Stranded

Dinner
Los Angeles
Tuesday September 30, 2003
I had dinner tonight with Victoria. It's been a dozen years since we were happily married and three years since we'd seen each other. It speaks of something positive in both of us that we had a delightful time enjoying roast chicken and each other's company at the strenuously hip cafe at my hotel. It also implies something mildly humorous given that we were vegetarians during our relationship. But life moves on and I suppose and a taste for blood and warm flesh develops over time. She's a lawyer now, though no longer practicing for reasons that might be obvious to anyone who's gone to law school. Married to a lawyer, though, and happy as far as one can tell based on a friendly, engaging couple of hours spent at this upscale diner. Her mom died last year. Her sister continues at Caltech purusing things none of us can understand. Thomas the cat has passed on; Simone the cat is still a fixture. She's writing fiction and poetry daily in an octagonal room, which is something I can both empathize with and envy. It was a dinner I'm glad I didn't miss.

Soundtrack
London
Saturday September 27, 2003
The following four posts are brought to you very early in the morning by Johnny Cash The Man Comes Around, Cinematic Orchestra Every Day, and Liz Phair Liz Phair.

Who's Pulling These Strings?
London
Saturday September 27, 2003
I've stopped being surprised at the way in which things that "shouldn't" be connected inevitably are connected. I had a conversation this week with a friend who's marriage was ending after less than a year, and so I related my own story about my first marriage, which ended in less than a year. I shared how, while things undoubtably sucked at the time, it was ultimately a good thing and after time had passed Victoria and I made our peace with each other. While it's a pivotal part of my personal history it's just something that I think about much.

Well of course, less than an hour after having this conversation, I received an email from Victoria. We've not been in contact for a couple of years I'd guess. The new news was that after finishing her law degree she's now writing fiction. Thanks to Google, I discovered there are in fact a series of Victoria Donovan Mystery Novels themed with crime and passion. A review of Damaged Goods argues that "The plot has more holes than Swiss cheese! The characters, particularly, the hot shot car dealership owner are the typical 70's stereotypes. Victoria seems to end up hating herself after having a sexual experience .. all in all very poor writing!" Which all seemed a bit uncomfortable until further Internet sleuthing confirmed this wasn't her. This makes it easier to look forward to seeing her next week when I'll be in LA. Go figure.

When the Earth Was Still Flat
London
Saturday September 27, 2003
It's odd the sort of craving one gets. This is a statement which actually diverts attention from the fact that what I really mean to say is that it's odd the sort of cravings that I get. I suspect others have similar quirks but, really, I should own up to my own quirks shouldn't I? So I contacted Mark the other night who is responsible for turning me and many many others on to the brilliance of Hedwig and the Angry Inch. I really really really needed to hear The Origin of Love. Thanks to the wonders of the Internet he was able to fulfill my request and I listened to it at least six times in a row, perhaps waking up the neighbors with my vocalizing. I was compelled by this song (or more accurately, this song in the context of the Hedwig story arc) long before I understood (thanks again to Mark) that it was a musical rendition of Aristophane's speech from Plato's Symposium.

I can trace my Hedwig recharge to last week's New York Times article (likely now in the "archives") on Stephen Trask who wrote the music for the play/film. He was quoted as saying a couple of things that just struck a chord:

"Very early on I realized that the story of the world that was presented to us by the media was not actually anything that happened or is happening. The structures are fake. When I was growing up, we went on a trip out West, and there was a spot called the Four Corners, where four states come together. Out there, where they have the Grand Canyon and all these magnificent natural occurrences, people would actually drive to the Four Corners and treat it as a natural wonder, when it's only there because some guy took a ruler and made a line."

And most of all:

"Even though it's not true, you have to think of the world as being run by a conspiracy of you and your friends."

In related news, the Hedwig site tells me that Dia's glamrockstar name is "Pink Freak" and mine is "Tasty Fantasy." That'd be Dr. Fantasy to you.

Connections
London
Saturday September 27, 2003
Connecting with people is joygantic. I love meeting strangers, getting to know people I know better, and having experiences when you're just intensely in the moment with another human. Sex, conversation, collaboration, communing, and crisis can all have this element, though given a choice I prefer the first four. And, of course, the connections I value most are the ones that are durable, which is why I so intensely love my friends and family. My itinerant lifestyle means that I don't see the people I love the most as much as I might. But the absence makes the heart theory tends to ensure that when I am with these beautiful people I know it and am alert to the moment. At the same time, moving around the same places means that I have the privilege of cultivating relationships with people outside Seattle that don't have to rely entirely on phone calls and email (I have not bought postage stamps in about five years). It also means all sorts of random human encounters and engaging time, sometimes quite brief, spent with a range of characters. In the past week this has included:

