tuesday, morning->noon, BM@camp

the first hours have been amazing: dusty, happy, unexpected, exciting, random.

everyone here is so very something. most people are wonderful, nice, helpful, strange yet friendly.

we were greeted at the gate by a woman wearing nothing but liquid latex, who deflowered us and then made us feel welcome with one of the best hugs i've ever received - an inspired reflection of what i offered that squeezed and snuggled back as long as i sent it. interesting to contemplate what that says about my hug style (too much? just sincere). it buoyed our moods much and sent us happy towards campfoundland. at the entrance we also got a warning from a clown that we were entering a police-patrolled zone and so we should stay legal. especially don't get naked like me, he said. (he was wearing some pants with a hula hoop as a belt, suspenders, floppy shoes, and nothing else. he didn't fill the pants very thoroughly..) we giggled at this, not really sure what to make of it.

we ended up with a delightful group, the nutria hunters republic. their prey/object of happiness is the nutria, a furred, ~2ft long 35 pound Rodent of Unusual Size with nipples on its back and dorito-colored extended beaver teeth. we try to promote nutria awareness, offering visitors a stuffed corpse, a pelt, a skull and a half, and most tastily, nutria jerky.
[editorial note -- my tone changed from "they" to "we" almost immediately. such is the spirit of the playa.]
these people are awesome--so accepting (they didn't know us at all, but a friend of Flex's was a friend of theirs as well), so generous (we pulled up late, and found them around dinnertime; they'd just cooked up a big vegan meal which we were invited to join, and did. setting up our tent and stuff was much more pleasant as a result. i found it incredibly nifty that this could have been anyone--i truly think that pulling up next to almost any camp and asking to join would not have been any kind of problem.

[something i came to realize throughout the course of the week was that everything out on the playa works. people believe in eachother, in what they're doing, and in the power of the community, friendship, and acceptance of people, customs, and beliefs. it is amazing how functional a trust-based relationship can be, and that i've found an entire community that celebrates that success.]

the wind, clouds, and something i can't read have dominated the morning, after an initial rain scare that has so far not manifested. ominous yet promising somehow, my campmate Jason and i agreed.
[editorial note -- our entire stay on the playa was pretty mild in 2003, but the first day didn't even really get hot or terrifically sunny... we coulda been anywhere during autumn, if not for the dust]

note: should bring wasabi next year [strange--i just had that same thought an hour ago as i ate dinner. i had not read this passage since i wrote it nor had i remembered writing that while extremely intoxicated either.]

should listen to some kid 606

how much does water weigh? [the answer turns out to be 8.31 pounds/gallon]

must stretch more. [as i recall i was feeling happily physical at that exact moment and actually sat and stretched for awhile. though it's good life advice as well..]

Wed afternoon, @camp

its hard to write here, too much and too little going on - periods of intense socialization activity, surprise, followed by lulls whose peace balance out the frenzy.

but there are a million distractions every second, every time i sit down to write.

it's white out, at the moment. windy & dusty but not a total white out. just...white. out. side. and hot in the shade, surprisingly. certainly hot in the sun.

this morning: tasty bite for breakfast, throatsinging for dessert, missed attempt at lamplighters bloody mary brunch led to some very pleasant sitar + chai + the morning papers at center camp, then i played a fairly weak scrabble game at the tournament (which sported about 50 people playing scrabble in the middle of a dust/windstorm, getting bonus points for use of S&M terms like "whips" and "bondage"). afterwards, failed to find an aikido class since i was still trying to figure out the layout of things, and witnessed some portapotty-user-ratings by audacity camp (the folks who were camped directly across the street from us). this consisted of the loudest audacious-one standing on top of the row of portapotties and rating people's audible efforts inside, entry, exit, and costumery. the winners tended to be whomever didn't end up feeling insulted at the end of the game-- probably about 50% of the entrants. of course the game was involuntary; you couldn't opt out except by finding different potties (the next nearest were a couple of blocks away).

what makes their camp so audacious? because they are audaciously sitting and doing nothing while called camp audacious. also the same guy who described it that way mooned us and told us that was audacious, then turned around and flashed us, telling us that was "something i am very proud of". looked normal enough to those in audience..

it's entirely clothing optional round these parts. campmate Esther wears mostly lingerie and nothing else and it suits her well.

center camp is a hive of activity, mostly people milling around which is odd in such a coffeelicious zone.

