool and memorable thing was that if you were there at the right time (which we were), you could hear the Temple bells. The walls of the main room were decorated with, among other things, a variety of percussion instruments (cymbals, shakers, gongs, drums, bells), and each was apparently attached to a motor in the walls that made each of the percussion instruments play on its own, but as part of a prearranged pattern. The effect was that the Temple was playing itself—a sort of stately, melancholy, re-imagined gamelan. It was beautiful and moving and set a mood that was introspective and yes, I have to say, reverent. The people who were there at night when we were there were all mostly quiet and tuned into their own experience, so we were able to just quietly experience it for ourselves too, even though there were lots of other people around us.

One of the other cool things about the Temple was that people wrote all over it, everywhere they could reach. In pen, in pencil, in sharpie, with paint, whatever they had. But what was written here was no ordinary, self-centered or purposely offensive graffiti—most of it was soul-baring, poignant messages of loss or grief (things like “I miss you Dad” or “Jennifer, I’m sorry we never made it work out, I’ll always love you) or statements of epiphany and intention (e.g. “we are all connected” or “resist” or “I am not afraid”). People left personally meaningful messages to each other or to the Universe that were specifically meant to be burned up and released or activated in some way. As the week went on there were more and more messages, and some people brought additional artwork or bits and pieces of things to leave at the Temple’s base or on its walls or in one of the little side Temples until it was thickly covered with this additional layer of meaningful self-expression.

I split up from Isis to go explore the Temple complex a little more—I wanted to climb up one of the bridges that connected the second floor of the Temple with the ground and look around up there. I took the curvy bridge (there was one curvy one and one straight one up to the second story) and got a chance to walk around the second story, which gave me a 360-degree view of the night time playa. It was once I was up there and looking around at the gorgeous nighttime landscape (with the various big art pieces and art cars all lit up, some close, some far away, and slowly shifting as the art cars as well as the bikes and people moved around) that something finally clicked into place for me: I suddenly “got” the sheer enormous scale of the place and the benefit to creating so much BIG, BRIGHT art in the middle of a vast empty space. Each piece of art or art car or art experience was certainly interesting and meaningful up close and personal (for example, a lot of the art you could climb in/on or touch or manipulate in some way, and of course the art cars were meant to be ridden), but it was also created in such a way so that it could be viewed at a distance as well as up close. The fact that one is able to see such a long ways away because everything is really dark and really flat made for a new and fascinating kind of gallery/exhibit experience that I’d never encountered anywhere else. In other words: I realized that each of these individually fantastic, big, bright (and often mobile and therefore constantly changing) art pieces combined together to form an even bigger fantastic, big, bright and beautiful experience, one which shifted depending on your perspective and one which you could literally only have in a place like this. I fell in complete love with the nighttime playa from that moment on.

On the way back to camp we realized that we could see Sacred Spaces Village’s lit up artwork from across the playa, and I had a moment of squee just realizing that hey, the place that *I* was staying was big and bright and beautiful and one of the landmarks on the Esplanade. (I might not always want that experience, but for this year as a newbie it felt kind of cool.)

[To Be Continued in Part 4...]

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

So after much conversation and intention setting, Isis and I finally arrived at Black Rock City (which is what we call the city that springs up every year around Burning Man) early Tuesday evening, almost two days into the event. It took us about an hour or two to get ourselves to and through the gate, which was frustrating at first but then we realized why it was taking so long. Not only do you have to show your ticket and let them search your car (no big deal really), but also they have a welcoming committee that you pass through, who pull you out of the car and give you hugs and tell you “welcome home!”, make sure you know where you’re going. And if you’re new, like I was, they get you to lie down in the dust and make a “playa angel” and ring a big bell. (I turned down the playa-angel-making experience, because I was just not yet ready for the dust. They didn’t force it.) We knew where Sacred Spaces Village was (4:15 and Esplanade, which was actually right on Black Rock City’s “Main Street” and therefore a pretty awesome home base) but even after wandering around a bit, we had a really difficult time accessing it by car. You’re not supposed to drive on the Esplanade, but we finally gave up and did so, just so we could get ourselves close to where we were supposed to be. We found the Sacred Spaces Village camp, but couldn’t find the people who were supposedly in charge of checking us in, so we waited around for a while as it got dark. Isis went inside the main chill space so she could lie down, and I waited with the car. Finally a lovely soul named Aaron arrived to take care of us. He welcomed me home (I love it how that simple phrase, which I heard many times while I was there, encompasses so much about community and identity) and then helped me figure out where we might be able to put our car and where we could pitch our tent. He even stayed with me to help direct me as I drove the car (slowly, cautiously, against the night traffic) to the camping spot, and made sure we got ourselves settled.

