Intermezzo: The Decomp Wall

So yeah, I hit my decomp wall yesterday. Seriously. As in huddled in a corner sobbing for an hour. Basically, all the stress came tumbling back into my life in full force, effectively reminding me that I although I can take a vacation from it, the stress always returns.

So my task now is to figure out a way to stop lower case d dealing with it (that is, coping) and actually Capital D Deal with it (living in such a way that the stress is minimized in the first place). That should be easy, right? RIGHT? C'mon...lie to me people! Sigh. So much work to do...

OK, now back to your irregularly scheduled BMan adventure show.

Chapter 3: "Welcome Home!"

That's what they say to you when you get to the Greeter Station. Cheesy, huh? Yeah, I thought so, too. Now I get it. But lemme back up a bit...

It's a long, slow drive from the highway to the gate; a mile or so at 10 mph. It felt like forever. We had to wait in a short line - maybe 5 vehicles ahead of us - for about 20 minutes. Because it was the Saturday before the event opened to the public, everyone needed to have their names checked against an early arrival list. Then the gate workers had to do cursory searches of each vehicle to make sure there are no freeloaders or hangers-on trying to get in free. With ticket prices averaging $250, it's no surprise.

We were waived through without being searched, and we drove the slow mile to the Greeter Station. To our right there were signs placed Burma Shave style, containing quotes and snippets of poems about hope and fear - this year's theme. My favorite was the Bene Gesserit Litany Against Fear, from Frank Herbert's Dune:

I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past, I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.

It was quite haunting.

Our next stop was the Greeter Station where a man named "Naked Bruce" welcomed us home, gave us program guidebooks, a map, and hooked us up with our placer, who would guide us to the patch of desert which we'd inhabit for the next 10 days. There is a tradition that first-timers - Virgins - get out and ring a giant cowbell. I told my co-pilot that if he outed me, I'd flay him alive. Those of you who went to Hampshire will understand from whence my aversion public bell ringing arises. I didn't ring the bell.

Finally we were inside. Really, truly inside. We drove along the outer ring at a devastatingly slow 5 mph (prevents dust from kicking up) and met our placer at the 3:00 keyhole. Our address was 3:00 and Brave, but that was only a general pointer: 3:00 can encompass BOTH sides of the road, in BOTH directions. Our "real" address was 2:50 and Brave, Man-side.

The placer took us to our plot: a 100' x 150' chunk of glorious desolation. We were the first of our group to arrive! We walked the perimeter with the Placer, and he pointed out our neighbors: Zu on the 2:45 side (whom we knew and were sharing a gennie with), Nosefish on the 3:00 side, and the Damn Fucking Texans behind us at 2:50 and Anxious. Across the street from us were the Energy Riders.

It felt GREAT to be out of the van, and even better to FINALLY have my feet on the Playa. GOD DAMN, I'd made it. I was astonished at my own audacity for having come. I was proud at the risks I had to take to get there. I felt like a million bucks.

There wasn't much around, seeing as it was Saturday, but Jacob told me that it would start filling in a little more each day and soon you wouldn't know it was the same place. In fact, he told me that the city changed SO much over the course of the week that it wasn't uncommon for landmarks to change and for people to get lost trying to get home, stoned, at 3 am. Luckily for us, we were right next to the 3:00 keyhole, and therefore it would be easy for us. He turned out to be absolutely right. Ahem. Not that I would know first hand or anything...

The remainder of our Saturday-arriving campmates showed up about a half hour later, and we immediately got to work unloading the van. Sunset was at 7:40 ish, and we had a lot of work to do before then: we had to get our shade structure up, our kitchen at least nominally set up, and our own tents/shade structures up before dark. This was especially true since our gennie wasn't arriving until the next day - it was coming up via the Zu crew - and therefore we had no power that night. All told, it took us an hour and a half to unload the truck, and our shade structure - an army parachute once used for cargo drops - was up within three hours.

After the sun set, I EL wired my bike and then went riding the Playa with four campmates - all virgins like myself. We rode the Esplanade (the innermost street, facing in toward the Man), then cut across the Playa back to our camp. A lot of the camps were still being built, and a lot of the art installations were still works in progress, but there were lights and music and a buzz of excitement that filled the air. It was truly magical to ride across the desert in the darkness, a cool wind in my hair (Yep, channelling the Eagles... God I'm a geek), stars so much closer than I've ever seen them.

