Burning Man: The Man Burns

I stood, leaning forward over the open hole of the porta-potty toilet. Someone had ripped the lid off the seat, which I thought was kind of funny as I retched and tried to hurl. But nothing came up and I nearly choked instead.
This was a battle between me and my body: I knew what I needed to do, but something inside me was not co-operating. Something inside me did not want to come out.

I closed my eyes and focused on the spinning sensation which overwhelmed by brain. I was really, really, really high.

And I really needed to vomit.

But even with my eyes closed, focusing on the pain, I couldn't do it. This ugliness inside me wanted to hold on for a moment longer and I suddenly felt angry at it. I wanted it out so bad that I felt myself shaking.

So I rocked my head back and forth quite violently, making myself feel affectively sicker. I tried again to throw up, but only managed to make a hideous choking sound, which drew the attention of someone in the stall next to me.

“Y’okay?” they asked.

“Never been better,” I shot back sarcastically, then closed my eyes and shook my head around again.

This time, as I leaned over the bowl, I thought about things that made me feel sick: Roller-coasters that spin, cheddar cheese, peanuts, Dani—

And I finally hurled.

Several times.

When I was done, my headlamp caught the color of my vomit and I recoiled, nearly falling backward – it wasn’t the color of my food as I’d expected. It was instead the color of Grizzly Bear’s personality.

As a synesthete, it’s hard to describe the emotion I feel when I see a color in “real life” that I see for a number, letter, or person I usually see only in my head. I once saw the color of my own cartilage and it was the color of my 2s. So even though I was a bloody mess, I pointed it out to the doc, who probably thought I was crazy.

Anyhow, seeing Grizzly Bear’s personality color escape from my body in that manner made me feel shocked, amazed, and totally relieved.

It was over.
I could move on now.

I had literally expelled him from my life in the most perfect, fitting way imaginable: Staring into a disgusting porta-potty on the Playa at Burning Man, the very night they had set the Man on fire.

This is what the veteran Burners call “Playa Magic”. It’s the crazy, divine co-incidences that leaves us thinking and questioning all we know about ourselves, our lives, and our spirituality.

Such is the way of Burning Man.

THE RED UFO AT BURNING MAN

We'd all expressed our pains, and fears, and joys on the walls of the great white structure. I had written about my car crash and the person who saved my life, then betrayed me. I doubt I will ever talk to him again at this point. I literally expelled him from of my system and I'm not going back (more on this story later).

For many people, the Temple Burn was something of a melancholy, contemplative moment, meant to be a time of meditation and reflection. For this reason, my group and I chose to watch the burn from a distance, and I'm glad we did. Not only did it provide a better view of the event, it also helped us realize how HUGE the resulting flames were.

And it also gave us a better view of the mysterious red light that crossed the sky that night...

I'm sure that hundreds of people saw it. I myself saw it and took a few images of it (coming soon). It was nothing more than a single bright light moving across the sky, which eventually stopped and sat for 15 minutes to the right of the temple. After the 15 minute-pause, it did something I've never seen an aircraft do before: It dropped another smaller red light out of from under it, which flashed on and off until it reached the horizon, at which point, it went out.

Thereafter, the red craft that dropped the light began to move slowly toward the temple, and then suddenly zoomed off and disappeared into the sky.

Now, I have seen some strange things in my life. But I'd never seen anything like that. I'd seen other UFOs, however, and there were some similarities that I was sure to note. Firstly was the manner by which it "took off" into the night - I'd seen a white ball of light in the sky do this exact move nearly two years prior while camping on a private island near the Oregon Coast. At another time, also in Oregon, I have seen another white craft zig-zag over a short distance like the red craft did over BRC. It also pulsed like the red UFO, and didn't appear to be very high up.

Ironically, I'd had a few dreams about UFOs and extraterrestrial life earlier that very week, whereas I normally don't dedicate much time to thinking about such things (my interest, after all, is with the living creatures of earth). But something about that red light did seem very intriguing to me and I'd like to know more about it.