So once we had our spot staked out, we were able to grab some food, and then we finished signing in and got our camp bracelets (which let us officially get food) and our bathroom keys (SSV had its own bank of port-o-potties and a couple of shower stall spaces, which was a huge blessing). By then it was getting close to 10pm, but we still had yet to put our tent together. Since Isis was still needing to rest and not lift anything due to her health issues, it was up to me to put our personal camp space together—and I did, after a few struggles with trying to adapt our fantasy plan of how things would be set up to the reality of the situation we found ourselves in. I pulled boxes out of the car, put up our big tent (we had brought several tents but there wasn’t room for them), filled it with air mattresses and our sleeping gear, and let Isis crash out. By then it was close to midnight, but I really couldn’t go to sleep without at least taking a brief look around. I found my costume bin and dug out a crazy yellow fish hat and bright orange shirt and stripy scarf, and put them on. Then I grabbed my Camelbak backpack and walked out the front door of our camp, which faced the open playa with the Man in the middle of it.

[A brief digression here to explain to those who don’t know how Burning Man is laid out—those of you who do know can skip this part. There’s a map, but the simple explanation is that the city is laid out like a semi-circle surrounding a large open area. The radial streets of the city correspond to the hours on a clock, from 10 o’clock on the left to 2 o’clock on the right. The streets that run the circumference of the semi-circle start with the Esplanade on the inside, closest to the open playa, and then after that are alphabetical A-H. Each year the alphabetical streets are re-named to correspond to the year’s theme, so this year, for example, A was Anniversary, B was Birthday, C was Coming Out, and so on. All rites of passage, see?]

First I just sort of wandered around a bit in our general neighborhood. I went down the Esplanade and the 4:30 avenue, drawn to the various lit up bits of art and watching the people, but I was feeling a little bit shy and uncertain so I didn’t really stop anywhere except for one place: a camp that had a giant “Wheel of Wonder” (the Burning Man version of a “wheel of fortune” type spinner wheel) in front. There were people there who were inviting others to come spin the wheel, and giving out prizes like “shot of whiskey”, “HD pin”, etc. I stepped up to spin the wheel and what did I get? “Playa Angel”. So ok fine, this time I did it. Gingerly, and without full enthusiasm, but I did lie down in the dust and wiggle around, mostly because the happy drunken folks tending the wheel did it with me.

Then I reasoned that I couldn’t go to sleep without visiting the Man, so that’s what I set out to do. On the way there, I stopped by an incredible lit up sculpture of a willow tree (yes, it looked kind of like the tree from Avatar). I was trying to take in all the people and the space and no one particularly interacted with me except for one guy who came up to me while I was looking at the tree and said something like “oh look, she’s here!” I looked at him with some puzzlement because I wasn’t sure if he was referring to me or not, but he repeated himself with a big smile so I answered him “yes, I am.” It was one of those brief moments that at the time didn’t seem particularly important but in hindsight takes on more meaning.

I continued on to the Man. This year, the Man was a giant neon-outlined sculpture (I don’t know how they made it safe to burn, but apparently it was) on top of an enormous, perforated pyramid that people could climb up inside to get up a couple stories high. When I got there, it felt pretty huge and overwhelming, so rather than going inside the pyramid and climbing up for a view (which I now sort of regret I never did), I stopped and sat in one of the small triangular shelters that were arranged around it on all sides. It gave me a place to sit and look and take it all in, and a place that others could come to interact with me if they wanted (a few people did come to sit with me, but I don’t remember any particularly memorable interactions). After awhile of sitting there and taking in the scene, I could feel myself getting pretty tired, so I headed back to Sacred Spaces Village.

