interlude….

i have more to say about burning man. i will get it out, oh yes i will because i want to chronicle it before i forget. we will see….

i have been sad this last week, thinking of and dealing with things with my mom. i saw a friend on monday night and he was asking me some questions and i just started crying and realize that i have been keeping a ton of energy inside regarding the eventual loss of my mom. i had a dream last weekend that we were connecting in our dreams and i told her that if she was done with this life and was tired and wanted to move on, that it was okay to go. i love her, she is one of my best friends, and i will miss her terribly, but i also don’t want her to suffer or be in pain. it makes me so sad to think of this, but i mean it. she is suffering now as the pain in her feet and legs gets bad again and it kills me. this acceptance of her not being here anymore comes slowly for me. five years ago, i couldn’t even think about it without crying. now, the thought is there, and it will all be okay, i just want her to be good and happy for however much longer she is here. and i want her to die peacefully in her sleep and not being cut open on an operating table or because of some perceived failed medical procedure.

goddess this is hard.

i needed to get that out.

there is so much more there, and right now i just need to stop here.

have a great weekend everyone. i am not sad. i am, but not like inconsolable, just sad because this is. it is existence and it happens to everyone and it sucks.

i love my mom. today she is 77.

peace. 

okay, okay…burning man, phase one…

so, this phase runs roughly from friday, august 25 thru sunday, august 27, as it represents the time before the event actually started. i will say, though, that this year, it seemed like, on monday, BAM, the entire city was there, and it happened fast. maybe it’s because i was busy…..

when we got there on thursday, longpig and aspen and cody were there already and they were all working. longpig was at camp with juju, we said hello and then they said they had to get back to work. this year, before we headed out, there were a slew of emails from the org and from other volunteer departments stating that people who were on the early arrival list were there to ensure that the infrastructure of the city went up before the city opened. it went so far as to say that no personal shade structures would be allowed, and that people should put up the minimum allowable to live until the event started because, essentially, we were there for them early and we could take care of ourselves after the event started. part of me thinks "this is not the way to treat volunteers"….but then again, when you have already given many of these volunteers free tickets to what is becoming an expensive event and now granted them early entry, i do understand it. but it still made me sort of feel like big brother was standing over me. yikes!

when we arrived, there was precious little around, but we were advised to take this day to rest up, take care of basic needs, and get situated because the expectation was going to be that the next day, the work would begin. we had been through a major trauma already because when we requested early entry into the event for daughter, we weren’t sure until a few days before we left whether or not we were going to be allowed to get her in and what we would do with her as far as volunteering went once she was in. we didn’t want to take more resources than we were entitled to or burden said infrastructure, we wanted to contribute and feel like we were doing our share. this issue would surface again at the end of the event, but in the end, it was all a pleasant thing.

the large shade structure wasn’t up yet because of the aforementioned directive, but we did manage to get situated in a way that seemed like it would work for the camp in general and us specifically.

for the last few years, i have wanted to get into the technical side of the ranger org, but this ended up being my year. i think they are distrustful because they want to make sure that dedicated volunteers are going to stick around, not just be a flash in the pan and get bored with rangering and move on to other stuff. i can’t actually remember if this happened to first day or the second day, but at some point….hmmm, i am going to clarify this, i will come back and finish this later….

we went over to ranger outpost tokyo and discovered that some of our friends and favorite people were already there. dirtwitch is one of them, and she and her camping mate feline invited us near their place for dinner. this was very cool. 

burning man, the intro…

 so, this year, it seems, burning man was broken up into at least four distinct "phases" for me, if you will. when we got there, we had been told there was increasing emphasis this year on "contributing to the creation of the infrastructure" if one was on the early arrival list, which we were, so that was one phase.

the second phase was the beginning of the event, watching the city take shape, and working normal shifts, or what passed for them…this year saw many changes for me….

the third phase was mid-week, where i took some time off, got to explore the city, see the sites, spend time with some folks, and play around, having a good time….and really, this extended through the rest of the event up to the big burn, because it all sort of seemed to blur for me after awhile…that seems to happen on the playa.

finally, there was the post-event phase….after the big burn, as people begin to leave, to return to normalcy, and this extends all the way until we are back into reality camp, which is generally met with much malaise, a general feeling of let-down, and disappointment that life can’t be more like it is in black rock city.

so, leading up to leaving for the event, it got scary early. the good thing is that we seem to have been more organized than we have been in the last few years. a lot of this is because of me. last year, my software consultant from work was here RIGHT before we had to leave. this made things quite uncomfortable, because dealing with his being here takes about every brain cell i have, which left precious little time or energy for much of anything else. i am sure that this made my husband panic because i generally take care of the finer details and didn’t last year, which made us seem hurried and unorganized at the end. that’s all in the past, though….and this year, we didn’t have any of that additionaly stress, so it seemed like things were pretty smoooooth sailing….mostly.

we had put off doing some maintenance things with the motor home and the truck, and it turned out these things came up to bite us and make money very tight for the burn because they HAD to be done, but had they been done sooner, it would have made life much better for us heading out.