CRAZY BUDDHAFISH TEMPLE, 6pm weds

later met some cool cats from the pacific northwest. walked around center camp, took lampshots, venus de playa, met pete the pilot and his shark volvo - he's owned it 31 years. rode out to the man and walked a line before him dedicating the experience to fun. and now i sit on a portacouch inside this crazy buddhafish temple.

wed 9ish

a hug and a kiss were imparted to me with the message: this is humanity, loving you the way you are.

center camp around noon Thurs

seen tshirt: it's never too late to save the world. smile.

heard poet: the only thing i can catch is unconditional love and inner peace.

it's so timeless here. i don't usually wear a watch, but here...it just doesn't matter what time it is. unless you want to make it to one of the 1001 prescheduled events (throatsinging lessons, brunches, talent shows, yoga classes, dance-a-thons, costume parties are just a few examples). so i haven't been paying a lot of attention to time. and that's been wonderful.

friday afternoon

hanging out in a slight lull in a very active day. theres been so much going on!

a few of the crazy things i've seen/done & remember some of:

critical tits parade: thousands of women celebrating their bodies on bicycles in a parade from the man to a haven. the twist/reason for the name is the level of undress of the participants. as one might guess, topless is expected, but there were a lot of nude bikers as well. there are a lot of pictures of this procession online, but out of respect for the celebration and the participants i refrained from being that guy who stood there drooling and gawking and photographing, and settled for being the guy who stood there drooling and gawking and cheering them on. [i don't think i actually drooled that much..] kinda makes me wish i were a girl, because the spirit and camaraderie of the participants was really great, but as you may expect, pretty girl-centric. there were a couple of guys piloting bikes that sported proud female figureheads on the handlebars, but they were pretty few and far between.

around the corner and down the street from our home base was a camp with a zipline set up--a cable run from the top of a 40' scaffolding down to the ground at about 300 feet distant, and a little handle-on-a-wheel that you could grab to zoom down it. we walked by it for a couple days, thinking "hmm, that looks kind of fun, but we're on a mission to do something else right now." and then one day, it was naked zipline day. they'd put up a huge sign declaring that a new prerequisite for participation was nudity. and that somehow tipped us over the edge; Flex and i stripped down and climbed up and sailed through the air to hooting and hollering (it was pretty frequent all around, but this camp was especially rowdy at the time we visited). liberating, silly, and fun; i'll probably never even have a chance to do anything like it again, but i'm glad i did it when i could.

sitting in our camp watching the world go by, we saw some funny things going down other than the aforementioned potty-style contest. mostly it was just people's strange costumes and conveyances, but occasionally someone made it more personal--there were several creative body-hair artworks, usually centering around the crotch, but one guy who hung around our camp had a heart shaped out of his (remaining) chest hair and the best one i saw was a man with the man logo shaved in his back. i tried to get a picture of him but was sadly not quick enough on the draw to pull it off.

another neighbor was a fabulous young lady who called herself the iron chef and had skills and tools (yes, she carted nearly her entire kitchen out to the playa!) to back up the claim. since we were so nutria-gung-ho, she requested, nay, demanded some nutria meat to turn into some fabulous culinary creation; and she did not disappoint! she kind of played the stone soup angle wherein she collected random available foodstuffs from surrounding camps and then created about 8 extremely tasty dishes and everyone who happened by ended up with a tasty-joyful smile on their face. the iron chef also possessed some of the omnipresent walkie talkies, and so we kept in radio contact through the night of the burn (nutria hunters calling the iron chef!) and made a new friend in Pam.

fire dancing is pretty huge out here; it seems like every other person can spin poi or do something else interesting with flames, be it personal like eating fire, or something more technical, like the many fire-spewing art cars and art installations. flaming hula hoops, flaming staves and edward scissorhands type contraptions were all in evidence most nights, but especially the night of the burn. there were hundreds of fire dancers, spinners, contraption wearers, and even a couple of burning men (people who set themselves completely aflame and staggered around for awhile) to celebrate in a fiery fashion. and during the day, the spinners often practiced with beanbags on cords and the like.
further, there were a lot of tall people out on the playa. people wearing stilts, riding tall bikes and the like. a couple of our campmates were both fiery and tall folk; it's pretty imposing to run into an 8 foot tall flaming edward scissorhands-ette even if she turns out to be your friendly otherwise-naked neighbor smiling and calling your name.

body paint was all over the playa too. which is kind of surprising considering it's tough to get a shower out here (unless you bring an RV), but some folks just stay filthy, others are just blue around the ears for the rest of the week, and still others wimp out like me and take a bus into gerlach for a $5 shower. by this point, i would have paid about $50 for the pleasure of a cold bath, but i think i'll try to make it all the way through next time without a shower. baby wipes for the hands and face keep things from getting too disgusting.