Before I could just wuss out and go to bed though, I had to pass through a spontaneously formed loose clump of people watching fire spinners that had formed on the Esplanade in front of SSV. I have always loved fire art, so of course I had to stop and watch, and I’m so glad I did. There were anywhere from 2 to 5 fire spinners in the circle at any given time, of all different types: single or double poi (fire balls attached to chain or wire), single or double staffs, fans, hoops, finger torches, even fire swords. Whenever someone would run out of fuel and finish, the crowd would clap and whistle, but in addition to that, there was a guy in the audience who just constantly kept shouting out his delight and encouragement to the fire spinners (“amazing!” or “you are incredible!” or “beautiful!”). At first I found him overly loud and annoying and sort of dismissed him as a drunken goober, but then I realized that actually, that sort of clear, delighted vocal appreciation was pretty cool. By being truly appreciative and giving voice to it, he made me evaluate my own delight and appreciation and realize that hell yeah, this was pretty f**king amazing, and I was really enjoying it too!

(Side note: over the time I was at Burning Man, I saw a lot of different examples of clear and vocal appreciation for others’ creative self-expression, and consciously participated in it too. Now, ok, one of my personal super-powers is enthusiasm, and so of course I appreciate it in others, but I submit that there is something really awesome about being in an environment full of creative self-expression that is also explicitly acknowledged and appreciated by others in the immediate environment. So often as artists we get too little feedback, so that it feels like shouting into the wind, or the feedback we do get is negative or repressive; but there at Burning Man, it seemed like there was a constant positive feedback loop that felt great and reinforced the community value of creative self-expression. I kept wondering what it would feel like if we had that kind of positive reinforcement for creative self-expression all the time, in the “real world”...probably pretty awesome!)

After watching fire spinners for a while, I finally came to the realization that it was close to 3 in the morning, and that if I wanted to enjoy the next day, I had better get some sleep. So I found my way back to our tent and wiped myself down and passed out for the night.

[To Be Continued in Part 3...]

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

Ok, even though it’s not quite technically Fall yet, the Parentheticals summer hiatus is now officially over! (What, you didn’t know there was going to be a summer hiatus? Well, neither did I. Sometimes things come as a surprise even to the creator.) After spending a summer full of travel and family time and “filling-the-well” activities, I’m ready to get back into the rhythm of experience-reflect-share-repeat.

Nu, so what kinds of activities and epiphanies have I been blessed with over the last few months? Well, lots and lots. But let me start with the most recent and most affecting experience, because it’s gonna be a doozy of a writeup: my first trip to Burning Man. (Warning: since it’s been so long and there’s so much to share about this experience, I’m going to break this up into several blog entries. If you really only want highlights, you can look at the selected pictures throughout and/or skip to the “Top Ten Takeaways From Burning Man” section at the very end, or you can view the full set of pictures on my Flickr page .)

So: Burning Man. Maybe you’ve heard of it: that crazy amazing alternate universe of participatory radical self-expression where everything is a gift and a party, in which a temporary city of 50,000 people is built up in the empty desert for a week and then disappears literally without a trace. Well, after years of hearing about it in my peripheral friend circle, and thinking “hmm that would be cool to go check out some day, maybe when the kids are older”, I was gifted the perfect opportunity to go experience Burning Man for myself. I had always imagined that Josh and I would go together, but this opportunity was just for me: I was able to accompany my friend Isis (yep, that’s her “playa name”, I’ll get to that in a minute), a Burning Man veteran whose recent health issues had made her uncertain as to whether or not she’d be able to go, and whose original traveling partner(s) hadn’t been able to go either. She’d floated the “let’s go to Burning Man together” idea somewhere back in May or June, but given all the travel and activity that I’d already packed into my summer, and the distractions they created, I didn’t make up my mind to go until July. But there was finally a point (after a few key conversations) where I realized that this event could serve as an excellent catalyst for all the personal transformation I’ve been working towards for a couple of years now, and that the only things preventing me from going were my own fears (of the unknown, of logistical hassles, of what might happen if I really did put my own needs first, of true transformation).

So I said “YES”.

