9/2 -- Mary-Jane
| MARY-JANE 3:15 & (Anal or Sex)
puffy grey wig.
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| An earnest and somewhat frantic young man sat beside us
and recounted at length his personal tale of woe -- which consisted essentially
of discontent about the bad weather and sorrow at not being able to find
a friend. I confess to being somewhat unmoved. However, the above annotation
is my promise to tell her where his camp is should I see her... which,
of course, I never did. |
| Burning man is laid out circularly, and the main roads are labeled
along the radii as on a clock, 2:00 to 10:00. The concentric circles are
named as though a human were laid down and vivisected, then the major external
body parts used as place markers. The result, unfortunately, is a bit sophomoric,
as the annotation attests. It is true, however, that time is largely unimportant
here, so the usual litany of the clock is almost entirely supplanted by
the map.
The dust storm did not let up for most of the day. We had set up on
one of the couches, and apart from trips to the overflowing and disgusting
porta-potties, we largely stayed there the entire time. At one point I
went out to embrace the storm; covering my mouth with one sleeve so I could
breathe, I sallied out into the wind. The dust was more gentle than the
day before, but again served to sever the continuity of the world, isolating
each encounter into a droplet of experience. A woman coalesced, cocked
her head at me, and then beckoned me over. "I have something for you,"
she said, fishing in her large bag. "Damn it, it’s in here..." She then
produced a dust filter mask. I had been expecting the usual -- people hand
out little inspirational stories, food, trinkets, and so on; so when the
one item I wanted most in the world appeared from the bag, it was Christmas
and she was Santa. She waved off my thanks airily. "Now you don't have
to breathe through your sleeve," she said, and then dissolved back into
the fog. |
Courtesy: Element-Zero
(worth the visit!) - photo by Jan Mazel |
| In the distance, barely visible, a large, two-wheeled cart
was being pulled across the open playa by a humanoid figure with an oversize
white head which looked as thought it had been pulled like soft wax, leaving
a single bulbous teardrop atop the skull. The cart, all of wood, had wheels
eight-foot in diameter, and in the center two revolving, scything blades
lent a fierce, warlike appearance, at odds with the happy expression on
the mask pulling the rope. Atop the cart a woman perched on a small seat,
shivering, while her alien struggled to haul the contraption through the
wind. As I approached, he was turning to her with arms spread in supplication
and defeat, giving up. It seemed natural, so I offered to help; together
we fought it across the windy desert until we reached the central figure
of the Man. |
Courtesy: CatWeasel |
Atop the Man three naked figures are having their pictures taken: a
grey-haired, sagging man has his arms around two well endowed young women.
The Man is cordoned off with yellow "do not cross" tape, and a crowd watches,
buffeted by the wind, wondering who the trio are. |
| A stream of ululating cries cut through the wind, followed
closely by the thirty throats that made them, surrounded by happy, smiling,
exposed female flesh, atop bicycles riding like a school of fish around
and past me, then turning and riding off again. As the last two passed,
one asked her companion, "Where are we going?" Giggling,
she replied, "Who knows?" and they wheeled on. |
| Back in the central area, things were more sedate. An airbrush
painter had begun to decorate people nearby. One particularly lovely woman
had had her torso painted aquamarine, with fluorescent green and white
lightening bolts. It matched her green jacket and yellow tutu quite perfectly,
and had an interesting effect on her interaction with men. She had become
a work of art, and men would approach and ask to see; after a moment of
studied reluctance she would part her jacket and proudly display herself.
The men would stare, mumble appreciation, and disappear, for she had become
a true object: easily approachable, yet unassailable and untouchable.
A big woman, dressed in a flowing orange wrap, matching orange eyeliner
and orange hair tint, was painting her nails... orange. Catching my eye,
she asked, "Want some?"
"Sure," I said, and she painted mine also, explaining that this week
she was "Madame L'Orange," spreading Orange where ever there was not enough
Orangeness.
Shortly thereafter a woman snapped a couple of Polaroids of L'Orange,
gave one to her and, after sticking the second in a journal, asked for
a signature. Sandy asked if she could sketch the photographer (who was
in fact the Lovely body paint woman, but all this was before the paint)
and meanwhile I was allowed to leaf through the journal. It spanned two
years, and captured the spirit of this place exactly -- so I will not try
to describe it! When Sandy gave the sketch to her, tearing it artistically
to fit in the journal, Lovely's friend quietly gave Sandy a sketch of Sandy
sketching, in return. |
| Eventually the storm had cleared, and we found ourselves
at a party at La La Land (5:30 and Brain). These were a bunch of Seattle
Microsofties, and were distributing (along with their rum punch, Manhattans,
and h'ors doevres) tins of Penguin Brand Mints. Horrors! A clear violation
of the No Commercial Zone Ordinances... so Buggy took a huge bag of the
mints and, placing each mint in the road, meticulously spelled out "Eat
Me," and "Mange Moi." As he worked, pedestrians contributed more languages,
and he ended with seven or eight, including an erratic glyph he cannot
pronounce but claims is Hebrew. "I meant it to be a comment on the Mints,"
he observed, "but everybody either thinks I'm talking about sex or X."
