Birthday and Cancer-versary Contemplations, 2017 Edition
I’m a few days late getting this traditional birthday blog post up this year, because there was a lot going on for my birthday and then I got sick (which I refuse to take as an indication that I overdid it around the birthday shenanigans...it is after all seasonally appropriate and I have been around a lot of people). Today I’m finally feeling better though and ready to contemplate this dual anniversary as I do every year and see what it feels like this time.
For those just now coming to the party, my birthday is also the day I got diagnosed with cancer...the first time, back when I was 23. That makes this year my 25th anniversary of the day my relationship with my body and my mortality abruptly changed. 25 years is a nice round number and worthy of celebration, though it would feel nicer (and more victorious) if there hadn’t also been this new diagnosis and cancer saga part 2 that I have been dealing with for the past year-plus. It’s become interestingly complicated to do this yearly philosophizing now that there are two cancer-versaries to contemplate, but I still like the dramatic dichotomy that this day of transitions from one state to another (from unborn to born, from healthy to ill) presents.
I do still feel a sense of victory, of having made it this far after the initial shock and upset of that first diagnosis. But that sense of victory is tempered now with the reality that life is complicated and the lesson that victory often comes at a cost (which sometimes takes a lot longer than expected to manifest). I can no longer see my life as divided into only three phases, pre-cancer, cancer treatments and post-cancer survivorship—my survivorship status is now no longer something I can confidently assume will not change, since it already has changed once, from cancer survivor back to cancer patient and then back to survivor again. Don’t get me wrong, I’m humongously grateful for and pleased at being back in the survivor identity after a tough second go-round, but the very fact that the pendulum has swung back and forth between having and surviving cancer an additional time makes me have to acknowledge that it could certainly do so again. (In fact, it is more likely to do so again than it once was.) I have to constantly be able to hold two possibilities in my head and heart: on the one hand, that I am free, that I have fought the good fight and triumphed and cancer has once again vanished from my body, never to return because we have salted the earth quite thoroughly (and will continue to for years to come, just in case); and yet on the other hand, that treatments for cancer can sometimes cause cancer, as they did in my case, and that my body seems to be a fertile ground for cancer (as evidenced by it popping up at least twice now that I know of), so even though we have done all we can to prevent recurrence, I cannot be certain that it won’t happen. Holding two opposite things simultaneously and being comfortable in that “gray area” of uncertainty is something I learned to do back in the first go-round with cancer, but now I’ve had a chance to repeat the lesson and it is even more nuanced and complicated. I would say that the ability to live in the gray is one of the hallmarks of maturity, so I guess I would also say “yay me” that I have made it far and long enough to even mature.
One last metaphor (because it wouldn’t be Parentheticals without torturing a few metaphors) that I’ve been thinking about in regards to this cancer-versary and the whole double-cancer saga I now possess is that of the Boulder in the Meadow. This is a metaphor I came up with after another, non-cancer experience to explain how it feels when things change abruptly, but it certainly applies here too. Imagine that your life can be compared to a beautiful forest meadow: open, wide, flat, with lush grass and beautiful little flowers blooming here and there. Perhaps a stream trickles through it, and little fish and frogs live in that stream, and the meadow grass is home to butterflies and hummingbirds and lizards and mice and insects—a whole happy ecosystem. Then one day out of the clear blue sky a giant stone boulder unexpectedly falls smack into the center of the meadow. It rips up the ground, crushes a bunch of grass, and wreaks havoc on many tiny creature lives. The stream now has to divert around it. And it completely changes the view of the formerly flat, open expanse—even though the boulder’s fall has not affected the entire meadow, you cannot any longer look across the meadow and not notice it. It is the single most obvious feature of the meadow now, and it cannot be changed or removed. Over time, things in the meadow eventually return to some sort of equilibrium, and the boulder is incorporated into the ecosystem of the meadow. Grass grows around it, flowers appear in its cracks and fissures, creatures take refuge in its shade. The meadow is still beautiful, but it will never again be the same open, expansive place that it once was. You can’t dismiss the boulder, or wish it away, or pretend you don’t see it. You can mourn the past, and remember fondly the way things once were in the meadow, but eventually you must accept the boulder as something that will always be there. Then you can find a way to view it as positively as possible, and choose to focus on the beauty that is still present.