i got most of the shopping done WAY early this year, so that the night before we left, all i had to do was buy fresh produce, most of which went bad anyway (hahahaha) and it was a much smaller trip than trying to think of what to buy for two weeks right before going. there was a combination of pre-cooked and prepared meals, fresh meat and frozen veggies, and various snack foods and salty/sweet stuff to just munch on as we went. i had gotten a HUGE jar of pepperocini peppers for the playa and those suckers were good! i ate them ALL while we were out there. must have been the combination of salty and hot that did me good….

for next year, i need to remember to take more soda….d said that he was going to take care of drinks but what that really means in d language is that he’s going to take care of ensuring that HE has cold beer the whole time out there and we can piss off. that irritated me a few times over the trip, but was a reasonably small thing, really. it just kind of annoys me that i am expected to anticipate and provide for his needs, but he doesn’t have to think of anyone but himself or his own needs. this is an ongoing battle that i have with him, nothing new, so moving along now….

the other reasonably unknown factor that we weren’t sure of until the end was the status of my daughter. i started talking to her almost a month before the event and stating that she needed to do some shopping, that she needed to be home to help me plan for food that she wanted to eat, etc. she ignored all of this, but she heard what i was saying. she took her own money and went and spent a ton of money on clothes/costumes for the event and the little bugger did a really good job, too!! she finally came home about three days before we left and then the night before we left, she kept pushing her luck and saying that she wanted to stay out just a little bit longer. teenagers!! oh my….in the end, though, she listened, she was there, and we all left together. i had planned for enough food for the extra person, and things were ready to go….

we departed (reasonably) early on thursday, august 24th, happy, well-organized, and anxious to start a grand adventure!! the kid road with me, and d drove the motor home. buying gas for the motor home was no easy task…i think we spent about $300 on gas and we only live two hours away!! that was INSANE, with gas over $3.00/gallon. i wonder how much that increased burning man budgets throughout the land?!?!?! exponentially, i am betting.

i was very excited, but also somewhat anxious and had some trepidation. i’ve never had one of my kids out on the playa before and i wasn’t sure how it was going to go. i wasn’t sure if she was going to take off and we’d not see her again until she came back mid-week, drug crazed, dirty, with dreadlocks and blazed out of her mind, dehydrated and half-dead, or if she’d hang out with us all week, be resentful of us having to work, and be pouty and miserable. i wanted her to enjoy it as much as i do. i didn’t want her to be disappointed and she is her own person now, and i sometimes wonder how well i know her.

the drive was uneventful. i was pleased because i got to show my daughter the snoopy rock.  i was pretty wrecked because at the playa rom, no one had repainted it yet, so i was afraid it wouldn’t be done, but sure enough, when we passed it outside of empire, there he was, painted and smiling, like always. daughter slept most of the way, which was cool because that gave me the chance to sing my little heart out most of the way there, good times =) we got there before the signs were up, and the box office was barely there, so she missed that whole experience, but she gained an even greater one….getting to see the city come to life before her eyes.

as we motored into the city, and towards our camp, her comments involved something like "wow, this really IS in the middle of nowhere…" and "why are we camped so far back?"….oh, just wait little one….we are going to be in the thick of things by monday……

i have returned….

burning man was as amazing as it ever is, this year. this was a very good and cool year for me, personally, professionally/volunteer-wise, and relationship-wise also.

the first good news is that my daughter did show up and came with us. she hadn’t been home much in the weeks prior to burning man, so i wasn’t sure if she had decided it wasn’t worth her time or not, but about a week before we left, she did actually show up, had taken a lot of responsibility for getting herself prepared, and it was a good thing. she had an amazing time at the event, is anxious to go back, and is now, as i write, in her first day back at school at one of the local charter schools. she did really well at the event. she was careful, but still managed to have an insane amount of fun, find her groove, her own transformation, and make it a great experience for her.

we had another friend who came out this year, flew in from texas, rented a car with another guy, and came out to brc. i am not sure what he was searching for or if he found it….he states that it will take him months to process all that he saw and did and experienced, but he views it as a positive thing. this is good.

i will post more when i can. i am processing too.

in some ways, everything happened, and in some ways it seems nothing happened.

i am, though, again, forever changed for having been there.

riding the edge of chaos is fun, it makes you expand your borders and your sense of what is "right", "good", "acceptable" and also what those things are for other people.

this year our camp was harmonious, there was a little drama, but thankfully this year it did not involve me.

i see my girl tonight for the first time since returning home. she was sick last week, so we didn’t get a chance to hook up but i am looking forward to it a lot.

that’s about it for now. i wanted to write something, since my last entry was seventeen days pre-event and now it’s almost that many days since it ended.

work continues to be what it is, and i wonder if i am losing patience for dealing with a lot of this stuff. it seems i am, but i have to endure…it’s worth it in the end, to continue to be here and to build what is being built here.

hope everyone is well. i have some cool pictures to post =)

peace.