What are you burning?
This entry is part of a series captured at Burning Man 2023. 1. “Morning Before Playa”. 2. First Coating of Dust. 3. Decompression of Ritual Time. 4. What are you burning?
Friday, September 1, 2023
The Man
Sitting in one of the hexagon booths in the hive at the Man. Observing passersby. Penning my immediate experience.
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The dust and small feet of a girl with pigtails. Discordant music drifts from the base of a Man set to burn. The sound of storms and banging of rocks. A reflection of fun, of trips and the loosening of eyes. The softening of parts unkempt. Stomp to the rhythm. Fists closed around grounded power.
Lift and share with the earth. The ground of being in animal dance.
What’s here? What am I feeling?
First, the gratitude for the love of friends new and old. Visions of floating, caring, gathering, grounding.
A chill wind. The desert is fickle. The languages cascade. Ritual cacophony.
A part of me who wants to hold onto separation. Proof that meaning is untrustable. Connection a disappointment. A closed part.
An ache. A shell cracking. Coming into a sensitivity. Mentor, older, wiser. Rooting clear-eyed guidance. A mirror. A support for the artistic challenges ahead. Fun remembrance. Open to what arrives. The eros of art.
The ache is a walking away. A letting gone. Coming towards. Allowed beauty. A gift of gifts.
Unspoken fear meets the upwelling of joyful laughing. The sun poking is fiery face through the clouds.
Clearing confusion. Making room for those who wish to pass through. Loving with what I have to offer. Giving.
A leaving of mistreatment. UNALLOWABLE. UNSPEAKABLE. The eye, the center, the throughline.
“There is an instrument inside!”, says a child.
The dark temple burns tonight and with it a rising laughter on the release from a cage. A living art. On behalf. A mutual gift of being.
Old men happy in company. Cracking wise. Talking photography. Perspectives of the aged bones. Carried in their living to the here and now.
The green eye of seeing shows itself in the obscuring of sky. Carried by a troop bedazzled in friendship.
Choosing slow, steady friends. Growing into one another.
Checking the heart. The shucking of self-conscious carapace. Who are you?
Thanking Larry and his will to art.
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In the last entry; the tendrils of change which have followed me back from desert.