Burning Man

[mnaz]

It can't possibly be thirty miles off, that naked ridge across the playa, the expanding part, dancing at its base. Hell, I could walk there and back in an afternoon. There's nothing in the way except thin-skinned powder sky, set to explode. I can't say just how or why I'm here, aside from crude instinct. I roll out of Delta, Utah, past a dust farm or two, westward into mystic overflow, on such a straightaway as you've never seen, and like a demon, a Utah state trooper materializes out of the arid sea and poetic mist with a radar gun, shot across my bow-- 72 miles per hour. He spins a heated U turn in my rear-view on that fine stretch of two lane portal. I've been issued a warning.

Naturally I vow never to set foot in Utah again. In Nevada the law is the law, though tempered by greater laws-- such as proportionality. One cannot pin down and warn the expanding playa. The law shall exhale in its presence. It's impossible to miss its morning gift-- joyous, elevated light and divergence, moved and removed-- the stuff of religion. It might be in the parched, rare air that never paces itself-- dead silent pockets and erratic puffs and bursts across miles of salt bush and shadscale mounds and swales, run aground on shores of ragged tuff, in the midst of all that blown span. And visible on the fringe-- more sculpture and unexplained gravity.

On the Black Rock playa last night the stars rioted, and I rise up now amidst volcanic ruin and new light of a humbly spectacular sort, projecting me onto and into the dry slopes and soothing misperceptions of their depth and pull, onto wondrous ramps and mounds and scarred chocolate complexes in every possible shade. I creep along the playa, absorbed in its fringe; it must be coded into the scarred strata. Passage foretold and assured. Sculpture is everywhere, wrought, bathed and backlit. Some prefer canyons and others a crest. A little elevation goes a long way, and crests multiply. I stop to feast on a soggy wing from the cooler, as sunlight cracks open a craggy rhyolite field.

I can't say which rise exactly, but I spy a distant co-mingling of sorts, deep on the playa ocean. I could be mistaken. That's the beauty of open sculpture-- make the next crest and test what you saw from the last. Atop the next rise I see a distant flotilla, spread out and sailing as to war. On with it! I've heard of urban refugees-- scientific types-- who assemble here to launch homemade rockets on the vast flat. Maybe that's it. No matter. I should cross over the volumes of cracked clay to the end of pavement somewhere on the western shore. I recognize Trego Mountain on the horizon, though I almost missed it from this angle.

On the playa nothing much is amiss, except that scattered flotilla of rocket scientists I spied from the hills is larger than it seemed. No matter. I cross the stunning flat to the western shore and its bright rumors of distant asphalt and pancakes. Halfway across I notice a tiny subcompact car speeding toward me, with stick-on cop light atop its roof just like Buford T. Justice in that Burt Reynolds flick, charging across the playa for miles, it seems. Dammit. What day is this?.... Oh no.... no, it can't be... oh God no... Burning Man?!.... Shit. I'm intercepted by a young deputy wearing plastic Elvis Costello glasses, who tells me I'm too close. Probably. I can just make out a low thump thump of high watt techno music.

[mnaz]

Here's a taste of what I missed...

http://www.lennyjones.net/burn2005/comicbook2005.htm

(note the "get out of hell free" card, monopoly-stylie, off to the left of the photo/comic album... hehe...)

[Arcadia]

cenacle talked about it!. It looks good as a photo-album!! how many days people live that way?

[mnaz]

Hi Arcadia...

I think the Burning Man, or "Black Rock City", lasts for a week or so, always the week before Labor Day. Those in charge of the event have a daunting task... to clean up after the massive party and leave the desert as close to the same as it was pre-event as possible... of course with so many vehicles, and bikes, etc, tearing up the clay hardpack, that gets tougher to actually do each year... I heard of some fairly serious dust storms from one recent burner when the wind whips up... Ah yes... such divine madness!

I guess I lied about my book last month. Turns out I had one last chapter to get out after all.... How could I leave out my own inverted, introverted take on Burning Man?!.... I like the 1st 3 paragraphs well enough...'tho I think at the end I think I need to sketch that moment of horrible realization... "oh shit... no, it can't be.... no way.... is it... Burning Man??!!.... man, I'm just there for some peace... talk about a shock to the system...

Thanks for reading!

[mtmynd]

as always, mnaz, a good read. and i concur with your own opinion about the ending... it'd be worth it. give it a try.

[joel]

my inner geologist wants to attend Burning Man some day--for the land as art as much as anything else. maybe if i go, i'll swing by through my old stomping grounds mit die deitsche Volk un' die alte Leute, die dass keine Energie um zu benutzen kriegen, zu d' Friedenfest mitbringen--i bet the old bonnet gals would love it (after the initial schock). but i'll try to remember a radar gun perhaps...though that might seem antithetical to a point.

[mnaz]

Thanks Joel.

For as much as I sometimes trash Burning Man, it does look like a tremendous transforming, "quickening" experience, not to mention one hell of a party... but oh what it is doing to my quiet desert...

ps... I "tidied" up the ending...

[hester_prynne]

Damn, this is stellar stuff Mnaz...
H

[Totenkopf]

Interesting, but if you were really at the B.M. show, more details.........and pics......bitte (though nudity should be reserved mostly for femmes under, say, 30 or so. Granny Clampett out peddling in her b-day suit next to the Giant Anus sculpture/performance don't quite make it) . We were invited quite a few moons ago by some Subgenii types, and nearly attended, but wussed (some of us know a bit about Nevada cops)---now it's been..........corporatized. Pyramid lake area quite buzzy and alien though, like those ancient fish that live in the lake itself...............................

[mnaz]

Thanks Hes, Toten...

Yeah, I wrote this one pretty quickly... need to "hone" it a bit.

The idea here is the intrusion of Burning Man into my sojourn... I was warned by the law and tried to take refuge in the fringe, only to have the self-styled "fringe" warn me as well... Never been to the Burning Man. Yeah, it has gotten too big, too corporate.

And I'm under no illusions about the nefarious deeds that Nevada cops may be capable of doing... but they don't seem to go out of their way to get in people's faces like many of their Utah Morm-bot brethren... I mean really.... empty twenty mile straightaway, 72 mph in a 65 zone (which should be 70 anyway).... I mean, come one...

[Totenkopf]

No the Nevada cowboys are not quite as anal as their Utah Morm-bot brethren, 'tis true: unless they catch you doing something, whether with a bit of grass or maybe at Kitty's cathouse and she doesn't have Zee right papers......it's that sort of baptist libertarianism---everything's cool........until you commit a crime of moral turpitude....Then you in trouble, boy (I only know what I know from stories---like some bay area 'head in Nev. state prison for 10 years or so for a lid).................. To be honest, the Reno--Carson--Gardnerville area is very scenic, and authentic old west, spaghetti western jive; you feel like you need your Colt strapped on when you roll into Carson Citay. But watch out for the .....demons. TO savor the real old west you got to be good and stoned--maybe with one of Kitty's finest---and visit one of the old graveyards, sip some whisskey next to the bones of miners, masons, coolies, ho's ...and the gentry a bit higher on the hill

[Dave The Dov]

I've heard of this before. Hmmmm okay in some parts. But over all carrying on the Druid tradition for sure.
_________________
Mercedes Simplex

[Arcadia]

dave:"Druid tradition", mmm I guess they would need forests for that instead, not the desert!!
mnaz: "I'm intercepted by a young deputy wearing plastic Elvis Costello glasses, who tells me I'm too close" that was evil...!