Burning Man 2010

Well, somehow it has been yet another year.  So many things have changed since last Burning Man.  In fact, events surrounding Burning Man of last year were in many ways catalytic to our move, our new house, little pieces of life that have shifted into the new now.  Burning man does that to you - it makes you think about things in a minute by minute basis - living in the now, this instant.  Burning man isn't all about any one thing - it is a million remarkable instants linked together.  That's regular life - "default life" by burner parlance - too, but we so often get locked in to the long term, the big "goals", we forget to breathe in this moment - the color of the paint on the wall, the simplicity of a reflection off the wood floor, little pieces of joy and wonder to be had all around us, if only we open up to them...

Ok, enough drivle - on with my Burning Man Report!

This year, my sister Suzie in Eugene and her family offered to watch Delilah for the week of Burning Man, which lead to also bringing our Mom up there, where they stayed for the week, then flew down to LA, where my brother Mark and his family picked them up for the night - and then, we brought them all hope. In the mean time, Barbara's mom house sat for us, and we had a jolly-old time wandering the Playa. I finally completed the drop off rounds last night about 9PM, and promptly went to sleep.

Driving up the Central Coast north of Santa Barbara.  We did our standard wandering through San Luis Obispo on Thursday night for the Farmers Market, then continued up to Redding and Eugene.  We had a remarkably nice drive - it was temperate, with almost no traffic to speak of.

From Eugene, we departed late Sunday night, with the intent of driving at least a few hours to get a head start on the otherwise long drive on Monday.  Which led to the only "dark period" on the trip - the grumpy, didn't sleep well the night before, leading to the "We're out of gas" station at Gerlach (and the 3 hour wait therin), followed by another 4 hour wait in the line for the gates to reopen after a rain+dust=mud storm. But even a storm at Burning Man has a silver lining -

This one in the form of a double rain bow. Folks started pouring out of their cars to enjoy the moment - one pair of guys had to pee and I suggested that they go back to back and make a "third rainbow"... they weren't quite ready for that moment to happen :) The mud made for very interresting walking - it would cake in sucessive layers on your shoes and build up into "mushy platform shoes".

We made it in to camp late, and were able to meet up with Marietta and Bob (our regular camp mates - thank's for letting us copy some of your pictures! :) ) and set up our camp for the year - "Not Constantinople" at 7:00 and Istanbul.

Second night there, we had a get together with some other San Diego Burners at the Yellow Gorilla camp, and I took my accordion and played some ditties there to rave reviews...

A night time shot of the the Playa from The Temple.

One of the many art projects - the Playa Belle, constructed of welded stainless steel wire, a hollow structure, illuminated both inside and out.  It took 4 man years to complete it...

One of the many Art Cars - a rolling picinic basket...

Burning Man is a Gift Economy - not technically even barter.  You give stuff.  Other people give stuff.  This guy made a hot dog stand, and rolled it out on the Playa.  On this day, he gave away over 200 hot dogs in the morning alone... Another great cart had S'Mores, with 4 gas burners to toast your own, and of course lots of bars.  One Jazz club (a favorite from last year) did Sprite and Wine - sorta like a wine cooler of days of yore.

Another welded Stainless Steel art piece - a globe, which was actually 4 concentric globes nested inside of each other.  In the distance and to the right you can see this years main temple - which was constructed to look like a Sand Stone meeting place of antiquity.  They figured with this years "Metropolis" Theme, the would go non-structural.  As my mom would say - "Interesting"...

An art tree on an alien structure of some sort...

Giant VW party bus...

And of course, the man.

A radial view out from one of the structures during the day.

And a little art that I did on Barbara's arm.

Fire Dancing...

Some highlights -

* A guy, pushing an Off Road Sequey that had run out of juice, being pushed back to camp.  I say to the guy "I'm guessing it's more fun to ride than to push". He groans. I say "Look at it this way - you're paying it back for the love it gave you in hauling it around the Playa all day..." he sorta nodds...

* A gal wandering, saying to her friends "Hey guys, what's the plan?" I say to her "It's Burning Man- is there a plan?" to which she cracks up.

* A showing of Tantra Theater

* Dancing at a Kirtan Concert

* Interesting folks - a fireman from Boston, a artist from LA, a couple of people that we met at our dinner night - two Film students, one that used to work for Clinton for the World Bank.

* Fire dancing at Bass camp...
* Ein Hammer, art trees, great food, great people, wow...

Enough for now!