Dust to ashes

It was a place where the full force of the human imagination pushed itself into the dream scape of the playa. I left Reno with no clear conception of what was to come, I had no idea that I was about to be transported to another dimension of the human mind and imagination. Burning man is truly the twilight zone, it is a place where tens of thousands of individual creative minds come together to redefine reality and create a world of pure human expression. There is nothing on the playa but dust and what people bring to it, there are no plants, animals or insects. It is a world where there is only dust and the human imagination. I found myself at first overwhelmed and consumed by it all. The social environment of burning man creates a chaotic vortex of human interaction that you are forced to loose yourself in. Everyone is your best friend at burning man, you are constantly having short rapid fire bizarre conversations with complete strangers in the most bizarre conditions imaginable. One moment you can be discussing the works of Hunter S Thompson at the gonzo camp to screaming in agony in front of a crowd of people while being mercilessly spanked by the hard paddle of the Spank-O-Matic to relating the extreme awesomeness of everything going on around you with a women with breasts the size of your head while she is painting a dancing penguin on the head of your penis. That is all "normal" discourse of events that constantly unfold before you at Burning Man. You really have no choice but to surrender yourself and say yes to everything that is happening around you. During the day you live in the hot blazing desert sun, biking for bar to art work to absurd situation and back again. I am still comprehending everything that just happened and really don't know how to put it into cohesive thoughts yet, but be assured that it is one of the more wild insane life changing experiences that you can have on this earth. If you are reading this blog I was imagining you with me there, the whole time I was absorbing the madness around me I kept imagining what all my great friends would think if this place and wishing that they where here to share the experience with me. I will elaborate further on burning man once I have digested the experience some more, it is not an easy thing to express with words and the core of the experience itself can only be experienced directly.





So after the actual burn of the man we left at 2 am to drive to San Fransisco, which is where I am sitting now. This is a different place for sure a place that I will get to know well for my work. We have gotten word from Grex, they are camping without shelter in Santa Cruz, me and Jim are going to go alleviate their shelterlessness with out tents soon and see some of the first familiar faces in a while. We have about 3 weeks of traveling in front of us and are trying to figure out what we want to do and in what order we want to do it. We are transients now and its a good feeling. I look forwards to getting a handle on the west coast and what this place is all about. Not really sure what is going to happen from one day to the next but I like that feeling. Well, about time to be off to somewhere new, perhaps my thoughts will be a little more together the next time we speak.