As though to punctuate, a heavily bearded man in combat fatigues stumbled
along the road, paused, and said, "Woah! That's a lot of X!" and stumbled
off.
Then, noticing with delight a rack of garish clothing, Buggy donned
a jumpsuit in wild green and blue. "Look!" he exclaimed, "they're cats!
...I love this!" From then on, any reference to disrobing or bathroom would
be accompanied by a wry "except it would take me 45 minutes to take off
this dress..." to which Holli would snap playfully, "It's not a dress!"
and Sandy would add, "It's a jumpsuit. Jumpsuit! Can't you get that straight?!"
A woman suddenly charged from the tent, excitedly shrieking "Oh my God!
Oh my God! I can't believe it!" and essentially attacked a man who had
just arrived on a bicycle: still squealing, now inarticulately, she jumped
up and down and then grabbed him across the bike, knocking him over so
that all three collapsed in a laughing, struggling heap.
"Oops," said Buggy wryly, "thought you were somebody else." |
| Holli and Sandy reappeared, face-painted and game. Sandy
had lost her shirt somewhere, replacing it with a green fishnet teddy,
which later looked quite fetching in her "pit" photo: a group was dispensing
rocket fuel and shouting "Show us your Pits!" and posting Polaroids of
the armpits of passers by. Sandy, in her teddy and black cowboy hat, encaptioned
hers "Bitch Cassidy at the OK Corral." Holli and I looked mostly drunk
and cross-eyed, and neither of us can remember the caption.
(Buggy: "This place is the pits!" [Laughter.]
Buggy: "Reminds me of Pittsburgh." [Laughter.]
Buggy: "Oh, come on! You mean to tell me you've been here all week
and no one has said that before?"
Polaroid Camera Man: "No! But..." [looks to his pen-wielding partner
and mock sighs] "I'm sure I'll hear it again.") |
| We were also invited to a wedding: "Aaaaaaaah! I can't
believe it!" shrieked and olive skinned girl wearing an open black vest
an matching shorts. "Married!" Her blonde companion, who had flowers in
his dusky hair and a matching light vest, flushed slightly and explained
they had met a year earlier, here, had lived together since, so he had
asked her to marry him this year -- at which point the girl burst out with
another shriek of joy. It became evident later that "marriages" were common,
but this one was expected to last longer than several hours, and so was
more permanent than most. |
| We decided to watch the fights at the Thunderdome, and set off, but
a message from Buggy's friend Yvonne sidetracked us to the farthest opposite
side of camp -- and when we got there (by way of drumming on a flaming
car, playing with a neon glowing Lite-Brite set, and the Armpit Polaroid
Wall) when we got to the opposite side of camp, the heavens opened and
we were deluged. There was nowhere better to run, so we occupied a nearby
abandoned encampment -- well sheltered, equipped with plenty of chairs,
and empty -- and waited out the squall in being boisterous. (The next morning
Buggy returned to search for a pair of lost gloves, and discovered that
the owners of the camp had been present, merely hidden in tents and giggling
at our banter.)
Eventually the rain became sporadic and we finally set across playa.
From either edge, the opposite side of the encampment is so distant, so
disconnected, and so enormous that it feels like a distant city lies across
the desert, and setting out for it like putting to sea. In the center,
away from the lights and activity, the desert again reminds us of how small
we really are. At one point during the crossing Holli convinced us all
to skip, and within seconds Sandy, Holli, and I were separated and completely
invisible. It was sheer luck that we rejoined; the brief feeling of isolation
and loss was deep and cold. |
Courtesy: Michael's Burning Man |
|
The Thunderdome is a metal geodesic dome, and the performance was quite
pagan: a dance of twirling fireballs, intricate and hypnotic, gave way
to a surreal and haunting operatic solo. Then the individual combat, suspended
from bungees, began; first a ritual combat, the pair attacking and parrying
with flaming swords. The two combats that followed were between two duelists
selected earlier from the masses, madly swinging padded brickbats for a
time until one was declared victor. All participants -- dancers, singer,
combatants, attendants -- were dressed of the "Death Guild," in black leather
and metal, adorned with savage body paints. |
| As the evening had turned very cold, we warmed for a while
by one of the barrels of fire, then stumbled through the now familiar corridor
of 7:00 to the landmarks of "Tall Burning Man with Fallen Head" and toilets.
There we discovered that, in the freezing rain, Sandy had prepared a wonderful
chicken burrito mess, which we all devoured silently, draped in the tarp
at the foot of our tent, and then dropped off into a full, deep sleep. |