Burning Man 2006
The Future:
Hope and Fear
So there I was. A year to the day marking the Beginning of my journey, and I had made it inside the gates of Black Rock City, to participate in the worlds’ largest psychedelic art celebration. This is what I had dreamed of for so long; now my dreams were being made manifest.
It is especially difficult to describe Burning Man to one who hasn’t been there, who hasn’t breathed in the lung-fills of playa dust, soaking in the scorching days and freezing nights and all the while craving more. Often, Burning Man is described as a psychedelic Disney World for adults, which for brevity’s sake is as accurate analogy as there can be to that amusement park (without the corporate Mice), for your spirit buys the ticket, and takes the ride with all the twists turns, thrills, chills, dizzying ascents and death-defying plunges a good rollercoaster ride will give you. I like to say while you are out exploring and taking in the playa with all it has to offer, you may think you have just seen, and felt, and interacted with the craziest wild thing that shakes and alters your perception and consciousness, but wait 15 minutes and it will be topped; repeat every quarter hour for a week.
No combination of words and pictures will ever come close to the authentic experience of being there, in that time in space of the universe, touching something unique in every direction.
I'll give it a shot all the same...
To my mind, this photo captures some of the sheer randomness... The funky people in body suits, obviously, but the dude photgraphing them in a diaper? WTF! And the hummer 'Dummer' shirt nicely displays the satiric art commentary in counter-culture which is infused in the spirit of Black Rock City.
I could post thousands of photos... and will certainly put up a few up here, but I'll put forth in words a couple of key scenes that was my adventure there.
Some camps brings you make in time with a vibe that harkens back to the Rites of Eleusis, and the Eleusinian Mysteries, with camps like the Temple of Entheon.
Here you could mingle with psychedelic philosophers, occultists, visionary artists, the dreamers.
I spend a lot of time here.
And got to meet Alex Grey again. It’s kind of weird how he pops up at random moments in my travels, but that is another story…
There is no money exchanged on the playa: a tradition of Burning Man. Instead, there is a Gift economy that flows through the streets of Black Rock City. As much as radical self-reliance is a virtue espoused, it is the generosity conceptualization of free gifts that infuse the spirit of radical community and friendship building. On one of my many wanderings along the Esplanade, I saw a man dressed in black carrying a sword in scabbard in his hand. It is funny how of the multitudes of people and scenarios in every direction are waiting to draw you in to interaction, you can feel a certain buzz or vibration around certain events that seems to seek you out personally for participation. So I approached this stranger and asked him if that sword was real. He grinned, nodded, and said yes, would I like to see it. Sure, I unsheathed it, and it was a straight-edged katana, sharpened, with good balance.
Using my limited experience in swordsmanship, I posed in a few kendo positions, while testing the weapon’s weight. The stranger in black smiled when I attempted to hand the weapon back to him, and said, “It’s yours.” My face broke into my trademark ear to ear grin. I bowed, thanked him, and saluted. I took a moment to marvel in my fortune: I finally had a sword! When I looked back again, the stranger had completely disappeared into the dust. Strange, powerful, beautiful magic flows at Burning Man.
The next morning, I strapped on my geta and headed out for another venture. I biked through the streets (after securing a gifted pancake breakfast… anything to break the monotony of peanut butter and tuna sandwiches) to attend another workshop at the HeeBee GeeBee’s Healer’s Camp, entitled The Hero’s Journey. As I was speeding along the Esplanade, I heard someone stationary cry out, “Peppers! Hot Peppers!”
Intrigued, I cut a fierce U-Turn and pulled up to a mid twenties Asian-American dude attired in desert playa-wear, with an assortment of jars containing peppers in a trolley attached to his bike. “Hot pepper?” he inquired as I approached. Sure, I replied, thanking him. I was shaking off morning bleariness, and a good spicy kick would be good for me and help clear my sinuses.
I took a couple of jalapeños, chewing them slowly as to get the full effect of the released capsaicin. Quite hot, but I was familiar to things spicy. “Good,” I said, and in an inspired whim, I asked, “Do you have any habaneros?”