I had worked my body harder than day that I'd worked it in many MANY years. I hadn't eaten anything except some cheetos and a coke since breakfast. I was riding a bike (much to the dismay of my very ample ass) for the first time in a decade or more. I was nearly 1000 miles away from everyone and everything that represented security and safety. And I'd never felt better or more comfortable in my skin that I did at that moment.

I hollered a giant YEEEEEHAAAAAWWWW into the night, as I tore across the Playa with my new friends. They all hollered one in return.

Dorothy was right: there's no place like home.

Chapter 2: The Playa

Grey-green. Mustard. Ochre. Sienna. Umber. Occasional ribbons of rust and cinnamon layered in the striated ancient hills. Miles and miles of muted earth tones contrasted against the blue of a late-summer sky and the industrial grey of well worn asphalt.

I was aching inside. Fear. Sadness. Visual boredom. Around the last bend we lumbered in our overladen mothership. And there she was in all of her blinding glory: The Playa.

Four hundred square miles of the flattest, most arid, most desolate earth known to man. An ancient and all-but-extinct lakebed, it gets impassably muddy with winter rains, but it never holds water for long. So arid and alkaline the rest of the year that nothing - no plants, no animals, no insects - inhabit it naturally. So flat that land speed records have been made and broken here. So white in the distance, that it stung my eyes to look directly at her.

My fear and sadness fled. I could do this.

All of a sudden I couldn't sit still in my seat. I started bouncing up and down and giggling like a child. My co-pilot, for all his opaqueness (opacity isn't the right word here) and sarcasm, understood completely, and actually seemed to take some delight in my giddiness. It was his third Burn and he knew exactly what I was feeling. I took comfort in his sudden openness.

I rolled down the window to breathe the day in. It was nice to feel real atmosphere after having spent so many hours with the air conditioning running (not that I wasn't TOTALLY grateful for it...) It was hot outside, but not uncomfortable. High 80s, low 90s maybe. In the distance, the Playa receded into nothing. There was no horizon where earth met sky. The shimmering heat created a mirage that made it seem as if the world just ended in blue.

It was 11 miles from the NV Route 447 turn-off to the Playa entrance. I couldn't get there fast enough. Of course, it was particularly slow going along this stretch, partly because of the relative sizes of the vehicle and the road, and partly because of the police presence - unseen, but very much there - waiting to enforce the 35 mph speed limit. Our route bypassed the two nearby towns - Empire and Gerlach - so we didn't have to slow WAY down, but discretion en route to Burning Man is definitely the watch word. Don't give 'em ANY reason to pull you over.

After a couple of miles, I saw small breaks in the whiteness: dark smudges in the distance. In a flash I realized that THAT was Black Rock City!! I was astonished at how the desert dwarfed the site. Granted the city was barely formed, but even still....

When we finally turned onto the playa, we had to close the windows as well as the vents. Playa dust is a fine powder, slightly...well, slightly greasy to the touch, and it sticks to everything. It doesn't come off easily, either; you have to use vinegar or lemon water to cut the alkalinity. I couldn't resist just keeping the window down a few extra seconds to take a good deep breath. I wanted to smell the playa, to breathe her in. Yes, in the back of my head, I knew I'd be smelling the dust for 10 days (and then some, if my lack of motivation to clean my gear is any indication...). But at that moment, I needed it. It was like I was breathing life back into my Self.

And Now For the Narrative. Chapter 1, anyways...

I've been trying to write this for days now. The Trip to Burning Man. My great mid-life adventure. I've come to the conclusion that I suck at writing things down. My thoughts rush so fast and I just can't keep up (you'd think I'd be a better typist by now, but you'd be wrong).

On top of that is the fact that this whole experience defies fucking description. The phrase "there are no words" is more appropriate than you know. It reminds me of that stupid SNL skit "Mango": "Can you know the mighty ocean? Can you lasso a star from the sky? Can you say to a rainbow... 'Hey, stop being a rainbow for a second'? No! Such is Mango!" Yeah. Like that.

But the writing needs doing, and I'm the only one up for the task. So here goes...

...

Those of you who know me, know that I have my, er... obsessive streak. Y'know, the streak that causes me to research 23 different computer bags before choosing one. Mmm Hmmm. THAT one. Well, the trip to Burning Man brought out that streak in SPADES. I obsessed for months (in between studying for the Bar) about this - clothing, survival gear, how to deal with dust, with the monthlies, what kind of food holds up in the heat, what size ziplocs were best, what kind of EL wire to put on my bike, advance demoopifying. [n.b.: MOOP means "matter out of place" - it's basically anything that isn't naturally on the playa, which means everything. Because of the Leave No Trace ethic required by the Bureau of Land Management and wholly embraced by the BM Org, anything that is brought in must be either burned or packed back out. So, much effort is put into minimizing MOOP potential - no feathers, no shelled nuts, no excess packaging, and so forth.]