• Patrick and Charlotte who invited me into their home, fed me the best meal I had in London, and made me feel like I was part of their world (which now I guess I am--that's what homecooked meals do, isn't it?)
• Lisa's friends Nick, Mark, Jai, Amy, and Tiffany (who I hope to see in Chicago when I'm next in London),
• A gentleman who's name I can't recall who dropped out of the corporate world and runs a PR consultancy from his house in Tuscany, which sounds like a gig worth emulating someday,
• A drunken bloke named Kevin who I briefly chatted up at the train station and who had no bones about sharing his view on Iraq policy which, though I was sober, seemed perfectly on target,
• Anne Marie, Nikla, and Jo who made me rethink my image of barristers
• Jarl, a young Swede working for a dot com in London that seemed to have the right attitude,
• Some woman who's name I never found out but whom, when I admired what I thought was her very funky abstract pendant, was agast that I didn't recognize it as the Christian Dior logo (big D small c) . . . this in no way fits my criteria for a connection, but was amusing and a reminder that not everybody leads with their best parts, or even knows they have them.

Lisa
London
Saturday September 27, 2003
I first met/last saw Lisa at Burning Man. A friend of Paula (the backstory is, of course, fabulous), she'd flown over from London for Burning Man terrorizing Las Vegas, Los Angeles, New York, and the Grand Canyon along the way. The Grand Canyon is no match for Lisa. I don't have a single picture of her from the Playa that does not have her with a vodka drink in hand and/or her mouth open talking, cackling, or heckling. Meet Lisa. And get out of her way lest you be run over. She brims with passion and spent the week corralling a supermodel and a rock star and turning a song into something you'll soon be watching on TV. Last night, I joined her at Cafe de Paris, a Piccadilly fixture since 1924, for Kitsch Lounge Riot. Jai, who'd I met the night I came into town, demanded R-E-S-P-E-C-T as part of an ensemble of singers who provided yet more evidence that the world is jammed full of talented, creative people and if that is not your experience of the world then you need to look a little closer

Headshots
London
Monday September 22, 2003
I just found out I'm speaking next week in Los Angeles and I was asked to "provide a headshot." I decided to provide a choice:

Room Servicing
London
Sunday September 21, 2003
I have spent all day in my hotel room, and it's been very nice. I was not really up for this trip but knew there was work that needed to be done and, really, that I needed to get out of town to hunker down, clear my head, and focus. Which is what today was about. I slept through the middle of the day and have been working on my email inbox, prepping for meetings tomorrow, and generally screwing my head on straight. I find that hotel rooms are good for this purpose.

A Friendly Reminder
Seattle
Thursday September 18, 2003
When I first joined the company I was both thankful and miserable. Circumstances required that I pay a mortgage (and thus I was thankful for an income) but my vision had been derailed by events and I was in 'prove you're worthy' mode (which made me miserable). In my first year on the job, in the split second before it would become clear to everyone that the bubble had burst, I was dispatched on a global marketing tour that, while skipping Antartica, seemed to hit every other notable spot on the planet. The drill involved flying into cities, meeting the local team, conducting an all day seminar rich in PowerPoint and technology demos, meeting with partners and potential customers and flying to the next place.

It was during this tour that I got to know Chris, a whipsmart "evangelist" whom I had drinks with tonight. More than two years ago I was walking down the street with a friend and ran into Chris--who'd just given her notice--and she told me she'd just been married to Scott (we were the first to know), and they'd soon be off to New York where Chris was joining Coca Cola's new high tech think tank. The two of them are on an amazing journey. I won't be so brash as to pretend I understand the highlights of their trip, but let me just note that living 12 blocks from the World Trade Center, cavorting with World Economic Forum attendees at the home of Coke's CEO, attending the Olympics, interfacing with Southern Culture in their move to Atlanta, and being laid off in the midst of this fully qualifies this pair as having a unique view on the world.

My hunch says they'll end up back in the Northwest; I think it's what they want. All I know is that it was an imperative to reconnect with them and among our discusson topics was their significant yard work, Chris' lust inducing Sidekick, and the fact that since we've met I've been migrating from my brain to my heart. I noted: "The Mark you got in Tokyo was different than the Mark you got in Rio." I'm fortunate, in lots of ways to be able to write a sentence like that and I don't want another two years to pass before I have this sort of conversation with them.

Not at All Joygantic
Seattle
Thursday September 18, 2003
This was going to be a post about the horrific duplicity of our President in suddenly and authoritatively declaring that there is no link between Saddam Hussein/Iraq and that whole 9-11 thing despite the fact that his PR machine has worked steadily for two years to successfully cultivate that opinion in 70% of the American populous. But as I wrote, and dredged up sources to make the case (not hard), I recognized that this really not in line with my previously stated definition of what Joygantic is about: "an overwhelming sense of hope, inspiration, playfulness, and well being." I'm sorry. I get worked up sometimes.