So in this cancer-saga context, I now have two boulders in my meadow. I’ve had 25 years to incorporate the first boulder, the one that so radically changed my meadow’s topography. It’s nicely weathered and worn now, and has certainly made things more interesting. I have accepted it as an ongoing feature of my meadow, and even grown to appreciate its gifts. But this second boulder—it landed so close to the other boulder, and it’s even bigger than the first one was. It did more damage to the meadow than the first one, and in some ways it is harder to imagine that its presence will ever feel integrated (even though experience with the first boulder should be reassurance that it will, given enough time). It makes me once again remember and mourn the flat meadow that once was, and even the single-boulder meadow that once was. I know that acceptance and integration is possible, and indeed the process has begun, but it isn’t finished yet. Of course, it may never finish—the meadow is an ever-evolving place. But that second boulder still bothers and distracts me with its disruptive, obvious presence.
I wish I could hurry this process of acceptance and integration along, and get back to thinking more about the meadow than the boulders. But every day I still see my scars and feel the numbness and oddity of my new “foobs” (fake boobs) and it still bothers me. I still struggle with feeling like my memory and my energy are not back to “normal”. I yearn—oh how I yearn—to put this latest cancer experience behind me and move on, and I am impatient with the fact that I am still dealing with the aftereffects. However, if there’s one thing that the first cancer saga taught me, it’s that recovery takes time. A long time. I actually think it’s an ongoing experience, not a destination. So there is no “putting this all behind me”, really. There is only the journey, round and round the meadow, looking at things from all angles, appreciating what is good and holding what is not good with as much compassion as I can muster.
A year ago today I had my first breast surgery (a lumpectomy and reduction). A week ago today I had what I fervently hope is my last breast surgery (tweaks to finish the DIEP flap reconstruction I had back in June). So I have been this new, smaller-breasted person for a whole year now. It still feels strange and unreal, though I’m finally getting more used to it. Being done with the reconstruction also brings with it a mixed set of feelings: on the one hand, “yay, that’s it, I’m done!”, where I’m happy to finally be through all the trials and tribulations and relieved to be relatively pleased with the results; and yet on the other hand, I also am feeling “oh, that’s it, I’m done?”, where I’m realizing that the form I’ve got now is what I’m going to have for—God willing and the creek don’t rise—the rest of my life. And it isn’t perfect, as it never is, but whatever my minor disappointments, now I must begin the journey back to body acceptance and self-appreciation all over again. Having done body acceptance work slowly but surely for decades already, it’s a little disheartening to have to do it again (and so relatively quickly). Do it I shall, with as much focus on the silver linings and bright sides as I can manage, but today is an anniversary where I mourn, just a little, the way things used to be back 
Around 7:00 we got a few people together to head out to see the Temple burn. 
Saturday morning we slept in (me more than Josh, surprisingly), and then it was time for the Pink Heart Meats and Cheeses party, which we wound up hosting in our shade patio. In addition to the sharing of delicious meat and cheese-related food items (and those that go with them like pickles and fruit), there was a bunch of Pinkie fun and merriment. One particularly memorable highlight was our campmate Karpo dressed up in a hilarious “cock and balls” stretchy onesie costume, swinging the giant penis around. (Trust me, it was funnier than it sounds.) 
After Meats and Cheeses, there was a big group of Pinkies that wanted to go all the way over to the other side of the playa to visit the Dr. Bronner’s camp, where they gift a shower experience called “ReFoamation”. The idea was not only to go get clean (at this point I still had not taken a shower or done any more cleaning of myself than baby wipes...one of the benefits of having short hair this year) but also to give away some more of the boxes and boxes of leftover Headspace cookies that Anthony had made (and which never got given away on Headspace because it broke down and didn’t voyage through the playa). I had heard of the Dr. Bronner’s experience in years past but never been. This year it sounded good to me and I wanted to go (Josh stayed behind), although I was also feeling a little shy and self-conscious about being naked around other people given how red and obvious my scars still are. Kathy told me that she was going to wear a bathing suit so I decided to wear one of my sports bras and a pair of bikini bottoms that Anjanette loaned me. I’m really glad I did go though because it turned out to be super fun and pleasurable (because clean!)
