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The Great Burn of 03 Part Four: Carey, Pogo, Shuey & Time So let's talk about Carey. Carey of Sebastopol. Carrie of the killer Ban de Soleil tan from hanging out in Brazil or one of them other sweltering erotic South American jungle environs fulla rebels and coups and guerillas and ewes. Carey with the ring through her lip. Carey the mother of Xena, future warrior princess and Wall Street power broker. Honey granola sweet Carey parked her tent by mine and together we talked of many things, bellies and bats and buffalo wings. We migrated to the whale. There was punch going around. Rum was it? No, vodka I think. This was a vodka year at the Burn. Whatever it was, it was strong and good and we sat atop the whale's bus body roof there inside the bevel of her vaulting ribs (the whale's that is) and swapped stories of the world outside. I took Carey's sore feet in hand and Scott took Toni's and we massaged away. I told a story of 80s teen idols with foot fetishes and how I once dated the President's daughter and set off her silent alarm while groping around her bedstead, bed head, red bed fulla dread.. huh? Where am I? Oh, yes, the dreaded and dust bedeviled Black Rock Desert. And it's Friday, I think, and the sun's sinking low and the air smells of dust, smacks of a pending sneeze, all the dusty tickle and none of the sweetness of Grandma's attic. Soon we will don headlamps whose bright LED lights will reveal a kind of snowstorm before us, a blizzard of really tiny snowflakes. Except they're not snowflakes, they're dust particles, tiny little alkaloid planetoids invisible by day, that is unless a full-blown dust storm whips up, which it will soon enough. And we're breathing this stuff. And no, it's not dead but very much alive and dormant, waiting, waiting for the rain or 30,000 sets of moist human lungs in which to spring to happy microbe life. Oh, yes. It's true, says Pogo. Pogo the prognosticator, Pogo the crane operator, Pogo in his pony tail and flat-lens antique mirror shades that cloak his soul but double YOURS! In stereo you are when Pogo looks your way. Pogo who lives in Italy in some rundown 14th century Palazia, Prego, Pompeii.. a house anyway. Pogo says he's taking a break from his place in Italy, a coupla years maybe, "Until the dollar comes back up to meet the Euro." But tonight it's all about Carey, or so I think, til Carey mentions how "one of her lovers" is camped nearby. One Tom person. Grrrr. Ouch. Not just a little jealous of this Tom guy, are we Smeagol? No. YEEESS! We likeses Carey Hobbits. But Master heard us read the evil poem! Carey Hobbits won't likes us. Bad Carey Hobbits! Nooo! But we loveses Carey.. give us the Precious! I grab my map of the "city," the almost-a-circle but as yet a horseshoe layout with exacting, clock-face coordinates and names befitting this year's mock-religious theme of "Beyond Belief." Let's see, we're at Serious and Vision. Heading clockwise inward toward Center Camp we've got Theory, Reality, Gospel, Faith, Evidence, Dogma and Creed. Heading round the horseshoe, Hell too many to mention. "One of my lovers," she says. Aurrggh, say pirate I. "Guy's probably over at the intersection of Dubious and Evidence, huh Shuey?" This is some kinda vodka-inspired small penis joke, and my friend & 5-year burning veteran Scott Shuey ain't laughing. Shuey and me are quite the team, up there with the best. Abbott & Costello, Martin & Lewis, Cheech & Chong. Together we've kept alive the drunk & debauched face of Burning Man, "Trinken bis Tot (dead)" as the Krauts say, and done so with great style and eloquence, I think. Portland's Hawthorne-based Shuey and I have kept alcohol at least marginally acceptable over these many burning years when all else has gone straight to.. to Hell! No more automatic weapons. No more reckless driving. No more getting high with the cops. No more refreshing wind-in-your-hair fast runs across open playa to Fly or Frog or any of the other area hot springs. No more public cunnilingus on the open tarmac. And no more pissing on the playa! Damnit all! Watching some lovely naked nymph squat and freely pee was once one of my greatest pleasures at Burning Man. No more. Back to the subject of Shuey and me and other Burning Drunkards, anymore it's all about holistic this and yogic that and women's sanctuary blah blah blah. Jesus Fucking Christ! Whatever happened to live sex in the mud to a frenzy of tribal drums, to the Celestial Sluts doling out beaver on Camp Show Talk Show? And Camanda Galactica running around in a scant white teddy with a bullhorn demanding penetration? And I'm not talking about this year's Jiffy Lube Camp, strictly for boys who bang boys. Anymore it's like The Man got all foofy and poofy. I mean, check out these offerings from this year's "What Where When" schedule of repeating events: Mysore Ashtanga Yoga, Sunrise