Burn baby burn

From morning yoga on the desert plains, to the "Female ejaculation seminar" featured in the week's schedule of events, to "socially appropriate public menstruation day" ('let the rivers of red run free'), the opportunity for participation at Burning Man is endless.
At first mention, many assume Burning Man is like any other "festival"- every event and performance carefully orchestrated and executed to adhere to a schedule. You are the "spectator"; the others, the "performers". You observe, perhaps coolly, possibly halfheartedly, maybe enthusiastically, one show after another, your desire to participate growing as the crowd loosens up. You are an attendee, but the performers are carrying the show.
At Burning Man, there are no attendees. On this unearthly landscape, you create your interactions. You are the performer and the attendee. Once you accept that there is no careful execution of events, no staged performances -or even a sense of conventional time- you will realise that anything can happen. And it does.

We told our camp neighbour Geoff we were going in search of coffee and would be back in half an hour. We should have known. I don't think at this time we'd really realised the spirit of the playa. Anything can happen. My orienteering skills let me down, and I couldn't find the cafe whose location "I thought I knew" (its name was Scarbutts: you got a spanking every time you ordered a coffee).
Not surprisingly, we stumbled across a no-name coffee stall managed by a kindly west coast stereotype called Jeremy, all long haired, open-hearted and laid-back, and who seemed to have a PhD on the benefits of the "Burn" brand coffee maker. A girl walked past, not quite yet in the "morning after the night before stage", but well on her way- fluorescent dreads and fishnets a go-go. "Oooh, coffee's good" she says in wonder, eyes like dinner plates. She didn't stop for any herself. A muscled dreamer called Forest arrives, taking a break from "writing the story of life" on the platform which overlooks the coffee stall. He's an illustrator of children's books, but has been asked by his camp to etch the story of our existence onto the floor as part of an art installation. He asks us to join his camp, but we decide to stay in the suburbs with our liberal but stable middle-aged threesome neighbours, Geoff, Eric and Ray. We're kind of curious about who fits in where in that set-up.
It was midday and the desert sun had risen and was at it most menacing. We took shelter in centre camp, a large convivial space loaded with performance space, jugglers and acrobats, artwork, and cushions. It is also home to the only place in Black Rock City (BRC) which accepts hard currency as payment : the cafe.
As an atonement for a small violation of a BRC rule (never let anything hit the ground), we pledge to give back and volunteer that evening at the cafe.
Cycling back, I get heckled by an oversized black man (woman?) with a megaphone to give her (him?) a full moon. I do, and I'm told "it's a great bootie to boot".
We encounter a kissing booth, where my companion kisses a high-cheekboned and full-lipped man under a giant pair of wooden ones.
Meals aren't the focus of our experience, but our stomachs have risen with the sun and at the corner of 7.30 and Hanoi streets, French toast is being served on a silver tray. We line up like crazily dressed POWs for delicious cooked sweetness. Warm oatmeal follows, but true satisfaction comes in the form of a shower. We hear the what will soon become familiar spraying sound of the water truck, of the stream of water hitting the parched road. BRC government uses it as a way of keeping the dust moist, thus lessening the intensity of duststorms. A common practise in the city with no running water is to run behind the truck (clothing optional) and wash the dust, sand, sweat and bodily fluids off. The real challenge is not keeping up with the truck itself (which moves at about 15 km/h, but not slipping in the path of wet clay left in the truck's wake. The question we never want to know the answer to is: where does that water come from?