So a full blown burning man post, and you know it must be serious cause I used the actual name! This year was quite different, from a new camp to a giant RV, the land yacht.
Burningman isn't just a giant party, it's a crucible, a test of your endurance in a giant city you help build. In a way it reminds me of a Klingon ceremony, where everyone parties and fights through the night and is expected to still be standing when the awards are finally given out. (and if you think that's nerding, did I mention the NCC1701-D shuttlecraft I saw out there). But as usual it was in many ways a life changing experience.
This year I pushed myself pretty hard and was amusingly often on the edge of heat exhaustion but was able to keep it together and never had any serious problems, but I say amusingly cause I could feel my brain moving slower and occasional slurring of my speech even though I didn't drink at all. But I survived. Only really yelled at my RV buddies once, but they were good enough to fix the issue and things went smoother from there. Unfortunately it means I failed at a number of things including sending out mail, but I made a decent attempt at it.
Camping with the future was pretty awesome, they are a crazy bunch of people who run a pretty awesome camp, in some cases just sitting and listening to conversations was the best. I attempted to participate in camp activities as much as I could. It's funny what pushes peoples panic buttons, giving a talk to 40 people while hung over, yeah sure no problem, doing mad libs with like 10 people in a play like activity… ahhhh.
Saw tons of sights, biked around like crazy, it was a great year for it, I must play with google maps and see about how far I was covering each night. Had multiple random experiences, which are often the best thing out there and even was blinky'd by a magician who gave us rings and pulled a few 'quarter from the ears' off of me with a small led light.
Watched sunrise in deep playa to the thumpy sound of robot heart, it's quite amazing watching the sun hit the mountains behind you first and then slowly crawl down them to finally strike the flat playa. Also got the amusing sight of the cops going fanatic possible on/at some boat art car, at first it was one truck with another clearly speeding towards it, then another, and two more, and off in the distance I could see the dust trial of more, by the end I counted 7 or 8 cars/trucks all around one area, so I decided not to go to close but still checked it out. They seemed to be doing the standard everyone stand around thing. It was one of the few times I regretted not having my camera but luckily there were a few photographers filming it. Note, must figure out what wacked off their hive.
I ended up doing 5 sunrises this year although some from inside the RV.
(Temple burn, photo from burning man blog)
As usual I didn't take many photos. One burn I'm going to go out there for the purpose of a photo project but until then I've found I can't experience everything, drag around my camera and take photos that I wouldn't rip to shreds when I got back all at the same time. The magic of the internet means that there's plenty of other people taking 'memory shots' for me, with gps and time stamps I bet I can even find photos of the sunrise I watched taken by people near me so I don't feel too bad about not capturing the moment in these cases.
Now the hard stuff, burn night was the 1 year anniversary of the death of Maya, Anna's partner and a good friend. We spent part of the night getting high and remembering that night. It was hard but needed. I had no clue just how much I would miss her until she was gone. She was a broken yet amazing person, who was family and family means nobody gets left behind or forgotten. If you have a brilliant little introvert that always around but often hiding behind others in your chosen family, please tackle them and give them extra hugs. We then watched the man burn from Pipe Dream, even from a distance the fireworks show is still impressive.
(Photo from Burning man blog)
Fuck all people with feathers and headdresses. Seriously, if you own a headdress and you wear it to parties you should feel shame and apologize to the local tribes you are insulting. it's moopy, and disgusting, it's not cool or pretty it just outs you as a clueless white moron and clearly first time burner. Headdresses are not burning man or burner wear, please light them on fire before we do it for you. Be glad I'm a nice person or I would actively light them on fire. I say this as someone who is both cherokee enough that our family has items from the trial of tears where an entire people were marched to their deaths and white enough to know these things are no longer for me, but would like you to stop disrespecting them. I left and didn't return to at least one sound camp because of you assholes. Which ended up being fine, as I spent most of my dancing at art cars.
For next year (or next time) I think my previous thoughts to light or blinky the fuck out of people is certainly going to happen. The number of dark people, darkies we like to say, is just horrible (you're right naked jeff, that does have an unwanted racist connotation, guess I'll stick with dark wads, to be nice and all) was impressive. Saw a couple crashes and a number of ambulances at least one from someone getting hit according to the people around. So many people don't realize they are dark and can't be seen.
Hmm, how to not end this on a down note, the constant small acts of kindness that become the norm out there make you have hope for humanity, it's all not that hard to create awesomeness and love for the sake of it.
ETA (Terms, Moop is Matter out of Place, the land has to be returned to its original state so every piece of trash has to be picked up down to feathers and glitter. Every year the whole thing is walked by a group who cleans it before inspection and grades your camp, those who leave trash can be not placed or even banned the next year.
The city is an open circle with the man statue at the center, at 12 o clock is the temple beyond that is considered 'deep playa' contains no roads and smaller art pieces. The area between the man and the first road in the circle is inner playa and contains the bigger art pieces.
Pipe dream is a couple story box shaped climbing structure with a coach strapped to the top of it that our camp put out in front for people to climb.)
(Photo from the Atlantic, the inner playa circle is a mile across.)