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.
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