by Kenny Reff

 

So here I am, spending another evening attempting to write a novel. My daughter is upstairs packing for college, I’m recently divorced, and about to be kid-less for the first time in 18 years. Wow.

While doing research for the novel, I come across a web page telling me Burning Man is happening in two weeks. It’s something I’ve heard about for years, but being 50+ and on the East Coast, I don’t know anyone else who’d ever gone.

Could I do it? In just two weeks? Of course not.

I stare at the week of August 27, but unbelievably, it is clear. The event had been sold out for months, but a ticket on eBay was coming due in 20 minutes. I placed the bid and won. And forty minutes later I have round-trip frequent flier tickets for free. It seems like I was meant to do this. Landing frequent flier tickets 12 days out? You know that just doesn’t happen.

But the real challenge I face is how to get all my shit to camp. Read more »

by Hal “Phoenix” Muskat

 

One day a friend & I were standing outside The Artery when we approached by a 25 year old women in flowered & flowing gowns. She was radiant and owned an awesome smile.

“I grew up here,” she sputtered with a certain conviction to us and to everyone who could hear. I giggled, thinking, “I grew up here too.”

But there was power and authenticity to her claim. My friend, a wise historian and archivist who has forgotten this encounter, asked, “How is that so, many Burners claim to ‘grow up’ here?”

“Well,” she began to explain, “when I was three years old, my dad and a bunch of his friends began to come up here every summer from Los Angeles for a week or so, so this was where we took our summer vacation until I was about ten. We would camp someplace out here.”

She had our attention and continued, “One day, I guess I was around three or four years old, I felt that none of the adults were paying any attention to me. I thought I would go for a hike and discover those mountains over there. Dad and his friends were sitting in the shade of our vans so I began to walk to the mountains. After a few steps, I looked back and dad and all his friends were simply looking at ME! I realized in that instant, that out here in the Black Rock Desert, I could do and be whatever I wanted, if I was safe!”

Before we could say “WOW!” she went on. “About five years ago I was driving home to LA from Oregon and I decided to take the back roads and come via Black Rock Desert to see my old playground. I was heading south on Hwy 447 over there and came around this bend north of here & I looked out to ‘MY PLAYA’ and saw all these lights and flashes of explosion. I thought, ‘What the fuck is going on so I pulled in and bought a ticket and have been coming back every year since.

Before we could get back to the first “WOW!” she went on, breathlessly: “When I left, as soon as I could get in cell range, I called my dad and said, ‘You’ll never guess what’s going on out here in Black Rock Desert!’”

We giggled excitedly, cause we knew what was coming next and even as I write this I get some chills.

“Now my dad is out here and this is our fourth year at Burning Man together.”

 

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Are you a multi-generation playa family? Say hi in the comments and tell us your story!

by MetaKim

In the middle of the afternoon on the middle day of my Burn, I was sitting in the middle of a bench in the temple, working through the problem of my fairly happy life. After many years of struggle, my life had recently started to straighten itself out. My projects were bearing fruit. I had my health. I had found love.

Problem was, could I trust it? For the sake of myself and the people I loved, I was going to have to own this good life, take action, build on it. It was no longer right for me to hide and hope, to expect the worst, to stay small and safe. But as soon as I got to the threshold of believing that everything could really be okay, I’d start thinking about my family. All their hopes and suffering and directives and defeats, the small kindnesses they could never dare to depend on. My martyred mom, my angry, exploited dad, my alcoholic brother, all the suffering I’d grown up with, all the suffering my parents had grown up with, on and on, far-flung ancestors and recently deceased relatives. How could I depend on my hard-won happiness when they never even had half of it?

I called it survivor guilt, and I knew I was going to let go of it. I didn’t know how that was going to happen, exactly, but I brought along a red marker in hopes of writing whatever needed to be written on the wall of the temple, so that days later I could watch it burn. Read more »

 by Green Monkey

When people ask me why I make the cross-country journey to Burning Man year after year, I tell them it is intensely therapeutic. And then I watch them laugh.

“What do you get at Burning Man?” they’ll probe, as if the price of admission includes something.

“What you get at Burning Man,” I tell them, “is entirely up to you.” Read more »

by Megan Thompson

My daughter, Sally, loved Burning Man so much that when we returned for our second year, she was living the Fertility 2.0 theme. Yes, she was 6 ½ months pregnant. We met so many people who just wanted to touch her belly and bless the baby. They were thrilled that she was living the theme. So many wonderful women introduced themselves as doulas or midwives and offered any assistance that was needed.

To help Sally get around the playa, I built a quad out of two old bikes that I had. It was loosely based on one we’d seen the year before. The design allowed it to be operated by one person, so Sally could take it easy and enjoy the sights.