Movement Ritual, Women's Nurturing Circle, Morning Guided Meditation, & Do-it-yourself Fairy Wings. Ugh. Thank God for Big Tool Cracker Camp and Tommy's ingenious little crank gift of the devil beneath the Man. More on that when I sober up tomorrow and remember that healthy people who do Yoga probably have better sex lives and are much happier than I in every respect. [Next day, back at the word-spinning sweatshop..] In truth, I have nothing against holistic living. If anything, I'm jealous. I couldn't go there now if I wanted to for much the same reasons that I'm not a vegetarian. When you fly by the brim of your mad hatter dreams, you don't turn down any dinner offerings. Besides, long ago I embraced a more chaotic, damn-the-torpedos kinda journalistic path, a sometimes dark and toxic existence. There were in fact a plethora of offerings more to my tastes. For the first time ever this year, I went through the web site and scribbled down the names of half a dozen camps I though worthy of a visit. Once in the gate, map in hand, I triangulated the locations of said camps and recorded them on the map. They were: Genital Portrait Camp, Dirty Dance Camp, The Cult of Alice (as in Wonderland), Love, Sex & Nudity Camp, and Epiphany Camp. (Sense a theme here?) How many of these camps did I successfully visit this year? Zero. At Burning Man anymore, there's just too much to do, and the more dense the schedule of events, the more I'm left feeling that I'm missing out on everything. And there's more to this than my laziness. It's a vibe thing. It's a flaw in the general plan. This whole time thing is WRONG. "Hey, I'm at 6:30 & Reason." "Come visit our camp at 2:15 & Gospel." "Were real easy to find, right at 4:20 and Evidence." Pfffflltt. From the down-to-the-minute dense schedule of events to the whole clock-based layout of Black Rock City, time is everywhere at Burning Man, and it sucks. Some sage once said civilization is time. If that doesn't make sense to you, think about what would happen to our social order, to a major city, a corporation, your day even, if every timepiece and all time-reckoning vanished. Chaos, right? Or what? One of the more liberating, almost unconscious benefits of the burn for me over the years has been its timelessness relative to the "real world." You are timeless on the playa, timeless in a place that, referenced by our short lives, hasn't changed in eons. Enter: the whole clock layout of the city. Even subconsciously, this is very civilizing. Get the What, Where, When guide at the gate. Now just try and go around without a watch. I think to myself: I'm not just a little appalled by this vessel of civilization being thrust at me. I end up abandoning it all, attending none of the scheduled events. What I do catch, I catch at random. We were schooled to think in terms of time. Time to arrive. Time to go. Time to think. We are sent home with work to be done "on our own time." We learned then, either quickly or after years of painful resistance, that not even our free time was really, wholly ours. What cruelty! What sadistic, evil bullshit. I can think of two exceptions to the wrong-headed glut of scheduling and time-reference at Burning Man. One, it is commonly understood that the ceremonies surrounding the burnings of the Man and the Temple will commence at sunset. This is humane scheduling. It's caveman simple, moon-cycle pure. On the full moon we will bleed. At sunset we burn. Second, group consciousness of when something's happening occurs often enough and is relatively inoffensive. For example, Burke hears of a pole dancing competition and encourages attendance in support of Elwyn. Elwyn knows the time. Word gets out. We all go together to watch her dance. Beautiful. No timepieces were waved in my face (not by the pole dancers anyway), and no starry-eyed, spinning inner child was harmed in the making of this moment. Thus said, I have decided to abandon all temporal structuring of this story. As of this moment, chronology is bunk. They say pre-school children have no inherent, built-in sense of time. They are time-ignorant. I say, let us be as children, if only on the playa and in the pages of this tale. -RSM The Duke of Words To Burn Afterthought: The other liberating, half-unconscious benefit of the burn is the absolute absence of money. I'm always amazed at the sight of my wallet at week's end. It's like looking at a moon rock someone stuck in your sock drawer without your knowledge. So, hooray to the Burning Hierarchy for holding steadfast to the no-cash rule. But PLEEEEZ, Larry, lose the clock layout, the clock so big you can no doubt read it from the farthest reaches of space. In this story: Scott Shuey, Camanda Galactica, Celestial Sluts, Larry Harvey, Robert Burke, Rick McKinney
Part Five: Wheat Grass with Werner This page recently dug up and dusted off in loving memory of Tom Kennedy, my friend.
© Rick McKinney |