it seems there are zillions of temples out here. i worshiped (s)lightly at a few, sat inside others to catch a nap or a good vibe, and cried when the sadness got to be too much. the temple of joy was a real tearbringer; it was a vast paper mache structure built by David Best who does temples on this scale, with different themes, yearly. if you want more info on him, i highly recommend the film dust devils for insight into the process and emotions, but the thing that really moved me at the time was the lot of emotion poured into the structure by visitors, in the form of writing on the walls. things that brought joy, things that stole joy, and generally memories of people of all flavors. "i'm sorry, mom" was up in a couple of different handwritings & places. i didn't get to stay to see it burn on sunday night, but it was apparently quite impressive which isn't surprising considering the size of the structure and the energy that went into design, building, and finally decoration by participants.

a girl with a "kiss me" name tag accepted a hug and a fake flower from me.

a nun riding a penis bicycle.

one hot afternoon, we reaped the benefits of being camped on a corner--the snowcone family came through and hooked everyone in the general vicinity up with some cool refreshing treats. it was a nuclear family--mom, dad, and probably a 12-year-old son. we talked with the kid for awhile, while his mom and dad cranked out snowcones (it was an old handcranked ice-shaver) flavored with red, blue, or margarita (of course i had to try the blue but i got a shot of margarita in there as well).
our wonderment was that the kid was hanging out with his parents, who were wandering around mostly naked and being silly old hippies. he said he was comfortable with his parents' behavior and was having a blast meeting all the freaks and weirdos and i think may have mentioned something about growing up to be one himself.
strangely that was but one of two roving snowcone stands; Flex and i found another out in the middle of the playa during a minor dust storm; turns out dusty snowcones are still tasty. that's the sort of thing that thousands of people do to create the community that is black rock city, and it's all free, since there is no real commerce allowed once you're in the door. money for nothing, and chicks for free; it's a barter/gift community.

there was a fairly huge party running pretty much 24/7 down the street from us [ok, to be fair, there were hundreds of such parties. this one was just nearby]; not sure what the camp was, but they'd brought a huge bamboo hut with them and setup with some bartenders inside and gave out free drinks all day and all night. it was mostly mohitos; at least that's what i got both times i visited.

one afternoon, we flew to mars through a crazy multistory maze, complete with a room full of fun-balls like they have in mcdonalds playlands. it's amazing how many people can fit in a room the size of a medium closet once you add a few hundred plastic balls. a guy lost his shades in there but all the people i came in with left with all their goods despite a temporary hat-lossage.

it's hard to explain the artistic vibe out here--definitely very healthy, but what really impresses is the scale. a silly example is the massive chandelier but also see dr megavolt, the temple of gravity and some of the crazy random wonderment. there's a lot of do-it-yourself-ism in action; some of the art even forms spontaneously, be it community generated or even accidental. i spent a lot of time just contemplating life out in the open desert by myself, as well as experiencing and trying to understand the mass of art that is simply everywhere out here--in camps, in the middle of nowhere, and in the middle of streets. even on wheels.

climbed the base of the man, and saw our temporary las vegas out here--there were quite a few flashy and flashing lights all night long, including eyes over the playa and a pretty incredible number of fully-functional (blazing crazy lights and eardrum-splitting volume music) nightclubs.

while i was out there, i forgot to think about small versus big, but did think about me versus the playa (it was really more symbiotic than that, but the desert itself provided just a blank slate--it was the community that created an entire culture out there) and me versus a crowd of thousands. [turns out that everyone pretty much worked together.] i experienced about 2 spots of unhappiness total, and only one was directed at me. even problems were taken as opportunites to figure out a solution using the limited resources we had on hand--which turned out to be quite copious once everyone pooled resources (for instance, our camp has a generator, but was running short on plugs til i showed up with a surge strip. my dustbuster was also a pretty major hit for cleaning out tents and the canned air i'd been inspired to bring did a good bit of de-dusting the DJ setup that we had running at times.)

drank red bull and vodka, drank a lot of coffee.

got squirted with random liquids by random people. that was another theme--moisture in the desert. from snowcones to mojitos to jonestown koolaid (there was an information table with pictures and a recording of some of the speeches from the last day of the jonestown community, and a girl serving "special" koolaid, which turned out to be vodka-spiked), lots of stuff went down my gullet, but equally as much was squirted on my face, arms, and other exposed fleshy bits as dress allowed by many passersby. lots of them had squirtguns containing liquids potable and non. and then there were the water trucks--for damping down the roads to help lessen the dust, but also for spraying anyone who wanted to run along behind them and get a free quasishower.

saw a zillion miscellaneous and uncategorizable sights.

said hi to many folks.

peed clear.