Isis and I then launched into a flurry of logistics (interrupted briefly by my trip with Josh to Reno for the World Science Fiction Convention in mid-August--which is the subject for another post, assuming I get to it). Everything came together pretty smoothly once the “yes let’s go” decision was made—we found a group to camp with (Sacred Spaces Village), pulled together all our camping gear, dug out costumes, and made our plans. I also was determined to bring some version of my Fly Your Freak Flag High project out there, so I wound up creating approximately 40 flag blanks to bring with me. (More about that later on.) 

Let me be clear—the logistics of attending Burning Man are not for the faint of heart or the generally flaky. For those of you who don’t know (and I’m guessing that many of my friends really don’t know, because hell, I didn’t really know what I was getting into until I started actualizing this trip), Burning Man takes place in the Nevada desert about two hours past Reno. And when I say desert, I mean DESERT. There is literally nothing there except flat, baked dust ringed by high rocky mountains—everything that Burning Man encompasses is brought in by some person or group of people. Very little is provided by the organizers of the event—chiefly port-o-potties, the general organization of the city and funding for the major art installations. You have to bring in all your own water, food, shelter, and everything else. You can go it alone, or you can hook up with other people who have already figured out how to bring their own infrastructure (as we did with Sacred Spaces Village, who had a giant “theme camp” which included an outside dance club, a central performance/workshop/chill space, 4 small sub-spaces for additional workshops/events and a communal kitchen that served meals twice a day.) The truly amazing thing is that over the space of approximately a month (a couple weeks before, a week during, and a week after), an entire city of approximately 50,000 people is created out in the middle of this harsh, inhospitable nowhere, and then it vanishes literally without a trace. And such a city! Totally self-organized, self-created and self-governed, prioritizing art and communal experience as well as personal expression of every flavor and stripe. As they say in the 10 principles of Burning Man, there are no spectators, there are only participants in this event.

Anyway, back to my own personal expression and the story of how I got there and what I did. So after much logistical hoo-ha and a modest amount of emotional preparation (mostly involving talking about the impending trip with friends and family and going “squeee! It’s going to be so much fun!”), the big day arrived and on the Tuesday before Labor Day Weekend, Isis and I set out on the long day’s drive to the desert. On the way there we had a lot of great conversation. We talked about what we wanted to do at Burning Man--I mostly wanted to just experience things as they came, and I was counting on serendipity to bring me whatever experiences I needed to have, but I did have a couple things in mind that I wanted to try to find. I wanted to see if I could find my friend Trey, who in addition to being an old friend and the person who was responsible for getting Josh and I together at the Renaissance Faire way back when, is also a longtime Burner and a great DJ (I knew he would be spinning on Wednesday night at his camp.) His writing about some of his revelatory experiences at Burning Man a few years ago had given me the true itch to see it for myself, which I was finally now able to scratch. I also wanted to find the WDYDWYD? (Why Do You Do What You Do?) project and get my photo taken with my answer to that question (not that I was sure what the answer to that question even was yet, but I suspected Burning Man was a good place to figure it out.) The WDYDWYD? project had been a direct inspiration for my Fly Your Freak Flag High project, and I knew they’d be doing portraits on the playa.

Isis and I also talked about where we found ourselves at this moment in our lives, what kinds of personal transformation issues we were both working on, and what we hoped to find or experience or bring about at Burning Man. Without losing the thread of the story by going into TOO much solipsistic detail here (if there can even be too much given the name of this blog!), I’m sure it will surprise no one if I say that the place I found myself was at a crossroads as far as identity work and self-(re)construction goes. I have been struggling to let go of old, no-longer-self-serving identities and patterns, and make room for even older or more primal identities to come through. (For example, letting go of the “intellectual/academic”, “businesswoman” or “selfless-helper-girl-who-puts-others-first” identities, in favor of the “artist/writer”, “solipsistic storyteller” or “welcomer/group integrator” identities. Yeah, it’s more complicated than that, but those were a few that came to mind while I was writing this.)