“Yeah…” he responded cautiously, and rightly so, for what I had requested was one of the world’s spiciest peppers; not quite at the level of Guatamalean Insanity Peppers, but just a couple of notches beneath. He handed me a jar that was full of them with an I-hope-you-know-what-you-are-doing look. I took one and casually tossed it in my mouth; chewed, swallowed. The heat was substantial; I clenched my jaw as my eyes teared up, and my nasal cavities relinquished what mucus was left in them.
Looking back at what happened next, I’m at a loss to properly ascertain any motives in my next action. It was one of those moments where if you had given any time to second-guessing, you wouldn’t have acted at all.
The impulse struck me; I scooped up a double fisted handful of habenros, crammed the wad of peppers into my mouth, chewed, and swallowed.
The pain’s intensity was as great as its immediacy, instantaneous and agonizing. It felt as if the blazing hot sun hanging over the playa had magnified all of its power into a beam of magnificent force that concentrated laser-like, blasting my mouth and throat; an initial explosion that catalyzed a chain reaction of equally intense surges of fiery energy that lanced like lightning, piercing and igniting every neuron in my brain and in turn my being with its electric storm of anguish. The sensation that quickly followed was that of having my physical body vaporized by a nuclear blast; the power searing and imprinting my shadow on the sand.
My reaction was not one of screaming, clawing and clutching in panic, but one of awestruck amazement. I had never felt anything quite like this before, and as one who has made something of a career in testing the edges and beyond of many of life’s boundaries, I, in a strange way, felt overwhelming gratitude that the universe still had some enormous surprises. With my arms out for balance, I stood my ground, motionless like a statue, my will greater than the pain or panic, and in a state of openness that did not hide or shirk from the experience, but accepted this new gnosis into my spirit with the greatest love.
I could faintly hear the pepper vendor calling with concern if I was okay through a veil of space and time that seemed eons away, though he stood right next to me. Nowhere near a state where I could respond vocally, from my statuesque state I gave a thumbs up, then extended my index finger indicating that I was going to need a minute. “Puke if you have to,” he helpfully suggested, to which I slightly shook my head. “Dude. Hardcore. That’s something a biker would do.”
As I was coming to, I noticed a small crowd had gathered, as the sight of someone standing posed in the middle of the main street with his hands out was apparently worth stopping to investigate. I like to think those hooked up and in to extra sensory perception noticed the tremendous amount of energy being channeled into my personage. The pepper vendor informed those who stopped that I had consumed a gianormus amount of habeneros. Some laughed incredulously and biked away, others waited, seeing what would happen next. What were they expecting, a speech? In retrospect, maybe… Upon coming more back to… reality? like stepping from one dream into another, I noticed myself in a social space I didn’t quite recognize, “What am I doing in the desert? Who are these people?” I did a hasty systems check: who I was, where I was, what had happened, and when all of these questions got a passing grade (with flying, swirling, colors) I looked to my audience and exclaimed, “Ah! What a rush!” and with that I mounted my bike and pedaled to my previously scheduled appointment.
My head was in the clouds; I was floating above myself out of body as I viewed myself biking hundreds of feet below. As the endorphins flooded my system, the agony transmutated into heavenly ecstasy. A beautified peaceful calm was awash over my being, and around me in a large bubble of environment was affected with lucid transcendence. While aglow with this state of pure being, I pulled into the Healer’s camp to participate in the workshop that was titled: A Hero’s Journey.
After removing my geta, I entered the tent, and saw a couple dozen people waiting for the event to begin. A member of the camp said that the speaker was late in arriving, so in the meantime we should break up into smaller groups and discuss the topic amongst ourselves until the facilitator showed up.
I introduced myself to the several people in the group, my face reflecting bliss with a calm Buddha-like smile. While in turn each chatted a bit about what ‘Hero’ meant to them, I felt the flow of the greater context of the term. In my oration, which was unplanned but inspired, I spoke of Heroes throughout history and myth, and how these stories of ordeals, adventures, and odysseys’ primary purpose was to serve as an example in out own lives; when faced with a difficult challenge or set of circumstances, we could draw upon the past and summon the courage of our ancestors, and how they overcame so that we could be. The Heroes were the members of the tribe or community who would venture into the unknown, or danger, to protect, to bring new knowledge, to evolve.
