We started the day with yoga two doors down at Faff Lounge. Faff is a Britishism meaning to waste time with anything other than what you should be doing, but which was backronymed in Black Rock City to "Fucking Around For Fucking-ever." They taught a drum yoga class that they invented with drummers supposedly timing six-second inhales and exhales. It was a good class, very simple sun salutation yoga but the flow breathing with the drumming background was a refreshing way to start what promised to be a long and busy day.
Before noon I got a seat in a smallish tent to attend an interactive talk on Stoicism, an ancient Greek philosophy in which I am particularly interested. I knew as much about it as the speaker but he focused on applying Stoic philosophy to cope with the challenges of Burning Man. He mentioned something about how "it might be hard to focus since you're all drunk and high..." and the topless girl next to me and I said in one voice, "Not yet!" Someone periodically sprayed us with a mister to keep us cool. It was a nice talk and I got a little laminated leaflet on using Stoic principles to deal with frustrating situations. Someone else printed out copies of The Enchiridion to give out as gifts and I gave mine away to someone who hadn't read it yet.
Immediately afterwards I tried to listen to a talk from the founder of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) on the current legal state of psychedelic medical research, but I had to squeeze around the door of their crowded lecture dome to hear, and only stayed for the few parts that were interesting enough to me, giving up on their extensive schedule of fascinating harm reduction and peer support talks that day. I did learn that the cranky, sad "come-down" people complain about the day after MDMA use does not appear in the therapeutic setting, and they believe it's only the result of sleep deprivation and possible dehydration. Their control groups had a harsher come-down, probably after realizing they got a placebo.
I gave up on staying for the whole talk and rode down to a camp that would be serving tri-tip steak. On the way I stopped for a champagne snow-cone because the line was short, and it's a great way to fight the heat. I found Leia near the front of the steak line, which stretched all the way down the block. I shared some of my snow-cone with Leia, and the people behind her let me cut in. I spritzed them with water and fanned them with my fan as a thank you. We ended up with a tiny bite-sized scrap of tri-tip steak that tasted amazing, but was a joke after standing in line - we each sneaked back in to get another one. Leia rode across town to send some postcards, not realizing we had a post office in our neighborhood, and I returned to Hall of Game to man the camp.
A friendly visitor from Square One camp came by to warn us that they expected rain and dust storms and to batten down our camp. I was on shift with J. - we finished up our game and collected all of the games into bins, storing away anything that could fly away. We ended up getting a dust storm but not a complete white-out, and no rain. Our shade structure held up well so we didn't feel much of it inside but we rode out into the storm that night to hear the music.
We planned out an all-night schedule of the bands most of us wanted to hear and where we'd be in case our big group got separated. Several couples did spin off into their own little excursions. I got separated from the group when my bike chain popped off its sprockets and had to be reattached. I went back to camp for a water refill and snack, and caught the last couple of songs of Balkan Bump at Reverbia, a live music stage. Then I caught up with the main group at Playground, the next music stage on the list, who were excited and amazed that I managed to find them again. They were seated in a chill-out tent across the street, not in the big crowd, or I never would have found them. Wednesday night was the "white-out party" so I was one of many men wearing white kurtas, and J. insisted that I put a string of lights around my waist to make me more recognizable.
All night we hopped from sound camp to sound camp seeking good music. We rested for a while at Opulent Chill, a structure with many white couches to relax on while Balkan Bump played to a much smaller audience. A few of us danced, while many cuddled on the couches or watched C. put on a prestidigitation show with lit-up gloves.
When biking through the dust storms across the dark open desert, wearing masks and goggles against the dust, we tried various ways to keep our group all together. We'd use the call-sign "pickle" to get each others' attention, like, "Pickle go! Pickle stop! Pickle turn left and park at the portos!" We'd memorize the patterns of lights on each other's bikes, packs, and clothing, as well as where we'd all park our bikes at each stage. We even tried to assign everyone a "buddy" to watch but many did a poor job of tracking their buddies. Usually we'd collect most of us together at a landmark.
Leia seemed to enjoy yelling "darkwad!" to warn us of people walking the desert without sufficient lighting, or to warn them that they couldn't be seen. In spite of this, she got lost for a little while after she crashed into one and her bike handlebars came loose and nearly fell off the frame. It became difficult to ride so we rotated bikes between three people until someone who could handle them better rode hers.
Our journey took us to Root Temple, a stage playing electronic music I didn't really like, yet others enjoyed. They stood in a cluster near the edge of the crowd getting blasted by dust and wind for what felt like hours, but I moved into the penguin pack closer to the center of the stage for effective shelter from the wind.
Around 4 or 5 AM we took a nap at Pink Heart, a camp with nothing but fluffy pink couches for crowds of tired partiers to collapse on, and a big neon heart over it visible from the open desert to guide wanderers. A few people peeled off back to camp to sleep up to this point, including our "leader" Shoelace, but E. and I herded the rest towards the trash fence to chase the Dusty Rhino, an art car.
Tycho's sunrise DJ set at the trash fence is an annual highlight of Burning Man and I was determined to find it. We hit the fence and started circling around it, past some art cars playing music, until we hit a collection of cars arranged in a semicircle with a crowd between them. By chance we came upon them as the sky was brightening minutes before sunrise, and parked our bikes by the fence almost right behind the Dusty Rhino itself, so we didn't walk far. Most of our group was exhausted and just wanted to find someplace to lie down. Leia and I split off to walk between the art cars and climb up one for a good view of the crowd by the fence, the sun rising over the mountains, the DJs on their art cars, and the fire spinners in the crowd of dancers. It was one of the more magical experiences for us, and it all dispersed when it concluded.
Leia and I stayed until about 7:00AM, resting on a fluffy art car for the last bit after the remaining 4 of our group had moved on. We met them heading out of The Folly when we reached it, a large wooden art structure on our way home. We saw where J. had written their names on a wall inside. The Folly is almost an amusement park, with various rooms decorated to look like an old fishing or mining town, paintings inside, and stairs you can follow up to a high observation tower. They even had a working piano on a stage inside and put on shows there during the week.
Our path from the fence to the city took us past other art pieces, including a big head with a line to climb inside it for which we didn't have the patience, and the Shrine of Sympathetic Resonance. This was a wooden building with every wall built as resonance chambers and covered in metal harp strings you could play. They took all the metal out of that before burning it at the end of the week.
Back in the city a barker invited us into a cafe that was miraculously open before 8:00AM serving coffee with local honey. It was delicious, we really needed it, and were given many honey sticks to take home to our camp.
No comments:
Post a Comment