Making simple quilts is one of my passions, so I pieced a baby quilt for Sally. We mounted the front on a piece of plywood and set it up in front of our camp at 7:00 and Dandelion. Passersby were invited to write or draw on it with fabric paints. Here’s the front with a few early contributions.

The backing went around with us on our travels and people were much more creative in their drawings on the back. I was surprised at how most people felt constrained by the patchwork squares on the front and rarely crossed the lines even with coaxing.

Instead of making my usual printed and sewn on label, I used fabric paints to fill in a couple empty spaces on the back.

Here’s the quilt all put together. I started by quilting a heart in Sally’s belly and then shadow quilting out from there like the ripples in a pond. I love the idea that the baby’s ripples will go forth into the world.

Thanks to all the people of Burning Man who helped create such a beautiful keepsake. Here she is — Miss Willow Simone — who joined the Burning Man community on November 29, 2012.

by Ted Chapman

In October of 2007 I was diagnosed with a grade 3 oligo-astrocytoma, a rare form of brain cancer that is virtually always fatal. After a year of brutal treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation, I was told in November of 2008 that the doctor’s had done all they could for me and I likely had “weeks or months” to live. My wife and I decided to move in with my parents in rural southern Ohio so that I could die around family. Months passed and MRI after MRI showed that, despite the lack of ongoing treatment, the tumor was not growing.

Hope is a double-edged sword when battling cancer. You need hope to keep going, but a battle against cancer is full of cycles of hopes raised and dashed. It takes great courage to continue to hope knowing the great probability of disappointment that faces you. It was in the context of these same thoughts that I decided to return to the Playa in 2009 after having missed the previous 2 years. It was my way of committing to believe I would live despite the probability that I wouldn’t.

As the months passed and the Burn approached I found myself increasingly anxious, wondering if my tumors would remain stable or if my hopes would be dashed at the last minute. Each dollar and hour I invested in planning and putting together my ‘burn kit’ represented to me a commitment that I would make it there. I had t-shirts printed saying “I’m not dying of cancer, I am LIVING with cancer”.

Finally the day came when I passed through the BM gates in the late evening. The next morning I went directly to the temple and wrote those same words on the Temple, willing the flames at the end of the week to burn away my fears the the temple. I began to weep then, as I am weeping now, overpowered by the simple thought that life is possible.

I return to the Playa this year for the first time since then. As then, I find myself renewed in my fight, having been diagnosed with a recurrence of my cancer in 2011. My cancer is still here, and still threatens my life every day, but my journey back to the Playa represents a triumph over fear, not by conquering it, but by accepting it, understanding it and embracing it.

Burning man is a culture of giving. I have neither the time, nor the skill nor the ability to create great art installations or mutant vehicles, or to commit weeks to cleaning the Playa or preparing it. I deeply appreciate everyone who does. My gift is the one thing I can give. My gift is hope, and the message that hope is possible and life is possible, even when the odds and the weight of reality tell you it isn’t.

by Bill Ball

I had been wandering around all night on the playa. Exploring what could be explored in the short time I had. I let my feet be my guide. I had witnessed magnificent things like fire-breathing mutant vehicles and sculptures that sparkled in vibrant lights. But that was all about to be outdone by one of the most beautiful events on this planet, a sunrise in the desert. I was near the Temple when I noticed the night sky beginning to change. I found a spot on the playa and laid down. I was one with the playa, I accepted that I was going to get playa dust on me so I made myself as comfortable as I could. I was very tired from my journeys throughout the night, my eyes were getting heavy. My eyes would close for a minute then re-open back up to an all new scene in front of me. Every time I did this it was like my mind taking snapshots of the landscape in front of me in time lapse. I was creating a mental image for future paintings each time I dozed off and re-awakened. There’s no real way or words to fully describe what was happening to me. It is beyond beauty to witness a sunrise in the desert. I loved how as the sun came up, so did the moisture trapped in the ground from the night. It came up as vapor, catching the colors of the sunrise in its ethereal wisp dancing all around me. The surrounding hills were filled with a radiant magenta color constantly morphing into different hues of red then orange. Off in the distance the mist coming up from the ground gave me the illusion that the hills were floating on white fluffy cotton. The clouds above were just as beautiful. Racing across the sky constantly being transformed by the colors. Finally, the burning orb broke the horizon. When it did it was like time stood still. I saw its beauty unfold before my very eyes. I felt its warmth instantly. There were hundreds of souls around enjoying this very moment with me. We all stood up and began to sing and dance and hoot and holler about, with rants and chants of joy and ecstasy. People all around were laughing, crying, hugging, kissing, and beaming with radiant smiles that would last them through the day. During my 10 days at Burning Man, I experienced the joy of seeing seven sunrises.

by Crystal Hoffman

My three-year-old niece has recently begun a cycle that myself, my mother, my grandmother, and my great grandmother all experienced around the same age. She dreams of snakes each night, wakes up screaming, still seeing them slither over her bed even as she regains consciousness. She never had a traumatic experience involving a snake. I’ve never even seen her shriek at the sight of one. In fact, I once placed a small snake in the palm of her hand, and she giggled joyously as it wiggled about in her palm. “He’s tickling me,” and then an uneasy look emerged over her face, “Okay, it’s time for baby snake to go home to mommy.”