The theme for Burning Man this year was “Rites of Passage”, which seemed particularly appropriate and personally meaningful for me, feeling as I did that I was in transition between identities and between activities. I was hoping to experience and create some personal rites of passage for myself, and find some additional perspective(s) on my identity and self-valuation struggles. I also really wanted (and thus opened myself up to bringing about) a kick-in-the-pants into true transformation. I trust it will not spoil this story too much by saying up front here that that is exactly what I got. (Yay for setting intentions ahead of time!)

[To be continued in Part 2...]

Ok, I realize that I’m extremely late to the party on this one, but I feel like I have to talk a little bit about the Maker Faire, which we finally went to for the first time this year. Although I’d heard of it for years from various friends, and was told that I’d enjoy it, I apparently wasn’t listening hard enough, because we never made the effort to go before this. I have to say, I’m so glad we went—I was tremendously inspired, even despite having to wrangle several hyper and curious kids at the same time. I will definitely be going back every year now, and hopefully even figuring out how to participate next time.

I wasn’t totally sure what specifically to expect from the Maker Faire, although I knew in general that it was a place for all kinds of DIY “maker” people (engineers, scientists, tinkerers, architects, geeks, artists, gardeners, crafters, etc.) and their projects. And it was that, but I think I didn’t quite expect the sheer volume of creative/fun/interesting/intelligent/kooky people, performances and hands-on activities that we found there (and we totally did not even get the chance to see it all—maybe only half of what was there, if that). It was like the Exploratorium and Burning Man and Cirque du Soleil and the Whole Earth Festival all got together and had a polyamorous love child. I found myself most drawn to the crafty/artistic/performance stuff (as opposed to the more “hard science” or green/organic type stuff), but all of it was interesting and presented in such a way that I wanted to try everything.

What I really “got” after having been there was that for everything we saw, from the young guys who had mashed up Minecraft with Kinect to the firebreathing steampunk dragonmobile, from to the motorized giant cupcakes to the Mentos-and-Diet-Coke guys’ performance, from the life-sized poseable articulated stick people that anyone could rearrange to the enormous inflatable color-changing nylon asparagus sculptures that anyone could hug (or punch), the point and the purpose seemed to be to infect other people with a sense of curiosity or wonder or playfulness. It was like thousands of people all asked themselves “what kind of cool stuff could I make that other people would like?” and then they all got together and brought their inventions and let other people play with them and taught anyone who was interested how they worked and encouraged others to try making them too. It was a magnificent collection of cultural creatives all flying their freak flags high and proud.

There was such a strong feeling of enthusiasm and creativity there, such an optimistic and positive energy, that I felt giddy at times. I remember saying to my companions that being around this level of collective creative energy gave me hope that as a species, we actually might someday be able to get together and truly solve our local and global problems. So I’m a total convert. I believe that making delightful and interesting things with care and attention, and more importantly, making delightful and interesting things in order to share with others, really does (and will) change the world.

I have been thinking a lot about memory lately. I’ve been doing some personal archeology in my own past, both as a form of research for the new novel, and as a part of the ongoing inquiry into issues of personal identity and self-(re)construction. I’m constantly amazed at how little I remember of my own life (let alone what was going on around me on a community, national or global level). I feel like the memories I do have are the equivalent of a small shoebox full of faded, oddly-colored photos, snapshots from this moment or that, not necessarily connected to each other and often unlabeled. Sometimes the snapshots are moving, like the Harry Potter kind, but they only capture a small moment, never an entire story. I’ll remember, say, contentedly walking across the UCSC campus on a macadam path under the redwood trees, listening to a Cat Stevens’ Greatest Hits tape on my Walkman. (Oy, did I just massively date myself or what? No matter. Onward.) But I don’t remember what I was wearing, where I was going, what the weather was, what the smells were, or why that moment was important. I just remember it.