We then palavered on Heroes in the modern context in the age of technology and media, I spoke of the glamour and glammer of cinema and television in taking the spotlight of recognition of local heroes, and in this time of global connectivity, attention is being drawn from neighborhood communities. I gave a brief account of my attempt to fuse travel, animation, and adventure in modernity, of my quest to find an accepting psychedelic society, in a journey that had taken me in the past year from Maine to British Columbia, to California, to Hawaii, and now, to Burning Man. With brevity and without boast, but from the heart, I spoke of the courage and willpower I had garnered over the past year to travel alone to unknown locations, and try to make a living there, while exploring and absorbing new cultures, with the obstacles of impoverished finances.
I had not planned such eloquence in speech; with my state of heightened consciousness I felt the words flow unabated, unhindered by my usual insecurities and shyness when modestly telling of my quest; I spoke with an empowered, unabashed veracity.
The woman who had set us into smaller groups addressed the collective again. She suggested we all might as well go, as it looked as though the lead speaker wasn’t going to show up after all. A fellow Burner who was in the smaller group with me said, “I think the leader was here all along, in disguise,” while looking at me. I was touched. It’s nice to be recognized in a way.
I left the camp on the bike in search for new adventure. The cloud I had been floating on for the past hour then suddenly transformed. Without warning, a thunderbolt pole-axed me through the center, mid-pedal. The fire of the habeneros reignited as they in the course of digestion, reached my stomach with renewed ferocity. How the shock didn’t send me sprawling over the handlebars, I’ll never know. As spots fogged my vision, I started to black out. I truly felt someone was going to have to peel my carcass off the playa, and I would wake up in an ambulance. As my peripheral sight faded into a tunnel, I looked up and saw the posted sign that saved me: “Medic One Block Ahead.” Summoning up what will and wind I had left in my reservoir, I put my geta to the pedal and rode further: “I must make it!”
Under the sign of the red cross; I saw a few cots set up, in a field hospital style. With my last bit of strength, I stumbled and collapsed on one, as medics came rushing over.
I mumbled out my plight of hot pepper overdose, yet I was already feeling significantly better laying horizontal. A few antacids later, I was coming to, and told the two women medics so. They had seen all kinds of maladies in Black Rock City; sunburns, dehydration; another medic was just then talking down a Burner who was ODing on acid and who knows what else, but apparently I was the first habanero case. “We’re going to have to call you Pepper-Boy!” she laughed.
“Revise the ‘boy’ part,” I corrected, smiling. I decided then I didn’t want to feel the joys of digesting these peppers further; the sensation of magma churning and burning slowly through yards of intestine was not one I was looking forward to. I headed to the nearest porta-potty, and drawing upon experience of a past personal history rich with ingesting all kinds of exotic plants and fungi, some of which would make a billy-goat puke (even Ergoat), I used a handy yet crude method in which I jammed my fingers down my throat and purged the remainder of half-digested peppers out of my system. Much better!
I then observed my feet, now unshod, and saw that my modified geta did quite a number on them. They weren’t designed for comfort. I had blisters on blisters, cuts, sores, and open wounds on my feet from days of wear and tear. Worse still was the heavy alkaline content of the playa dust that caked into the wounds, further scorching them. Since I was already at the medics’ I asked the second female attendant if there was anything she could please do about my feet.
She proceeded to tap into a realm of healing I had never before known in another. I have lived without health care my entire life due to poverty and politics, but what limited care I had received from doctors was pretty cut and dry treatment. She was far superior in her genuine care, for in her I could sense healing wasn’t a job, but a skilled passion. She humbly knelt before me, cleaning my wounds, and bathed my feet in a vinegar foot bath to neutralize the alkaline. I felt a very spiritual connection in this service: I would do the same for her. It was though she could empathically feel my suffering, and she summoned her energies to dispel my pain, and renew my vitality. I was blown away and humbled. What else could I do but put my hands together, “Namaste,” but with no words; an eye to eye connection that said I recognize the divine in you, which was reciprocated.
I rode off again on my bike. Just another morning in Black Rock City.
Center Camp
The THUNDERDOME were you could get yer intergalactic gladiatorial pitfighting skillz on...
