The night of the burn arrived and it was really the first night Chris and I wandered out into the camp together. We'd always done different things and pursued our own paths, often with one person staying and watching over our stuff, but usually just two different people with two differing agendas.
The main thing, the big reason, was that this place was just too huge to go slogging around on foot. Chris couldn't bring himself to steal a bicycle. He just couldn't. No matter my arguments for the morality of common acceptance of the practice. It bothered him too much. Chris is a vegan, too. It's not so much that his morality is better than mine, its more like he actually follows his, even when it plainly contradicts his narrow self interest. What he has a hard time doing is differentiating between following rules because of self-denial and following rules in defiance of DQ because you are afraid of social consequence. So I take it back. I am not more immoral just because I break the rules constantly and gleefully. Anyway, because of Chris's strict interepretation of "Thou Shalt not Steal" and his refusal of my marxist dictum that all property is theft, we mostly went our seperate ways. Me speeding off on bike, him near-sightedly trudging the dusty paths, far distances out from the center. Also, we did have differing agendas. They have meetings and symposiums and scheduled events at Burning Man that are interesting to a geek like Chris. It turned out that there was a whole catalog of high-minded discussion of Chris's doctoral subject, the effects of hallucinogens on consciousness. He had an entire schedule to follow of places to be and things to see, and some old friends to converse with. And in his off time, he volunteered at the various centers of aid for those coming down off bum trips. Not only is Chris interested academically in the trips and doses people report, but he's a genuinely empathetic and kind person and perfect for coming down off a bum trip. Not that I'd know. I've never had a bum trip. So the night of the burn it felt special to go walking out toward the big gleaming green man, the centerpiece of our reality for the week, with Chris. Taking it at his pace and slowly observing the details I usually zoomed past, it was a pleasant enough start to an interesting evening. Interesting, to say the least. I remember a few details about the burning itself. We got to stand in a fire lane with a clear view of the whole thing because I sorta befriended the poor schlub charged with keeping it clear. Something I wouldn't ordinarily think all that much about but Chris commented upon as we were walking the long road back home, exploring sections of the circles we didn't ordinarily see, making our long journey out to "J" or "Jungle" as it's called. Talking, tired, somehow content but also missing something. It helped to have a fellow misfit to roam the sidelines while the raucous party went on all around, but it wasn't exactly 100% satisfactory - Chris and John, befrienders of schlubs the world over. I'd had slightly higher hopes - setting out. There are celebrities in every movement, and there was this one group, a camp called "fuzz camp" that was pretty well known and "up there" in the circular hierarchy of burning man. It just so happened that I knew these guys fairly well... We didn't hang out much together, but they live a couple blocks from me in a town of 162 (give or take) and I'd reasonably hoped for a bit of shirt-tail relative conviviality, but I pretty much felt like cousin eddie busting in on the party. Geeky old white guys are a dime a dozen at BM and it burns an iconoclast to blend in so well and be thusly facilely dismissed. Ah heck. Truth is, I'm just not that good at inserting myself and neither is Chris. And so we trudged. Tired, Thirsty. We came upon Math Camp. Now, I'd been kinda curious about math camp. It actually seemed like a cool place to hang out if you like geeks -- and I love geeks. I've always hung around geeks. I'm not really a geek myself, I can't quite keep up when the vocab gets esoteric and the logic chains convoluted, but just hanging on the perimeter while its happening is for me like normal people listening to a symphony. Except I do get to interject a comment, an insight, an idea now and then. And my input is actually helpful! I can't explain it. But suffice it to say that if anybody deserved a warm welcome at math camp, Chris and I did. Only thing is, there wasn't nobody home at math camp. Everybody was back at the big party central, boogey'in down no doubt. Even the guys from math camp were bigger partiers than us. But that was ok. Because these guys were smart enough to figure out how to have that precious commodity, ice, and a full bar. All lit up with empty barstools and a beckoning atmosphere about it. Chris might be too moral to ride a stolen bike, but he wasn't too moral to drink a tall stolen margarita. Even he knew without me arguing that he was deserving of math camp generosity. Chris is like, an uber-geek. I had a problem with my well once, that I described to him and next day he gave me a wad of wires and ciruitry and said, just wire this in series with the switch. With our cold drinks in hand, the rest of the wallk home was much more pleasant. The sounds of distant partying more sootheing. When we got back to camp, we personally inspected every crapper and made sure each had clean extra roles of toilet paper, and Chris retired shortly for the evening, and I made a big campfire with all the wood I'd brought from home and hadn't used, and ate the rest of the bag of mushrooms Chris had obtained from some one of his Psychedelic Consciousness Investigators. Yeah, that was a nice night. Many dreams and visions of applying this way of life, this free and artful experimentation with people and shelters. Do good ideas propogate in a populace? Independent of what people watch on tv? That night it was an open question. The following years since it seems less and less likely. But then, encouragement comes at the unlikeliest places. Three nights ago, I was at my bro's, doing a little trimming. A hippy girl there told me that she goes to Burning Man every year. I mentioned I'd gone once and stayed in a SIP A-frame and our conversation when thus: Hippy Girl (Named "Keesha"): "Yeah, I've seen those. They are real nice." Me: "What do you mean you've seen those?" Keesha: "They have a whole camp of like 15 or 20, and there's others scattered around. They're real nice and cool in the heat." Me: "What?? How did they get that idea?" K: "Some guy built one in 2007, and a lot of people liked 'em and they've been a growing thing ever since." Me: "That was ME! I built one, I called it the Iconoclastic TP, and I had no idea anybody built any since then." K: "Dude! You're like, famous. You should go see them next year. You know, this year's Burning Man theme is Evolution." Me: "Maybe I should." Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
