One Small Step at Burning Man; One Giant Step for Burning Mankind
I have been struggling with the cognitive dissonance that the Amazon rainforest is on fire while 70,000 people drive up to the Black Rock Desert for Burning Man, where the week-long festival will culminate in the burning of a human effigy.
Burning Man and its magical temporary city has always been a reminder of the impermanence of life. Putting aside the sheer amount of consumption required to make it out there, the principles of radical self-reliance, radical inclusion, and decommodification create at least a temporary oasis from the consumerist mindset, and open our souls up to all kinds of potentials for a world that could be.
This year, Black Rock City’s lessons of impermanence are no longer archetypal or abstract. Scientists say that the Amazon rainforest produces 20% of the earth’s oxygen, and the Amazon River holds about 20% of the world’s fresh water. Those of us in California remember the Paradise fires of last year when we couldn’t be outside for more than a few minutes. Schools closed. We wore n95 respirators in the house. You could see the sun, a big bright ball behind thick layers of smoke and toxins. This is our new normal. The lesson of impermanence is one small step at Burning Man; and one giant step for burning mankind.
I am not going to Burning Man this year. Maybe if the organizers pivoted somehow to “Raining Man” or “Renewable Energy Man” or even “Buy Less Crap in the First Place Man,” I might reconsider, but all of these seem unlikely.
I don’t mean to throw shade (so to speak) on Burning Man, but I do want to implore anyone going to use the burn to transmute some of the fear and pain of our real-world problems into action.
Several years ago, I went to my first burn. I had decided to go on a whim after a painful breakup and a cross-country move. I was camping with a lovely group of folks that I didn’t know super well. The night of the burn, I put on an old lacey bride’s maid dress I had picked up at my hometown Ragstock, and went out with my camp mates. Somehow in the din we got separated, and I was alone in the utter bacchanalian madness. I wandered the playa on foot, going to familiar haunts looking for my camp mates, and finally realized it was just not going to happen. Grieving for all the loss…of my friends, my relationship, and the uncertainty of my new life, I encountered an old man with a long beard holding a trident sitting alone next to a bonfire. Like a grizzled desert Poseidon, his worn eyes were transfixed by the flames.
I felt myself pulled into his orbit and sat down several feet away from the fire. In the flames I saw images of the life I had left behind. My funky old apartment, my friends, my job, and my ex-boyfriend whom I still loved but knew I couldn’t be with. I saw my own fears and anxieties and self-limiting behavior. I saw the dazzlingly ordered yet incomprehensible machinations of the universe I had yet to really explore.
And suddenly, I knew what I had to do. I got up, took off the bridesmaid dress, and hurled it into the fire. I watched the pretty vintage lace and faded plastic pearls incinerate, sending sparks shooting heavenward. I cried, then laughed, then cried some more. I prayed to the gods and goddesses of impermanence to help me find my way again.
Desert Poseidon did not look at me once, until I got up to leave.
“Thank you,” I said. He nodded slowly, and turned back to the fire.
I spent the rest of the night in a state of grace, my grief and fear having been released. I was alone, dancing and running and exploring the wonders on the playa, and it felt awesome.
Anyway, I tell this story as an invitation, whether you’re going to the playa or not, to take some of the pain that is life in our crazy fucked up world and use the fire to transmute it. The default world needs you to come back whole and healed. Pray to the gods and goddesses of impermanence — and maybe put in a good word for environmental stability, while you’re at it.