Anyway we all biked over there and got to skip the very long line because of the cookie gifting we had arranged, and go in as a group. (There were other people in the dome with us too, but we were a large enough group that we went through as a clump.) The shower experience went like this: first you walked in to a big covered dome with a cool tree-sculpture (with a face on it!) and a DJ spinning upbeat but mellow music, and we took our packs and clothes off and put them on the side of the dome. The floor was covered with perforated foam tiles with a tarp underneath, so you could walk comfortably around (and dance) with bare wet feet. One side of the dome was the showers—so after getting naked, you walked with your group of about twenty people up some stairs and into a clear plastic-enclosed area with a scaffolding above it. There were people up in the scaffolding with foam and water sprayers. Everyone gathered in a clump on one side of the enclosure and they explained to us that the goal was to not wash yourself and to not use your hands, and then they blasted us with a ton of fabulous thick peppermint-smelling soapy foam while we all shrieked and yelped and giggled and wiggled around. (I have to admit that right beforehand I had a brief twinge of Holocaust shower PTSD but it was so clearly not the same kind of setting and so happy and fun that I didn’t linger in that thought.) Then the group moved down the enclosure to the other side where they sprayed us down with water (and there was more yelping and giggling). After that we all walked out and down a set of steps back into the rest of the dome, where there were people painted and costumed to look like satyrs and dryads and other fae woodland creatures who offered you oils and lotions (and later on, after we Pinkies got into the act, cookies). I have to say it felt blissfully great to be clean and moist and moisturized in a cool shaded dust free space while also dancing around and appreciating all the different shapes and sizes of naked bodies happily coexisting. Anjanette said to me at one point “you know, this is exactly what people who don’t go to Burning Man think we do out here the entire time” (e.g. get naked and dance around in pagan rituals). Giving out cookies to clean naked happy people was really fun too. I loved the whole experience and I will definitely do it again next year (and hopefully this time with no clothes on). 
After the foamy fun, I biked back across the playa with Anjanette. We made a detour to go see the Temple one more time before it was to burn the next day—I was curious to see what had become of my plaster bust and also to see how much more the whole Temple had gotten built up with additional offerings and energy. It was indeed humongously more built up and very emotionally intense there, but I was feeling strong and happy and so this trip there was more of a sightseeing and honoring other people’s grief than a reactivation of my own. Though I did dust off my bust (especially the piece right in the middle with the words “I’M STILL ME” in a heart) because why not. Then we biked back to Pink Heart with a couple of stops along the way because again, why not.
Friday we were supposed to have a volunteer space on Headspace but it was broken and not going anywhere, so we had a day free of commitments to explore and play and do whatever we wanted. What that turned out to be was a slow start and some fun chill time in the back of camp with various friends over at our camp neighbors Deron and Suneeta’s place, and then Mom and Kathy and I decided to go over to our neighboring camp, Kostume Kult, for some free costumes. We’d been hearing them all week with their very loud sound system and often obnoxious MCs talking about the people strutting the runway, but we hadn’t yet gotten around to the whole Kostume Kult experience. What is the Kostume Kult experience you ask? I will share. First we went and waited in line along the edge of their frontage, which looked like a graffiti’d metro car cut in half, and watched people who had acquired their new costume pieces come do a parade down a long elevated runway that led from the curtained back of their frontage up to the Esplanade. Then we were welcomed in groups to pass through a curtain and into a large tented space full of clothing racks and bins on tables and wall clips full of costumes and accessories. A lot of what they had there were actual costumes (e.g. the low quality kind made for Halloween and other costume events that you might find at a Spirit store) as opposed to just fanciful costume pieces, but because burners could also bring things to gift (we didn’t, although apparently if you did you were allowed to skip the line), there was some random one-off stuff in the mix too. After browsing around we all found some fun things to try on, which we did over in one corner of the tent. Kathy found a beautiful long pink tropical flower print dress with little ruffles on the neck and sleeves, Mom found a black gauzy overshirt and a bright pink Mad Hatter soft top hat, and I found a silly “Lady Luck” costume which was a long stretchy green dress with three-dimensional foam dice as shoulders (being a long time tabletop gamer, I could not resist a costume with dice), a gold horseshoe insert at the neckline and a gold chain “belt” with a four-leaf clover, a small foam die, fake rabbits feet and a heart hanging from it, paired with an oversized “leprechaun” green top hat with a fake gold buckle on it. Once we were satisfied with the things we found and ready to take them away, we put them on and exited the tent, where we waited in a much shorter line to go show them off on the runway. It was fun to strut down the runway dancing to the music and doing model twirls; the MCs were obnoxious and loud but generally supportive. Sadly, at some point in the trying on fuss I lost my sunglasses, and even though I went back right away to look for them, there was no way of finding them in all the piles and bins of stuff. (I lost a lot of things—sunglasses, water bottle, buff, earrings, flashlight—at the burn this year, like little aftershocks of the bigger losses I had experienced during the year between last burn and this one. But they were very clearly just things, and though I was sad to see them go, it didn’t bother me that much.)