It’s no secret that man has a natural enmity towards snakes. The serpentine form and vertical pupil is deeply ingrained in our psyche. It inspires fear from deep recesses of our primordial memory, wherein their jaws were mysterious threats to our species’ survival. But there is a reason the ancients used snakes as a symbol of power, wholeness, and health. The fact is that healing takes wounds, and overcoming the fear of their existence, looking in the depth of the bite marks, acknowledging the teeth and the flesh from whence they emerged—and not flinching back, is sometimes all it takes for the unification to begin.

My final full day at Burning Man I woke up an hour before sunrise, dressed in my favorite Victorian gown, grabbed my typewriter, neon arts and crafts supplies, a couple scoops of hemp hearts and almonds and made off for Center Camp. I had intended to write poems for people at Burning Man before this. My friend Margaret and I were hired to create wearable self-reflecting poetry for audience members as the TypewriterGirls for the Work of Art Awards Ceremony in Pittsburgh about five years ago. It quickly turned into one of our favorite activities. But somehow each time I planned to set up shop at Centre Camp, I was sidetracked—by Gnostic Masses, Sufi Whirling, Acro-Yoga, adjustable four story climbing structures, Elvis Espresso Camp, cinnamon toast stands, steam rooms, Old Testament story re-enactments, 10 am contact dance parties, etc. But this time, I had new vision and was determined to inaugurate it in the desert dawn.

I was inspired by a sacred stone ritual held at Nectar Village wherein a group of women wrote the most damaging stories they carried as a part of themselves on piece paper, wrapped gemstones inside them, and then burnt them in a pit full of playa dust after reading them out loud. It was a process intended to alchemize the words and stones into powerful amulets for future battles. This was precisely the kind of healing that I hoped to accomplish through the interview poetry writing sessions. Beyond writing out a short personal narrative or extended vignette packed with symbols snagged from dream recollection or intuited from conversation, I would attempt to write out each burner’s full-blown fantasy self, attempting to produce a condensed hero’s journey.

The interview process lasted about fifteen minutes or until I felt like I had enough material and structure to begin alchemizing. I asked each burner questions about powerful childhood dreams, their driving goals and fears, their most formative battles, the most important symbols in their lives, their earliest and most recent experiences of awe, other individual that shape how they view themselves, and their conflicts and contractions. In short, I guided our conversation so that might discover potent images and structures that could be used as powerful personal symbols to effect transformation. The most important thing in each of these poems was to create both a narrative that the individual could identify with and strive towards utilizing a system of symbols that could take on a myriad of layers of meaning. In as short amount of time as possible, I also tried to them aesthetically pleasing and accessible. This was not easy. It was exactly as draining as you would think it would be, but oh so worth it. After composing the poem, I typed it onto the colorful cart stock, punched a hole in the corner and strung it with ribbon to be worn as an amulet for protection in future battles or placed on their altars.

Perhaps due to the ethereal surroundings, but also due to the fact that merely having someone listen to you intently and bear witness to your most personal stories is powerful in-and-of-itself, each individual that heard these poems aloud for the first time was moved to tears. Half of them stated it was one of their best Burning Man experiences. Then around 2:30, I discovered that a fellow who I thought had been watching the acro-yoga going on around my station at Center Camp had been listening to my questions for the past couple of customers. “Are you a psychologist? You should join up with my camp. We have free advice booths.” “No, no. I’m just a poet. I’ve been writing poems for people like this for a few years with my performance group.” “Well, you know it’s very like narrative therapy. Have you heard of it?”

This doesn’t surprise me, but it cinches something. I’m suddenly certain of why I’m here. I’m trying to heal some of the wounds that our toxic society lays on our psyche with their damaging stories of “you’re not good enough” “that person is hurting you” “you have to be better than her at____” or “you have to defeat this____”, or that any such qualifiers should even exist in the ultimate reality that we should be attempting to build in our collective psyche.

It took a while to fully process this experience. I quit my job. I looked in a million different directions to fulfill this calling. I’m still not certain of my future, but I know where I’m heading now. I’m going to walk across the country doing what it is that makes me that happiest. I’m going to write poetry for people. I’m going to write new myths that break down borders and wash away the soot. And while I’m at it, I’m going to try to inspire others to do so, and collect them in what I’m calling The Poetry Pilgrim Project.