Last night was rough.  I woke up at my usual 2:30 in the morning to pee, and maybe it was the joy of porta-potties in the desert, but I felt sort of sick afterwards.  My stomach was queasy and I spent a long time lying awake in the tent hoping I wasn’t getting sick and worrying.  In addition to my normal anxiety about throwing up, I was not looking forward to having digestive issues without a flush toilet in sight.  I calmed down a bit by telling myself I could leave this morning if I really needed to.  Fortunately I went back to sleep and when I woke up this morning my stomach had calmed down.  Tom woke up before me and I dozed in the tent until it got too hot to sleep.  Then we had breakfast of Power Bars again and headed back to Playa Info for another round of computer charging and attempting to find R and M.  No luck and the internet was down, too.

Frustrated, we went back to camp for lunch and went out to the deep playa to check out the art.  On the way we stopped at the pee funnel camp so I wouldn’t have to make any more late night portapottie runs.  Finally I can pee in an empty water jug just like a boy.  We went all the way out to the trash fence and touched it just so we could say we went to the end of the city.  There was some lame art that didn’t seem to mean much of anything.  But there was also some amazing art.  One person had constructed a room of wood lattice and screen.  Inside was a bunch of felt flowers, a testament to hope and blooming even after/through loss.  Someone else had constructed a huge bamboo starburst structure that looked a bit like a porcupine.  People had climbed it, somehow.  And a woman had fallen off.  Rangers surrounded her, holding her head immobile.  A friend was with her, crying.  Other burners surrounded them in a distant circle.  I saw one person watching, standing with his palms out as though he was sending energy to her.

We also found a wooden box with colored lights, pillows and blankets inside.  There were a few people already there and we all chatted about the burn so far.  One girl talked about how she just happened to run into the people she had been looking for, and Tom said he envied her - he hadn’t run into anyone he was looking for yet.  She said to wait, it would happen.  We joked about talking to people in a box; not something that happens often.  For some reason that cracked us up.

Tom climbed on one structure that had been made from something that looked like PVC pipes and bungee cords.  He and another guy were bouncing on it when suddenly a couple of the cords snapped, just as I was talking with other women about the chances that it would break.  Tom and the other guy both fell.  Tom only hurt the little finger on his left hand, fortunately.  But it was bad enough that we called it an afternoon and headed back to camp for ibuprofin and ice.

We did another round of Center Camp, where Tom finally ran across some of his coworkers.  After we had dinner we went out to their camp.  They were a friendly and welcoming bunch.  We watched some short films created and produced in 48 hours, here in the desert.  Some of them were inspiring, some incredibly lame.  One of the women we met was totally adorable and I wished for the nerve to flirt with her.  Instead I just admired from a distance.  Considering she was dating one of his coworkers, I figure that was smart too.  Unfortunately my knees were killing me after all of the biking we did and then standing around while we watched the films so I needed to call it an early evening.

It took Tom a bit of arguing to agree to stay in with me, but I didn’t feel safe sleeping alone in the camp without anyone who knew me around.  Learning to use the pee funnel was complicated but very beneficial.

Several times today it hit me - Burning Man is a whole other world.

Posted on August 31st, 2006 by Kat
Filed under: General