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the spectacle: i remember being crushed in a sea of friendly bodies and getting stuck in wet playa from my own spilled beer. this lowered the comfort threshold somewhat, as wet playa is adhesive and merciless, and then it took forever for the man to actually fall, as if he'd been reconstructed out of inflammable material in defiance of his previous, unscheduled immolation. some frustrated someone nearby yelled "i have to work wednesday!" which elicited a good laugh. finally he fell and the usual swarm ensued. we made a break for the temple, where doug and wendy were going to re-marry for the coolness-and-sentimental factor of doing so at burning man, where they'd proposed the year before. even in a crowd of 40,000, we easily found our party, but by then i had to pee so bad marital re-enactments were no longer a priority. we wished them well and headed vaguely toward camp and portapotties. |
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i didn't make it.....thereby coming to my first genuine encounter with the playa in all its natural glory. i hiked my skirts and did what i had to do, offering a silent prayer that i was not reeking havoc on the uber-dead ecology of the lakebed. thus newly bonded to my environment, we wandered further out to empty playa, evading the crowd that was now swarming toward the oil derrick that was soon to be torched in the biggest mushroom cloud yours truly ever hopes to bear witness to. |
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for me, finally, the dark playa was where the real magic occurred, adrift under a big sky, away from the vibrant humanity exploding across BRC. the annual lasers planted by some sensitive soul in the mountains on both sides of the lakebed flashed their signals across the bowl, revealing and reveling in the expanse. lying down on our backs, we oriented to pure space, the great blank slate under which so much expression was now unfolding. the simultaneity, the paradox of so much amid such nothing, air and dust, teeming with individuation. a blink of emptiness, a blink of everything. |
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it was as if the entire sum of creation and dissolution was perceptible, under the turning sky.
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