In short, if anyone knows anything about this event, I'd love to hear from you. There must have been hundreds of witnesses and I've heard from some that they took video of it (though I have yet to see it myself).

The following are images of the craft which I took with my Canon EOS 7D DSLR camera, using an 18-55mm lens. I set the camera on the solid Playa ground to ensure that the shots I got were as clear as could be given the low lighting. I wish with all my heart that I’d had my 300mm and a tripod on me, but alas, I did not. I heard from another photographer, though, that he did, and he planned to post the images online (again, I have yet to see these).

This photo is a zoomed in view of the red light before it dropped its second light. You can see that it seems to have a ring of yellow around it, followed by a halo-like aura of more red. The light was flashing for a while, so this may just be a part of the flash, yet it appears in my other images of the light as well, leading me to believe that it’s actually something in the nature of the craft. Again, though, I’m not sure. I wish that I had a bigger lens for this.

And this is where things got interesting: You can see from this series of shots that the red UFO has now dropped a smaller red light toward the earth. This flashed on and off (all images here show the light while on) and then disappeared when it reached the horizon about 15 to 20 seconds later. My boyfriend told me that this 15-to-20-second drop time means that the original red craft was only about a mile high in the sky, which is quite close indeed, raising my suspicion that this was some kind of hoax.

This next image was taken with a 20-second exposure. The close up in the corner was sharpened to show detail, but is, like the rest of the photos, completely unedited aside from cropping and the signature included for copyright purposes. 

Again, I MUST re-iterate that I simply have NO idea what this thing is. I'm not trying to claim that it's an extraterrestrial spacecraft, nor am I taking the firm stance that it's a hoax. I'm simply saying that I don't know what is, and I think it's a very interesting experience which I'm glad to have had. Once more, if you know anything more about it, please feel free to share! I'd love to hear what you have to say. 

Burning Man: The Temple at Sunset

Dancing Wolf was full of light, and joy, and secret pain. The wolf skin headdress he wore was antique, but I could tell that he had taken immensely good care of it. Wolf, he said, was an animal he held a deep connection with.

We talked about totem animals, the powers which draw people together, and the passages we experience as spiritual being from one stage of existence to the next.

These are things I do not normally talk about. Having once lived in a religiously-oppressive country, going to a Christian school which taught me that John Lennon and Frank Sinatra were advocates of Satan, and attending a church lead by a minister who stole money from the congregation, I naturally find it hard to speak openly about my spiritual beliefs.

Yet the fact that Dancing Wolf was wearing a wolf skin headdress and I was wearing a cougar skin headdress probably had something to do with the sense of ease I felt around him. We talked of Shamanism, and the power of music and dreams.

He walked back to camp with me, and along the way, we curiously asked a few passersby what their totem animals were. We were oddly pleased to find that most people openly shared theirs with us, and that the rest were simply curious to know what a totem animal was to begin with. There was no ridicule, no resistance, and no awkwardness about it. Naturally, the couple with animal skins on their heads would be the ones to ask such questions.

A few days later, I ran into Dancing Wolf again, this time accompanied by a pretty little lady called Singing Bird. I joined them as they walked to the Temple with a couple of drums, a watermelon, and the knife clipped to my wolverine tail keychain.

At the Temple, I cut up the watermelon into small pieces. We ate about half of it between the three of us, and then handed out the rest to the people meditating and praying within the main tower, beneath the gongs and bells which rang and chimed with the help of automated mallets and drumsticks. Once all the watermelon had been handed out, the three of us sat down in the center of the open-aired room and Dancing Wolf began to play his drum as Singing Bird and I set up a small alter of crystals and feathers and white sage.

Then, we began to sing.

And pretty soon, a few others within the temple joined in. It was haunting and harmonious, and Dancing Wolf's drumbeat was loud and perfectly clear in the still Playa air. The song changed and evolved as we continued, until we were howling and chanting and clapping out hands in time to the music, and many others from the Temple had joined us. One man was even playing violin.

I have no idea how to explain it. The sounds which came from my mouth during the chants and humming were wavering and powerful unlike any other time I've sang. Not even being on stage has drawn such sounds from me and it was beautiful. I felt beautiful. And when our song ended, many people came up to the three of us and touched our shoulders and thanked us.