Well, for once it paid off. Not that my excessive planning and obsessing was totally necessary; There were people in our camp who weren't remotely as prepared as I was, and they did just fine. But I admit that I REVELED in the knowledge that I was capable of doing for myself - that I wouldn't be a burden on my campmates. Pretty proud of myself when people assumed I was a two or three year burner! SCORE!

The Drive: I helped co-pilot our camp's mothership (a 26' Penske van loaded with 2 tons of water, an assload of bio-diesel, food, and all our camp AND personal gear) with, Jacob (aka "Perfect" or "the Angel" or AJ, depending on which playa name he's going by at the moment), one of the most marvelously opaque individuals I've ever had the good fortune to know. He drove, I navigated. It was all told about 17 hours through southern WA, central OR, northeastern CA, and Northwestern NV. In other words, a lot of time to spend pondering what's forthcoming.

I did my best to leave my expectations behind. That's the advice I got, read, heard, saw time and time and time again. Don't have any expectations. Don't have any expectations. My infant Buddhist practice has placed much emphasis on leaving expectation behind, so I took the advice. My only expectation was that I would have AN experience, but I was open to the myriad forms that experience might take (including that I could hate every fucking minute of it). Ultimately, I took the attitude that if could do what I've done for the past three years with no break, I can live through ANYTHING for 10 days.

Still, a lack of expectation didn't prevent me from feeling dread like I've never felt the closer we got to the Playa. For perhaps the last hour of the drive, I simply wanted to cry. Just sob horribly. Undoubtedly some of that stemmed from my co-pilot: his edges were showing. Or something. I don't know what it was. All I know is that every time I made an observation about anything, he responded snidely. In retrospect, I don't know that it was snideness or sarcasm; he's an odd, odd soul, and I'm not convinced he was doing it purposefully. I'm not convinced that he wasn't either. Regardless, I did finally call him on it and then I shut up.

So there was that. And the fear of the unknown. And the length of the drive. And the knowledge that I'd not be sleeping in a real bed or having a real shower for over a week. Oh yeah, and PMS. Niiiiiice. I really did have to work not to cry that last hour. I tried parsing it out in my head as it was happening. The best I could come up with was this: Buddhists often talk about the very mixed emotions they experience when they meet their root guru. They know they are tapped in to someone and something special, but also someone and something that will cause their shit to be laid bare. This is daunting and not terribly comfortable. That's about how I was feeling those last hundred or so miles through scrub brush and sage. I wanted to be excited, but I wasn't. I was horribly unhappy.

Then we rounded the last bend in NV Route 447, and I saw it: the Playa.

Prologue: Last Things First

I'm avoiding decomp. I don't want to return to default, and yet I haven't been able to synthesize the experience enough to weave it in to default. Or maybe I'm just clinging, I don't know. It's hard to let go of a place and time in which you feel completely at ease.

For a little over a week, I felt essentially no stress. D'you know how liberating that is? To not feel the grinding of fear and worry and pain? For the first time in uncountable years I was actually at ease. But nature abhors a vacuum, so the physical manifestations of stress are flooding back in like Barbarians over (under, through) a medieval wall. Headaches? Check. Stomache pain? Check? Nausea? Check. Body aches? Check. All disappeared while I was out there in the dust. All have returned in force.

My friend LingLing and I talked earlier this week about living in integrity: that cellular/spiritual knowledge that we're livin' right, livin' as we're supposed to. Is this some sign that I'm NOT? And if not, what do I do? The default world situation I'm in is not one that I can extricate my Self from quickly - I have massive debt to pay and I will do so willingly. I borrowed, now I must return. And I really do want to practice law. I want to be an instrument of social justice and order. I want to use my powers for good, not evil. It's a matter of finding the balance between what I need to do to regain solvency and what I WANT to do to live in integrity.

I know that the culture of the playa - it's generosity, it's economy, it's openness - isn't really sustainable out here. But I feel like parts of it are reproduceable and I want to not only carry those parts with me, but foster them to the greatest extent I can. Am I just wishing on a star? Am I clinging to a good, spirit lifting time? Or is there really a path out there on which I can do this...?