We went back to camp to show off (and in my case, take off) our finds, and hung around for a bit longer with our campmates, until finally at some point in the afternoon Anjanette and I motivated to go out on another playa art adventure. (I got to spend a lot more time with my bestie at this burn than I had anticipated, and that was a real joy.) She wanted to climb on the giant warthog, which even though it was not spinning anymore looked too hard and dangerous for me, so I declined and cheered her on and took pictures from the ground. She made it all the way to the top and back again with no incident.
One other cool highlight from that set of art adventures was a piece that I later found was called “Doors to Recovery” but which Anjanette and I were calling the Lotus Temple (there was a giant and gorgeous Lotus Temple we had spent some time in the year before, but this was much smaller). It was a room-sized, lilac purple octagonal structure with a conical roof, and a big white lotus flower at the top of the roof. Each facet of the octagon had a door in it, and each door was painted with a beautiful painting and a question above it, which said things like “what makes your heart sing?” or “what sets your soul on fire?”. There were a few fill-in-the-blank questions too like “addiction is...” or “a natural high is...” or “self-love is...”. You chose a door to enter through, and once you entered you realized that (not surprisingly, given the size of the building) all doors led to the same interior space. Right in front of you when you first entered were chalkboard-painted walls punctuated with open entryways into an inner room. The chalkboard walls had the same questions as the outer doors above them, and space and chalk to write your answers below.
On one of them I wrote the same “everything is going to be okay in the end...if it’s not okay, it’s not the end” quote that had become such a theme for me this burn. The inner room inside the chalkboard walls was mirrored and at the top of the walls were two long quotes, one of which said “The lotus flower begins from mud and darkness, finding the strength to rise to the light and bloom its beautiful flower,” which is a flowery version of one of Anjanette’s favorite quotes ("no mud, no lotus") and similar to my own love for the “suffering cracks us open and lets the light in” philosophy. The ceiling inside that inner room was hung with gorgeous pierced-metal lanterns with purple light inside, and the whole thing was really beautiful. It was the perfect art piece for the two of us.
After we got back to camp that afternoon, I don’t remember much else besides climbing up on someone’s RV to look at the beautiful sunset and getting ready to go out for the evening again. We did at some point go over to Moon Cheese to get some late night grilled cheese (our camp had loaned their camp some room in our refrigerator truck so they let us cut the line to get our grilled cheese). So they brought us out a big metal bowl full of sandwiches and we got to nibble on warm grilled cheese while listening to awesome live music next door at Crossroads. After that a group of Pinkies went over to see the Helios burn at midnight, which was gorgeous and exciting and started with a ton of fireworks. It was the first big burn I’d been to that week and it got the burn excitement going for sure.
Thursday morning I had to get up bright and early to run my 
Another thing I noticed about the FYFFH workshop this year was that we had many fewer people participating this year (probably only about 20 folks over the course of the two hours), but they were all really into the activity. Many who did participate took it really seriously and spent quite a bit of time making their flags. I had one woman tell me how making her flag really helped her clarify and bring into focus some of the big epiphanies about her burn, and she really appreciated having a way to create a physical memento to remind her of them. Cool! With so relatively few people to manage, I had more time to connect and hear people’s stories about their flags and what they put on them, and really give people the gift of being seen and heard. (I especially enjoyed chatting with a young man from Boston who gave me enthusiastic recommendations about “livetronica” bands from Philly to listen to after I asked him about the logo he’d put on his flag.) My friend Ron came by during the workshop and made a flag and we got to catch up a bit, which was great, and my new artist friend and camp-mate Deron came and made a flag too.
Around 11am people were starting to gather for Halcyon’s 
After the hug-fest broke up, Josh and I decided to linger a while at Center Camp. I wanted to check out the stage there where I would be performing later that evening, plus I’d been promising myself a cup of iced coffee. (I’d been mostly off caffeine since my chemo treatments started back in January, and this was my ritual welcoming it back.) It was, as hoped, just as delicious as always and I talked really fast for a little while but otherwise didn’t feel particularly jittery or anything. We sipped and scoped out the scene for a little while and then decided to go on a mini-art adventure on the way back to camp. So we headed back up the 6:00 spoke towards the Man again, with the intention of spending some time at the interactive workshop area around it. On the way we detoured to check out two amazing giant gorilla sculptures (official name was apparently “Seeing Humanity for What It Really Is”) made of cardboard over wooden frames, and met the artist there who was making some repairs to one of the gorillas. We also got a chance to stop and appreciate more fully the “Inside the Mind of Da Vinci” sculpture and meet the artist Mischell, whom I had recently friended on Facebook after seeing an interview Halcyon did with her when he was at the Generator in Reno. I really admired that particular art piece and how beautifully it was sculpted. Josh and I did the typical Burning Man thing of climbing on it, and took a few pictures, and then we biked out to the Man plaza to see what was going on there.
