9/1 -- Grey
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| Day dawned cold, blowy, and overcast. Making sporadic and
mute protest by hurling handfuls of water drops at us, the clouds slowly
cleared; in their stead, the wind brought donation of airborne dust.
Buggy discovered a minor emergency: the dry ice had overcome the insulating
layer of H20 ice and created a tiny, plastic enclosed glacier, clutching
our beer and perishables in a frozen, implacable grip. It took thirty minutes,
various tools, blood, hissing dry ice, water, and a broken, foaming bottle
to recover our precious golden fluid. "Perhaps," he said dryly, "we overdid
it on the ice." |
| Since walking is an endurance sport in the scouring wind, we have settled
in the Main Camp. Somewhat sheltered, the space holds myriad couches and
cushions, arranged in conversational clusters. Translucent green and black
burlap are bound in an enormous flat parachute above, suspended from a
circle of 30' wooden pillars in the center and tethered to the ground by
a web of cables throughout. The area is filled with sprawled bodies, chatting
groups, musicians and drummers and dancing accompanists, and a steady parade
of the mostly young; here a group trades massage; a woman in a barber's
chair sews dust-filter masks; a pair of jugglers; a chess game. The dress
code starts at nudity, includes the man in the fluorescent pink cowboy
hat and matching g-string, the woman in chiffon skirt and fairy wings;
the vast majority are dressed for a day at the beach, adorned with ski
goggles or dust filter mask or bandanna; a few from the opposite
extreme, in combat gear or full Arabic robes. |
Courtesy:
Scott D. Feldman
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Overheard at Burning Man: “She flew in with
a photographer and makeup artist from Kyoto just for this. Shaved her head,
even her eyebrows. She's going to cover here entire body with Chinese characters
-- a Buddhist tradition, to keep evil demons out -- for the shoot. What
I wanted to know, though, was if she was going to cover her entire body
-- if she was going to shave, you know, down here.” [waves hands before
his leather-and- steel-chain jockeys, which are all he wears] |
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Courtesy: Keith Phillips
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I generally mislike writing which consists primarily of lists,
yet find that is my primary entry so far. Perhaps I have reached a limit
of my expressive ability, for I find Burning Man resists generalization
save for the most banal platitudes -- cacophonous, chaotic, fragmented
-- and happens too quickly, even simultaneously, to allow lengthy exploration
of a single theme. Perhaps the choice of pacing is like the choice of transportation
we have all made: either a bike tour, speeding through the maelstrom to
focus on a particular vortex; or pedestrian, floating on and tossed by
the turbulent crosscurrents of fellow tourists, flashing from rock to rock.
This is a walking tour: light on details, but attempting completeness.
I realize, too, that I have not discussed the four of us much; I think
that is because our attempts at participation have been somewhat meager
in comparison to the outpouring of creativity and madness around us; our
private times have been fairly quiet as our overwhelmed awareness tries
to process the flood that has barraged us.
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