Some moments are more important, and they are seared in my memory, yet still only snapshots: sitting in the stall of the school’s bathroom in 7^th grade, fearing that the stain in my underwear meant I’d had some sort of incontinence but then in a thunderclap of understanding realizing that I’d just gotten my first period. Climbing up the dusty, switchback dirt path up Masada in Israel at dawn (and twisting my ankle and getting to ride the tram back down). My first “real” (albeit casual) kiss under the mistletoe hanging in the doorway of our Drama classroom in high school. The moment the ground heaved like the ocean and trees bowed like dancers while I was standing in the doorway of a classroom on the Kresge campus, during the Loma Prieta earthquake. Losing my virginity in the back of a Volvo station wagon, in the cast parking lot/campground of the Renaissance Faire. Sitting in the doctor’s office on my 23^rd birthday, being told that the bad news was, it was cancer; the good news was, if there was any kind of cancer to get, this was the best one (and my response: “well happy fucking birthday”). Sitting at my desk in the house I shared with a friend in Santa Barbara, pouring intense emotion into typing back and forth on computer chat with Josh and finally coming out with “I love you” and feeling drunk on exhilaration and fear as I hit send. Our wedding day. The loss of three potential children. The birthing of my two sons. The morning of 9/11. The moment when a secret was revealed that changed my marriage.

It’s not that I have *no* memories, it’s just that they’re, well, snapshots. They’re brief. They’re incomplete. I question whether I’m remembering the events themselves or just the stories I have been told/told myself over the years *about* those events. Some things I feel I should remember are completely gone. World events, cultural milestones, family experiences. Everyday details, places, people. What kind of time did my brother and I spend together in middle school? What did I eat for lunch in high school? What did the outside of my last apartment in Santa Cruz look like? What was the first date like with the boyfriend I met through a personal ad? I feel like there is so much that is just irrevocably gone. Friends often play the game of “do you remember so-and-so?” with me, and almost always, the answer is no. It’s not that I didn’t appreciate or connect with the people around me at the time, it’s just that if they’re not still around, and they aren’t associated with one of the snapshots from the shoebox (or one of the stories I’ve told about the snapshots in the shoebox), well, they vanish. It’s a good thing I still keep family and friends around me from all the stages of my life, or I’d be constantly adrift, wondering where I’d been (and who with).

In this day and age, we have a million easy ways to capture memory and save it up for later. Back then, it didn’t occur to me to document my life with any regularity or detail, nor did I think I’d need (let alone want) to have those memory aids someday. We have shifted, our culture, to a constant broadcasting of ourselves and our experiences, and we leave an easily searchable/recoverable trail behind ourselves of emails, photos, online journals, status updates, tweets, and check-ins. I have a much more complete and regular record of what I’ve been up to in the last 10+ years since email, digital photography/video, computer journaling, blogging, Facebook and Twitter came into my life, but even still, that’s not enough. I hardly ever review my past journals or letters or emails (or updates or tweets), and I have so many photos now that it’s nearly impossible to just browse through them (even the physical photo albums I happen to have, which are not many, I rarely look through). I know that I *could* go back and look for anything that’s in my digital archives though, and that sort of comforts me. But what about the older stuff, things from our early married life, from grad school, from college, from high school? In addition to my memory snapshots, I do have some physical souvenirs and ephemera from all those periods in my life. I have bunches of saved cards, letters, notes, journals, etc, perhaps because I have long labored under the illusion that some day an archeologist or historian or maybe at least my children would want to know more about my early days--but I never look at them (though the older and more forgetful I get the more attractive starting to go through all that old stuff seems to me). It seems an overwhelming job to examine it all in an effort to remember the details.

Part of me wonders if I need to, if this constant obsession with personal documentation that is part of the early 21^st century is a good thing, if it gets in the way of the “normal” human experience and memory. Maybe there’s very good reason why I only remember so many things, or why some things remain important to me while others have mostly or completely faded away. Yet part of me still grieves over the unrecoverable loss of so many potentially helpful (or at least potentially comforting) details of memory. Isn’t knowing who I was then an important prerequisite to figuring out who I am now, or who I may someday be? I think so, which is why this recent spate of personal archeology and archival research into my own past that I’ve undertaken seems more interesting and more urgent now. I know there are patterns to be teased out that I didn’t always see (or some that were always there that I’ve forgotten about until recently), and this is maybe what I’m hoping to find when I look back through my memories or life souvenirs: some new (or newly understood) arrangement of explanatory details to hang an identity story on. I know I can construct an identity story even without “proof”...but the “proof”--the ability to examine and analyze my own historical record and say “Aha! See, I was always that way”--seems awfully attractive right now. Maybe in future posts I’ll be better able to articulate why.