Josh had been really eager to check out the blacksmith/metal-working workshops in the plaza, but they were either closed or way too crowded while we were there so we kept looking around instead. We got sucked in to a brief activity where people put on togas and arranged themselves around a backdrop that looked like the Last Supper and took pictures, and we stood in line (and chatted with people) for a bit to make leather-stamped pendants. There were other things to make but Josh didn’t want to get too deeply involved in anything so we mostly just looked around at what was there. It was also getting pretty dust-stormy (which is typical for midafternoon) so we eventually just gave up and decided to bike home. We stopped on the way at the porta-potties because Josh had to use them, but I didn’t so I went over to the nearest big art sculpture, the giant Medusa head. While I was sitting there waiting for him a big whiteout dust storm blew through—I could barely see the giant sculpture in front of me and for sure couldn’t see the porta-potties beyond that. I had a brief anxiety that Josh wouldn’t be able to find me after he came out of the potties, but as it turned out the whiteout eased pretty quickly and it wasn’t a problem. Still, we were pretty dusty when we got back to camp, so I decided to change before going back to Center Camp for my handpan jam.
I had to go over to Center Camp a little early and check in before my scheduled stage time, and Josh and a few other Pinkies came with me (Ali and Keith, Anthony and Kathy, Mom, I’m probably forgetting others). I was pretty nervous, having never played handpan on a stage with microphones and an actual audience, but everyone at the backstage was very nice and helpful and made me feel respected as a performer. Josh was with me backstage for a while but then he went back out front to get a good spot to watch and take video from. No other players showed up to jam with me (which I had mostly expected), so it was just me up on stage, at least for the first few songs. I hadn’t really prepared any specific songs or set list, so it was really just me improvising and playing whatever came into my head. (The only problem with the spontaneous improv method was that I felt like I was being too repetitive/not diverse enough in my rhythms so that everything I was playing sounded similar and by the end of the half hour I started to run out of new ideas/things to play—next time I do this I’ll prepare a bit better and at least make sure to have some variation in my seed rhythms or something.) After the first few improv pieces I did alone, Ali came up on stage to sing with me, and we improvised several pieces together. That was really fun—she mostly sang wordless hums and trills but for the last piece she started to put some words in to what she was singing and I really liked the way that we sounded together. (It reminded me of some of the jams in the 
After my official stage time was over, Josh and I were wandering slowly out of Center Camp and chatting with one of the people who’d been at the concert. He wanted to try the handpan, so we stopped at one of the benches and I let him play, and we had a nice little interaction there for a bit. We told him we were heading back over to Pink Heart and he told us a story about a negative experience he’d had there with our campmate Deron, who had apparently mocked his headpiece (he was wearing a goofy, colorful, little mini-hat/fascinator thing). We were surprised to hear about that and tried to make him feel better about it, without much success. (We heard another side of the story later on from Deron, and I think the whole thing just proves that we often hear what we want to hear and that some people are very sensitive to and have a hard time letting go of perceived offense or ridicule).
Thursday evening Josh and I went out with some other Pinkies for more playa art adventures. Highlights of that particular journey were Helios (which Josh climbed on and helped activate), the Black Rock City Lighthouse Service (which we did not climb on because it was too crowded and we were too flittery and now I’m sorry we didn’t), and the Sonic Tunnel (which we did walk through and it was awesome.) We also saw a several-stories-tall sculpture with red sails that I never learned the name of that flapped and fluttered beautifully in the wind. I really was intrigued by the concept of wind art this burn. I really love the movement of fabric and wind and the playa is a perfect place to play with that (there was another very simple but pretty sculpture not far from Pink Heart which was just three large triangular flags in a row made from something white (silk?) that caught the wind really easily and rippled and snapped, and a camp near us that had a whole lot of brightly neon-colored flags and streamers all over their camp). I feel really inspired to do another big freak flag art installation either next year or the year after using fabric (as opposed to the rebar ones I made a few years ago)...stay tuned!