spent some time trying to figure out what i'm about, trying to ignore some of the distractions that always seem to get in the way of deeper thinking for me. didn't really come to any conclusions, but sat and pondered a lot. and i always seem to come around to the conclusion that i hobble myself--if i just want badly enough to do a thing, then i do.
sometimes though it seems that one needs to peel off the distractions like onion layers to get down to the meat of the matter.

saw many girls and boys enjoying being naughty.

dreamed of jeannie.

many examples of potty art and poetry.

living across from the urinals has been interesting--providers of quick relief, and leaving us in the lee of the wind, but the camp pretty well evacuates when the truck comes by to empty them, since we are downwind. all in all, the potties were amazingly clean (in contrast to single-use stops at most venues that you leave at the end of the day, you also have to use these the next day, and the day after, and...) for the entirety of the event.

i was sad to find the internet access flaky at best--i could get a connection up but then usually timed out during early usage. so i just skipped the net for the duration and i think that was a good purge--even when i'm on vacation i tend to find computers to use and end up geeking out instead of participating; which is fine, but this festival is all about participation!

now for more fun.

saturday morning

slow waking is the habit here as the excesses of the night before both in intoxication, dehydration, and sleep depreivation have all ravaged the will of its desires for vibrance, but the clear desert air is surprisingly cool and even revitalizing as long as the wind keeps up. and the sounds of the less damaged nearby denizens revving up helps pull one over the hump. and, if you're not up by 8 or so you get absolutely fried if you're still in your non-shaded tent. shade! my kingdom for some shade!

last night was a whirlwind of sound and color.

saw a sort of rock concert by lost at last - crazy band with chanting & trippy visuals. pretty strange to go to a concert with 4000 people but no tickets or bouncers or bars, out in the middle of nowhere. quite a decent projection system set up to do the visuals behind and beside the band.

later, a lowtech fantastic light show: diffractive glasses plus a tunnel of xmas lights and space music piped in.

at some point the iron chef wandered over with a handful of kazoos and we made a temporary morning kazoo orchestra.

discovered that some of our campmates have a TV/VCR in their tent, and sure enough esther produced a video demonstrating real nutrias. despite having eaten them and played with the taxidermified nutria + skull + fur that was on hand, i was still a little skeptical of nutria actually existing before i saw the informative video. it's a strange world; strange but true.

in the middle of the night, took a ride on a 6ft tall bed across and around the playa; i could have sworn i heard the driver say that it was actually rolls-royce powered underneath! it carried about 15 people around for awhile and it's fun to be in bed with 15 cool people, it turns out.

at one streetcorner, found and played with a huge lite brite.

around the corner from us was a strange contraption that was being built for most of the week. last night, it was unveiled and many of us spent some time in the infinity box. it was a cube that could contain a person, and was completely mirrored and lit and shut--you stayed inside while it bounced gently (it was affixed to a scaffolding with mostly bungee cords) and the lights flashed. it was thoroughly strange and wonderful to experience it and i found it awesome that someone built it just for playa usage.

sent some postcards via the official postoffice out here (USPS liaison) and now am sitting for this journal session in front of a fabulous community blacklight art project.

earlier today played a giant sized harp with my feet.

still watching the world go by has been an intense experience. i should definitely go out and experience more of it personally & actively next time.

sunday center camp 

hope i can kick the morning coffee habit when i get back to austin... [editorial note: turned out to be no problem]

the man burned last night while we hooted drummed and hollered. still seemed a bit anticlimactic tho the flaming itself was pretty impressive. the fire vortices, flowing smoke-flames, fire dancer intro, and crowd spirit after the burn was intense.

most people burned something personal that they had written, a kind of letting go ritual of cleansing, but that was what this whole journey has been for me. the time away from my known world out in this wide world, full of no impetus to ---- [transmission ends]

[i recall a strangely peaceful burn-setting--people sitting down around a safety-patrolled perimeter, chatting and anticipating, contemplating and intoxicating, and a giddy anticipation. i recall the heat of the flames reaching us from hundreds of feet away, and the crowd cheering and dancing as the man was engulfed and collapsed. and finally an almost worshipful silence the next day, rooting among the ashes and remembering how fleeting so many of the meaningful things in life can be, and figuring out how to keep some of that spirit within oneself is a worthwhile challenge.]

a city of 30000 dissipates and life goes on.
the city being dismantled is a sad process, less naked smiling folk and more serious cranky people - kind of like morning elsewhere only this is the end of an era (in my life) since this has been such an intense time.

the music seemed to move over and thru me last night, an aural / auditory vortex.

must remember to give all traveled goods a "dust quarantine" out in the garage. [yeah, like i did that =)].