I had been a part of something which had drawn tears to others' eyes. I had been a part of the magic that had drawn me to Burning Man in the first place. But the magic didn't end there.

Later on, as Dancing Wolf, Singing Bird, and I were walking across the Playa in search of food, Dancing Wolf mentioned that he was craving sushi. "Try to focus on finding sushi. Maybe the Playa will manifest some for us!" he joked.

But as we neared the esplanade, he spotted something on the ground in a little green package, still sealed and undamaged....

It was a box of dried and salted seaweed used for wrapping sushi rolls.

We all smiled and shared it amongst ourselves before parting ways. I didn't see Dancing Wolf or Singing Bird again, but they certainly left a mark on me that I hope will not soon fade.

Burning Man: The Coyote Shaman

It was after they'd burned the Temple. I could feel the heat from the flames as we approached. It was uncanny. People were crying, cheering, and laughing as they moved around the temple in a massive counter-clockwise circle, watching their pains and fear disintegrate into the Playa. They seemed more dressed up than they were for the Man Burn, and indeed, Jake and I had both donned white tribal face paint and I was wearing Ashland the cougar on my head.

Everyone seemed to be in a daze. Jake and I were walking around the flaming remains of the structure in a quite train with the rest of the crowd, half-lit by the flames which gave off such an intense heat that I had to shield my face with my camera and look through the viewfinder in order to walk so close. I was in a state of split consciousness: Part of my brain was dedicated to focusing on the pain I had just shed during the Burn, and part of my brain was focused on photography. It was overwhelming.

Then, suddenly, amid all the confusion and noise, I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned to find a beautiful young man standing there with a lovely coyote draped across his head. I automatically reached out a hand and rested it between the coyote's ears.

He lifted his hand and did the same for my mountain lion headdress. And we stood there for a moment in a state of Complete Understanding. I felt as though everything stopped then; the flames, the crowd, and even my lungs had stopped moving.

But even in that profound moment, reality was too hard to ignore: The crowd was pushing us forward, so it had to end. I asked to take the Coyote Man's photo, and he nodded, though didn't speak. I stood back and fired a few shots. 

Looking at them now makes me wish I were still there. I wish I could have talked to this guy more in-depth. We had an odd moment of understanding in the middle of the Playa that I cannot explain because I have never experienced anything like it before nor since. It’s hard, after all, to understand the complexities of the human mind until you’ve been to an event like Burning Man.

BURNING MAN: Rights of Passage

They're crunching the numbers. Some said that 30,000 people swarmed the desert that is Black Rock City, but I heard from some of the 'officials' that nearly 100,000 showed up.

Rights of Passage marked the first year that Burning Man tickets completely sold out, and the wait in line to enter the Playa was over 4 hours long.

The bus in front with "ON TO BURN NOW" is the one that I arrived in, but this photo was taken from their sister bus, "Swamp Thing". We were drinking and getting high before we even reached the gate, and I cannot describe in words how happy I felt to be there, even though we'd arrived at 4:00 in the morning and I'd had virtually no sleep through the night.

The wait didn't bother me; it was like one big party - just another part of the event, which we were all glad to be a part of.

At the final barricade before entering Black Rock City, we were stopped by two old men, buck naked aside from the hats on their heads and bandannas around their necks. They pulled all us so-called "virgins" off the bus, hugged us in their nude glory, and then had us strip down to our undergarments and roll around in the Playa dust - this was initiation.

Thereafter, we were handed a huge metal mallet and instructed to strike a massive metal gong, at which time we shouter aloud, "I'M NO LONGER A VIRGIN!"

The naked man closest to me grabbed my bare shoulder and told me, "Welcome to Black Rock City. You can do anything you want here." And I felt free.

Burning Man is magic. It is a social experiment gone horribly, horribly right. It is ANARCHY, and perfection, and a restoration of one's faith in humanity. There is no money, no computers, no cell phones, and yet, everyone is in a state of week-long bliss. It changed my life.