Burning Man 2003
A Bellinghamster in the Black Rock City
By Troy McFadden
The cutting edge of cultural, technological, and planetary
evolution
Pirate radio stations and slap-dash newspaper presses disseminated
the Word of Truth throughout our city-state while the Intergalactic
House of Pancakes and the Pizza Sluts helped to feed the masses.
Huge gyroscopes rotated under the sun and stars while gladiators
battled to the blissful end inside of giant steel cages. NASA
engineers created sonic booms from re-wiring old jet engines. The
inventor of MIDI served minty cocktails from an igloo. Drag queens
danced with bikers at raves in the joyous celebration of
equanimity. Skydivers jumped into the fray from the airplanes (and
no doubt spaceships) that circled above, watching the entire
spectacle with ecstatic detachment and involvement both, for one of
our few rules is the “No Spectators” clause: One is a participant
in the flowering of our world or not officially there at all…
42,000 of the most beautiful, radiant, creative, and intelligent
beings on earth (and no doubt some life forms from other planets as
well) recently gathered in the middle of the Nevada desert to
create “Black Rock City”- -the temporary community that
spontaneously forms and then dissolves, a miniature world of
technological innovation and loving hearts that was indeed “Beyond
Belief,” with every manner of expression except lower charka
negativities flowering up from each crack in the earthen floor of
this previously parched and barren region.
Simply put, the annual Burning Man gathering is the most
magnificent gathering of human beings in the known history of the
earth. It was if we projected our collective subconscious and
superconscious minds onto a blank screen and then frolicked in it
for a week together, basking in the awe and wonder of Life in all
of its magnificence and glory. It is a Tom Robbins book sprung to
life on the empty canvas of an ancient lake bed that is “The
Playa”, a dusty otherworldly environment in the middle of nowhere
and at the center of everything, one poetic page at a time being
flipped open by the desert wind, revealing the next step of a
surreal plotline with all the magic inherent in the higher realms
of our universal theatre.
Amazing
transportation devices roamed the playa, offering the cities’
residents passage to the castles and roller rinks, temples and
trapezes that helped form our circular universe. Some enjoyed
riding on the back of robotic dinosaurs, others inside the belly of
a giant whale or on the wings of a large insect. Still others set
sail on giant motorized galleons that housed full bars and
nightclubs, cruising through the dust storms of our beloved city
like ghost ships arriving from space, a space so near that it
seemed to almost be bowing to humanity by lowering itself onto our
dusty base, with an amazingly bright Mars auspiciously leading this
galactic act of veneration and respect.
Beneath
the glow of these, our traditional heavens, we created another
paradise, a society fueled with mind expanding elixirs, massive
amounts of love making (much of it public), and “gifting”, the
noble giving and sharing of all resources, as no money is allowed
to be exchanged, one of the other few rules that we collectively
agree to.
Largely naked or else adorned in the most fantastic expressions
that textiles have had the pleasure to be associated with, we
honored each other’s beauty and magnificence openly and fully,
those of us who have worked enough on the conscious amplification
of our evolution to be willing and able to do so. We dropped the
charades, the masks, the walls and shields that we have been
encultured and encrusted with for far too many eons and raged,
raged against the dying of the light.
This
beautifully bizarre prototype of a post apocalyptic, or at least
post-technological, patriarchal world, was infused and fueled with
the best resources that a country rich with material wealth has to
offer, brought forth by citizenry who are blessed with spiritual
affluence as well. The very best of America was poured forth and
put on display-our creativity, optimism, generosity, and
openness.
This
was “us”-a healthy limb from the newest branch on the human
tree-showing the world what all of it’s technology is really good
for-delight, merriment and service rather than manipulation,
control and oppression-and then finally, in a brilliant act
reflecting the Buddhist wisdom of impermanence and non-attachment,
we burned our creation down to the ground, leaving nary a trace of
what happened in our town, our hearts, our minds, or our souls for
the less enlightened to use against us.
As
wonderful as Bellingham is, I am hereby claiming Black Rock City,
Nevada as my new hometown. See you there next
year!
copyright
2003