intellectual properties

last thoughts before burning man 2011

Forget safety.

Live where you fear to live.

Destroy your reputation.

Be notorious.

— Rumi

this many years and i still can’t narrow it down.

once i get there it all seems so immediately and abundantly clear, but beforehand it is like a phantom in the mist. how can that be?  like a far away lover you haven’t touched in months – you only remember the smell, the touch, the feel, the other information filed deep, resurfacing only exactly when needed.

.::.

i bring things like books and cocktail dresses.  someday i should set up The Most Elegant Library Ever on the playa, with deep couches and chandeliers and velvet ropes and lace curtains and walnut bookshelves filled with hardcovers of everything from Sartre to Seuss, where you can sit and drink champagne while reading silently, or have quiet discussions about literary subjects.

.::.

however, all moments of periodic dusted and sunbleached elegance aside, in the thick of it, i like to get feral and not give a fuck.

i like to go to burning man and get lost in its dream, subconscious wandering interspersed with bouts of extreme physical hyperawareness and athletic mania.  i like to be dirty and unwashed and sunkissed and running on empty and compulsive and punch-drunk and completely alive.

most of this is a personal experience, but at the same time i fall deeply in love with humanity and the people who commune with me and i want to feel all of them.

.::.

the rest of the world seems so fragmented, anxious, fluxuated, and holding its breath right now – my own life, and globally – that burning man seems like the safest place to be – the place where we can breathe, the place where we can all be perfect* for a little while, and not worry about failing.

*adj. exactly fitting the need in a certain situation or for a certain purpose

.::.

whether here or there:  love.

another QOTD on being everything and nothing

“Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,” said Sri Nisargadatta. “Love is knowing I am everything. Between the two my life moves.”

QOTD

“Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.”

–Sylvia Plath

 

.(related).

denial

Finally, after the 30th day, she cried.

.(one sentence).

FREAKY COINCIDENCE DAY

this is actually really creeping me out.

yesterday, i sent a project proposal FedEx a day early, joking that i wanted to send it early “in case of any strange Acts of God or something.”

then, an hour ago, i was riding my bike and was stopped at an intersection for a truck to go by.  when the truck went by, the ground shook a lot,  and i mused, “oh, life. just want you think you are standing on solid ground, the earth shakes.”

and then i got to work, and found out an earthquake had hit the east coast, causing THE BUILDING WHERE THE AGENCY I SENT THE PROPOSAL TO IS HEADQUARTERED TO BE EVACUATED.

i shit you not.

update August 24: and now we’ve had to feel-able earthquakes here on the hayward fault in the last 12 hours, and the Tori song “Little Earthquakes” has been in my head nonstop.

OH: “no-latch”

OH some guy talking about how lucky he was to find a woman who was “no-latch”, and i thought:  why is it considered a fault, a mental obsession, to “latch” onto someone, even if just temporarily, who has been trusted enough to be literally INSIDE YOU in a carnal and intimate way?   i’m all for casual sex, but when someone gets a little infatuated for a minute afterward i don’t think it’s a sign of inscerity or instability.  it’s natural (literally biochemical) and i hate that a lot of women get painted with this “needy” brush because they want some attention after intimacy, when to me it seems actually sort of weird and sociopathic if you can fuck someone and then just walk away the next day and not think about them.  OTOH, stalking people and becoming unnaturally attached, especially if the feelings aren’t reciprocated,  is obvi not good and if you have a tendency to do that then maybe you should rethink whether or not you can handle casual sex.

enter the hot dream

last night jayober & i went through the music files to make a rockNroll mix for burning man (so much electronica on the playa; i can’t take it for 7 days. we decided we need at least one rockNroll + whiskey afternoon). “just 1 or 2 songs from fav bands”.  after we finish, even without all our favs added, it’s 13 hours long.  i <3 rock and roll.

.::.

AWAKE (listen)
Shake dreams from your hair
My pretty child, my sweet one.
Choose the day and choose the sign of your day
The day’s divinity
First thing you see.
A vast radiant beach in a cool jeweled moon
Couples naked race down by its quiet side
And we laugh like soft, mad children
Smug in the wooly cotton brains of infancy
The music and voices are all around us.

Choose they croon the Ancient Ones
The time has come again
Choose now, they croon
Beneath the moon
Beside an ancient lake
Enter again the sweet forest
Enter the hot dream
Come with us
Everything is broken up and dances.

.::.

poem of the day

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

-e.e.cummings

this is me in a forest

8/6/11 @ Big Bend/Loch Leven, Tahoe National Forest

QOTD: self-destruct

“If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you.  If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.”

–Jesus, via The Gospel of Thomas (#70)