"So much of what you project is what will ultimately come back to you". This is a saying that has rung true for me in so many instances- from friends, to relationships, to jobs. At Burning Man, a festival whose core philosophy is participation as opposed to passivity, what you desire will one way or another find its way to you.
Cynics, hush- you are about to hear about something wonderful.
Relatively young, not so innocent, naive but open-minded, Kathy and I arrived in the chilly desert night with a brand-new tent and no idea how to set it up. After being welcomed at the gate by a woman called "Mighty" ("Welcome home!" she says, hugging us) and being made to roll in the dust as part of our desert initiation, it was time to conquer the anxiety-inducing tent pitching (for two relative novices). Headlights trained on our dusty camping spot at the edge of Black Rock City, in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, Kathy and I opened the foreboding object.4 From step 1 ("remove packaging; unfold tent") to step 7 ("tie rainflap onto pole "a" while tying other jargon-word piece of equipment onto impossible-to-find hook"), we had an accelerated lesson in setting it up in the second-harshest conditions (the worst being rain).
Twelve hours, 539km, one Wal-Mart and countless songs on the iPod had summoned up the need for a stiff one, so we cracked open our litre of vodka and downed a quick few, before venturing down 8 o'clock street and into a new definition of the word "participation". In those first few hours on this dusty desert plateau, whose lights and reach seemed endless and whose beyond is known locally as "infinity", both our perceptions were and are still skewed. There are the very first participants we see, beating what is still in our minds, a dead horse, but we know this could not be possible. There is the mutant vehicle, illuminated and blaring trance music, manned by an inebriated girl screaming "Forward hoooooo!" There is the stripper stage, where I discovered my hitherto undiscovered talent for pole dancing. There is Kathy, frozen in ecstasy for two hours, head on an Italian's shoulder, and coming to in the middle of the road at sunrise.
Despite being the most chronologically distant, these memories are the most impressive.
NEXT BLOG:
A day in the life of a "burner" (one who attends Burning Man)
Cynics, hush- you are about to hear about something wonderful.
Relatively young, not so innocent, naive but open-minded, Kathy and I arrived in the chilly desert night with a brand-new tent and no idea how to set it up. After being welcomed at the gate by a woman called "Mighty" ("Welcome home!" she says, hugging us) and being made to roll in the dust as part of our desert initiation, it was time to conquer the anxiety-inducing tent pitching (for two relative novices). Headlights trained on our dusty camping spot at the edge of Black Rock City, in Black Rock Desert, Nevada, Kathy and I opened the foreboding object.4 From step 1 ("remove packaging; unfold tent") to step 7 ("tie rainflap onto pole "a" while tying other jargon-word piece of equipment onto impossible-to-find hook"), we had an accelerated lesson in setting it up in the second-harshest conditions (the worst being rain).
Twelve hours, 539km, one Wal-Mart and countless songs on the iPod had summoned up the need for a stiff one, so we cracked open our litre of vodka and downed a quick few, before venturing down 8 o'clock street and into a new definition of the word "participation". In those first few hours on this dusty desert plateau, whose lights and reach seemed endless and whose beyond is known locally as "infinity", both our perceptions were and are still skewed. There are the very first participants we see, beating what is still in our minds, a dead horse, but we know this could not be possible. There is the mutant vehicle, illuminated and blaring trance music, manned by an inebriated girl screaming "Forward hoooooo!" There is the stripper stage, where I discovered my hitherto undiscovered talent for pole dancing. There is Kathy, frozen in ecstasy for two hours, head on an Italian's shoulder, and coming to in the middle of the road at sunrise.
Despite being the most chronologically distant, these memories are the most impressive.
NEXT BLOG:
A day in the life of a "burner" (one who attends Burning Man)
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