So now it is Wednesday morning and even though Our Heroine still has not slept, and neither has her bestie co-conspirator Anjanette, we decided it would be a good time to finally go to the Temple (which had apparently just opened that morning). We went to go freshen up a bit and I checked back in with Josh, but he was still sleepy and didn’t want to come with us. I changed into my Wednesday white outfit (which seemed fitting for a Temple visit) and grabbed my plaster bust art piece and then Anjanette and I biked over to the Temple. We split up when we got there (Anjanette had her own processing to do and I wanted to be by myself for a while) and I walked around the inner walkway for a bit, looking for a place that felt right to leave my offering. I finally settled on a corner of one of the four archways that led into the main sanctuary room.
Then I found a place to sit down about 20 feet away with my back against a support pole where I could still see the offering I’d left, and I had a good cry for a long time, just thinking about everything that had happened in the last year and all the scary, painful, violating bits that I’d had to be so courageous through, and that now I was finally ready to release and burn away. I especially remember running my hands through my (still very short) hair and weeping for all the things I’d lost, and all the changes I’d been forced to absorb. After a while of that I was finally ready to re-read a copy of the letter to myself that I had written before I left (and which I’d taped a copy of to the inside of the bust so it could burn too.) I’m not going to reproduce the whole thing here (because believe it or not I do keep *some* things private), but for posterity (and extra juju) I will share the last couple paragraphs:
I also wordlessly hugged a couple of strangers who wandered by with grieving faces—there is something really special and moving about meeting and acknowledging a mutual experience raw open grief, no matter what it’s about or where it comes from. Eventually Anjanette came and found me and sat with me and we hugged and cried together for a bit. I gave her a rock from the spot where we sat and she gave me one too. We talked some and sat quietly some until eventually we were ready to get up and go. Leaving the Temple I felt tired and somber but also cleaner and lighter, having finally observed the major part of the closure ritual that I’d been anticipating for so many months.
On the way back to camp we couldn’t resist diverting a bit to see some playa art. We took pictures in the big picture frame and at the “HOME” and “EARTH” metal letters installation. (We also saw Mark Day, the 
When we got back after all excitement I decided I was finally tired enough to take a nap. Luckily this year we had brought an actual portable air conditioning unit to go in our yurt so I was able to get a couple hours of sleep even though it was the hot part of the day.
When I was done with the water bar I wandered back to our yurt and found Josh outside in our shade patio talking to our friend Mary (aka Pom-pom, a friend from back in our Sacred Spaces/Yaboogie Pod days). We had a joyful reunion and some catch-up hangout time, but eventually it started to get dark and she wanted to leave. We gave her some lights and promised to meet up again for burn night like we usually do.
While we were messing around with the tattoos, a dreadlocked guy with glasses showed up, asking for me. It turned out to be Miguel, a handpan player who’d seen my post on the handpan.org forum about jamming at Burning Man and had come by to find me. (He had stopped by and asked for me the previous day too, but I’d missed him.) I told him I was going to be leaving soon and he said “but are you leaving right meow meow?” He’d brought his pan and wanted to play at least a little bit, which was hard to resist. So I ran back to my yurt and got out my Saraz and brought it up to the front. Miguel turned out to be an amazing player in that super-fast percussive kind of style, which I couldn’t really keep up with (and it made me feel kind of shy and inferior so mostly we just listened to him play. He had to leave after a few minutes to go play a concert next door, so we only had a brief encounter, but I’m glad we connected even though it gave me that burst of inadequacy. I tried to get him to come play with me the next day during the time slot I’d booked at the Center Camp stage, but he was non-committal.
Anyway after all that (and I never did get around to the tattoos), we finally motivated as a group and headed out to the White Party. I remember there being a cool little conversation between Halcyon and Josh about a bunch of philosophical stuff (I think Halcyon was riffing off Josh’s “Mystic” playa name). We found Anjanette right away when we got to Opulent Temple, and had a good time dancing there for a while. (Lea even got to dance with one of the jellyfish.) I especially had fun grooving with my torofluxes there. We randomly ran in to our buddy Alex from Sacred Spaces there, and shared a sweet hug but then lost track of each other. Eventually though we got tired (both physically tired and tired of the scene) and headed back to Pink Heart. But of course we detoured through the playa a little on the way home and saw a cool art installation: a big twinkly bright “wishing star” where you could make a wish by putting a wooden star-shaped token over a sensor on a stand set up about 20 feet away from the star, and then when a single star flashed you made a wish on it. A few moments later the whole thing flashed and glowed. Apparently the more each star got wished on, the brighter it glowed. I wished for my cancer to stay gone and for my health to stay strong. It seemed like a fitting end to a day that had started with a visit to the Temple.