post-pilgrimage
Am back. Am alive. Trip was good. Black Rock Desert is amazingly gorgeous. I would gladly go camp there when there's no massive event going on. (Lisa, start packing.) But massive events are good, too. I would spend the mornings building a costume and the time afterwards wandering around in finery and seeing what befell. Ended up watching Fight Club, taking a pole dancing class, climbing the giant, tippy pendulum of death, cheering for the motorized muffins, riding in the topless bike parade, listening to several really good bands that never would announce their names, marching with the Brazilian drumline, helping to tear down the info booth (power tools!), setting a new lifetime record for most days without shower, dancing until the last timber of the Man fell, thinking deep thoughts as the temple burned, thinking, "My fucking gods, that's a lot of fire," as the Belgian Waffle burned, considering the possibility that performing aerial trapeze suspended from a giant mechanical venus flytrap might be the proof and culmination of a full and glorious life, and spending a lot of time out on the rim of the city with the peace and sun or the stars in a sort of semi-retreat.
Saw almost nothing of anyone I knew. Never did find Diana. Fortuitously did see Basil's fire conclave performance (yay!), but very little of Basil for purposes of hanging out. More of the other Bostonians, actually. And of random, fun new people: Fritz, the mad German painter-psychic-DJ-actor-Indian sausage vendor; Monica, The Friendliest Person in the World; Tom, the drunken bar tender of whom I inquired, "So can you not trust a sober bar tender the same way you can't trust a skinny cook?" and whom I totally heard using this line later without attribution; Michael, who gave me an excellent idea for a cocoa casino theme camp; Al, the Georgian English professor who was generally both chill and cool; and Green-Haired San Franciscan, who told me I reminded him of a hairy gay man. Granted, this last might have been because I was in fact covered in hair at the time. See, the goodness of the trip did not extend to the return journey, I ended up spending 13.5 hours in the car to accomplish a normally 2-hour drive to the airport (naturally missing my flight), and it seems hacking off mass quantities of hair is sort of becoming my stock reaction to interminible automotive incarceration. The good news is...it's in remission. Actually, the better good news is that provided I manage to some sort of rest and reduce the current level of haggardness, the hair has the potential to look more cutely Sinead-ish and less chemo-y. Further good related to the travel debacle -- 1) people at the office seem determined to believe or pretend to believe I was really sick, 2) used airport's business center to straighten out all my registration woes after NYU rescinded its promise to let me out of work for an early class (am now registered for this crazy comp lit course, Intersections of Poetics and Cultural Theory: An Intensive in Joyce and Beckett), 3) bought Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell from the airport book shop and am quite entertained so far. The bad, of course, is: 1) entire fucking day in the car, 2) entire day and night in the airport, 3) all happy peaceful refreshment of days in the desert rather eclipsed right now by grimy exhaustion of sitting in the office knowing I have lost time just when life is getting more, not less, busy. Also, other things are weird now which might be less wierd if I were just rested and un-cranky.
But I will be going back. Oh, yes. Going back and doing things right. None of this getting in late on Thursday and leaving in the mad crush of cars on Monday. Full-out, full-time, real-camp burning next year. Bwa-ha.
Saw almost nothing of anyone I knew. Never did find Diana. Fortuitously did see Basil's fire conclave performance (yay!), but very little of Basil for purposes of hanging out. More of the other Bostonians, actually. And of random, fun new people: Fritz, the mad German painter-psychic-DJ-actor-Indian sausage vendor; Monica, The Friendliest Person in the World; Tom, the drunken bar tender of whom I inquired, "So can you not trust a sober bar tender the same way you can't trust a skinny cook?" and whom I totally heard using this line later without attribution; Michael, who gave me an excellent idea for a cocoa casino theme camp; Al, the Georgian English professor who was generally both chill and cool; and Green-Haired San Franciscan, who told me I reminded him of a hairy gay man. Granted, this last might have been because I was in fact covered in hair at the time. See, the goodness of the trip did not extend to the return journey, I ended up spending 13.5 hours in the car to accomplish a normally 2-hour drive to the airport (naturally missing my flight), and it seems hacking off mass quantities of hair is sort of becoming my stock reaction to interminible automotive incarceration. The good news is...it's in remission. Actually, the better good news is that provided I manage to some sort of rest and reduce the current level of haggardness, the hair has the potential to look more cutely Sinead-ish and less chemo-y. Further good related to the travel debacle -- 1) people at the office seem determined to believe or pretend to believe I was really sick, 2) used airport's business center to straighten out all my registration woes after NYU rescinded its promise to let me out of work for an early class (am now registered for this crazy comp lit course, Intersections of Poetics and Cultural Theory: An Intensive in Joyce and Beckett), 3) bought Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell from the airport book shop and am quite entertained so far. The bad, of course, is: 1) entire fucking day in the car, 2) entire day and night in the airport, 3) all happy peaceful refreshment of days in the desert rather eclipsed right now by grimy exhaustion of sitting in the office knowing I have lost time just when life is getting more, not less, busy. Also, other things are weird now which might be less wierd if I were just rested and un-cranky.
But I will be going back. Oh, yes. Going back and doing things right. None of this getting in late on Thursday and leaving in the mad crush of cars on Monday. Full-out, full-time, real-camp burning next year. Bwa-ha.