nawl

I've put off writing about Burning Man.

Or maybe it's just that after coming back, my life shifted very quickly into something very far away.

What is Burning Man? Nevada. Desert. 40,000 people. The idea of "radical self-expression", which usually seems to involve some combination of hair extensions, nudity, fake fur, fire, blinky lights, drugs, and structures of questionable integrity built by people of unknown engineering expertise.

There is "art". Art like the Belgian waffle ("Uchronia"), an enormous, organic-looking structure built out of thousands upon thousands of two-by-fours. At night they lit it up with colored lights and played techno music. By the end of the week every piece of lumber within reach of the ground had written messages covering it.

Of course they burned it.

It was the single biggest fire I've ever seen in my life.

There's the aesthetic of everything, the piercing blue of the sky and the gray-white dust, the bicycles, the tents ruffling in the wind. Those moments when you're whipping up dinner from scratch for 20-odd of your awesome campmates and look outside the kitchen truck and notice that everything is whited out in a dust storm. The enormous dust devils churning across the open playa.

There are the surreal moments. Yes, a marching band with a flaming tuba is crashing the salsa class that I'm helping teach. That is, in fact, a boat driving across the desert, and that's a big glowing thing with tentacles, and glowing velociraptors are actually chasing each other over there. (Why do people do drugs, again?)

The desert is a nice place to tango. (Picture of but not by me.)

There are the port-o-potties, and hand sanitizer, and showering in groups with garden pump sprayers, Dr Bronners fresh in the cool breeze, and the people who rip off all their clothes and sprint after the water trucks spraying the roads. (As often as not with non-potable water. Ew.)

I spent a lot of time alone this year.

At night the city appears very far away from the trash fence. On one side there is the wide expanse of open desert and the stars above, perfectly calm and motionless. On the other there is the dim roar of the city, the milky way disappearing into light pollution, lights flashing here and there, flames periodically roaring into view.

When they burned the temple, 10,000 people were absolutely quiet.

I ended up hitchhiking home after my ride broke down. Less than five minutes after putting up a sign, I had a ride to my door in a huge RV full of Russians. We raided the fridge and had a Trader Joe's yuppie leftover feast around the RV table while the RV sped through the night down our wide all-American highways and they told me how it was just like taking the train in Russia, where someone will pull out bread and chicken and vodka and everyone will gather around and feast together.