Homesick
I'm having Burning Man flashbacks tonight. It is making me sad enough to cry. I am awfully homesick.
Critical Tits was far different this year. There was no perimeter. It was out in the open desert and there were tons of men and cameras around and not a ton of beautiful women. I had raved about it to Nicole and Sheryl (Cheryl?) saying how it was just the best fucking girlie time I've ever had and it really turned out quite different. On the ride in, we'd seen many crosses on the ground.
"Art?"
"I dunno, let's check it out."
We walked over to what was around 3,000 little, white crosses on the ground. Each one had a picture (or a placeholder) of an American soldier on it, their date of death, and the circumstances of that death. These soldiers had all died in the Middle East. They were in chronological order and there were so many. Thousands of human beings with families, friends, childhood keepsakes, spiderman pillowcases, favorite foods and favorite coffee shops...people that went wading in the ocean and accidentally got their pants wet...people that have had their heart broken...people who were bullied in school...people who were shy and people that were loud and silly...people with mommies.
We walked through the crosses separately...each of us stopping at random to read of a death or two. By total chance, I stopped at my birthday from last year. Six people had been killed when their convoy was bombed. Back at the first of the crosses a man began screaming and crying.
"Why, God? Why do you kill our brothers? So many men!"
He would walk a few feet, stop, sob and scream some more, and then do it again. The man was clearly using alternative substances. He wailed and cried and my heart went out to him, but I felt apprehensive. When two other men approached him and hugged him and sat with him, I felt foolish for not comforting him.
We three converged once again at the first of the crosses. There was a book & pen and we each kneeled and cried and wrote. We then found our bikes and rode away with an entirely foreign aura about us. We rode in as beautiful, bare-breasted women, ready to party and be well-worshiped, but we rode away as, what? Sad American women? Ineffectual liberals? Informed burners? How can I describe it accurately? All those dead soldiers. So much death.
But then, at burning man, on the playa, with that 40,000-person family...so much life. So much living.
Critical Tits was far different this year. There was no perimeter. It was out in the open desert and there were tons of men and cameras around and not a ton of beautiful women. I had raved about it to Nicole and Sheryl (Cheryl?) saying how it was just the best fucking girlie time I've ever had and it really turned out quite different. On the ride in, we'd seen many crosses on the ground.
"Art?"
"I dunno, let's check it out."
We walked over to what was around 3,000 little, white crosses on the ground. Each one had a picture (or a placeholder) of an American soldier on it, their date of death, and the circumstances of that death. These soldiers had all died in the Middle East. They were in chronological order and there were so many. Thousands of human beings with families, friends, childhood keepsakes, spiderman pillowcases, favorite foods and favorite coffee shops...people that went wading in the ocean and accidentally got their pants wet...people that have had their heart broken...people who were bullied in school...people who were shy and people that were loud and silly...people with mommies.
We walked through the crosses separately...each of us stopping at random to read of a death or two. By total chance, I stopped at my birthday from last year. Six people had been killed when their convoy was bombed. Back at the first of the crosses a man began screaming and crying.
"Why, God? Why do you kill our brothers? So many men!"
He would walk a few feet, stop, sob and scream some more, and then do it again. The man was clearly using alternative substances. He wailed and cried and my heart went out to him, but I felt apprehensive. When two other men approached him and hugged him and sat with him, I felt foolish for not comforting him.
We three converged once again at the first of the crosses. There was a book & pen and we each kneeled and cried and wrote. We then found our bikes and rode away with an entirely foreign aura about us. We rode in as beautiful, bare-breasted women, ready to party and be well-worshiped, but we rode away as, what? Sad American women? Ineffectual liberals? Informed burners? How can I describe it accurately? All those dead soldiers. So much death.
But then, at burning man, on the playa, with that 40,000-person family...so much life. So much living.