Better
Seattle
Tuesday September 16, 2003
A frequently invoked mantra about Burning Man describes it as a temporary community based on the principles of self reliance and radical self-expression. It's the self-expression part that gets the most airplay: amazing art blah blah blah lots of blinky things blah blah blah enormous party in the desert blah blah blah. This is true and it's a big reason 30,000 people show up in the middle of nowhere. But it is the experience of surviving in order to take in the enormous-art-filled-blinky-light-party that I think is the crucible of Burning Man. This was driven home to me this year through a multitude of small but profound acts of kindness, caring, and generosity.

My carefully calculated plans were derailed by the RV breakdown and in many ways I'm grateful for this despite the significant increase in the hassle quotient. There would be no popsicles, fresh produce, public shade porch, or air conditioned refuge when the weather turned unbearable. Instead it was instant mashed potatoes in a cup, tuna in a foil packet, following the shadow of the dome to stay out of the sun, and an rented SUV packed to the gills with all my important possessions, none of which I could easily find, some of which I never found. For some not completely understood reason I had had my campmates bring my tent to the Playa, which completely saved my ass.

My experience at Burning Man was exhilirating but on the edge. I constantly confronted both by my overwhelming desire to be there and the unfolding, uncomfortable implications of Plan B. But, really it was perfect. Which brings me to a story that embodies the most profound lesson I took away from that home to my other one.

It was Friday night--the night before the Burn--and I was in a hole. I was not (I thought) dehydrated, just exhausted beyond belief. In a deepening funk I reclined in my tent, gulped water (thinking maybe I was dehydrated) and watched fire explode across city sky to a soundtrack of uninvited techno beats. I was becoming increasingly certain I was watching The Apocalypse unfold, which was my first solid clue that I needed to do something other than lay in my tent and sink into an abyss. But I needed help.

I pulled myself upright and found Lara standing in camp in her pink Hello Kitty coat: "I need your help. I need to get my shit together. I need to get out and be with friends and I can't do it by myself." "Of course, what do you need?" "I need water and I need to find my Fez." She helped me load up on water and find my Fez (actually my replacement Fez, see below).

And it was right about then that (the other) Mark, having retreated to his own space much as I had done but with better music, emerged from his tent. "Mark, we're going out, you should come with us" said one Mark to the other. "OK, but I need someone to be responsible for my hydration." "I'll handle it," I said. I grabbed a gallon jug of water and the two Marks, Lara, Gina, and Corinne ventured out into the city.

And at some point--maybe before getting lost in the Flight to Mars Funhouse, or possibly it was after we had conversed with the various dieties installed at the Man, but I'm sure it was before Lara and Corinne horrified a crowd with their regularly scheduled, much anticipated, cathartic brawl in which Lara did not pull her punches--at some point, anyway, I was again in need of help: "Does anybody have any lip stuff?" (If this seems like a minor request you have clearly not spent the amount of time camping in the desert required to make you feel as if your lips are about to either fall off or begin gushing blood, about two days.) Within five seconds, Corinne had yanked lip balm from her belly chain: "Here honey." It was the very same lip balm I'd given to Corinne four days before when she had the same urgent need.

For me, this little tale condenses the most profound dimension of Burning Man I experienced this year, but an aspect of the happening you really can't take a picture of . . . Lara ensures I have water and a Fez and doesn't for a moment question why finding my Fez is important, I make sure Mark has water, Corinne makes sure I have lip balm and she can make sure I have lip balm because I made sure she had lip balm days earlier.

Self-reliance my ass. Burning Man wouldn't work if people didn't make the attempt at self-reliance. But it also wouldn't work if circumstance didn't drive home the point that total self-reliance is an illusion and that when we humans are deeply connected with one another, in touch with our needs and limits, unafraid to ask for help, and always ready give without expectation we are simply better.

On the Mend Spend
Seattle
Monday September 15, 2003
I can't recall being so pleased with a shoe purchase since I bought my first pair of Doc Martens years and years ago. I'm telling you, my Blundstone boots are spiffy. The boots were purchased on the ocassion of Dia and I mostly getting over our colds and embarking on a consumer frenzy that involved replacing tattered bedsheets and a broken stereo receiver and replacing belts that mysteriously disappeared somewhere between Burning Man and home. Other items apparently lost to the Playa this year include a digital camera charger, a Fez, and a straw hat. The hats were actually lost somewhere at SeaTac on my flight to LA to pick up the ill-fated Helen Lautenschlager Memorial RV. Thanks to my fine friends I was able to borrow a staw hat on the Playa and have my backup Fez delivered. Which reminds me of a story . . .

Flash-in-the-pan Mob
Seattle
Sunday September 14, 2003
I'm on board with the absurdist phenomena of Flash Mobs. Organized public silliness certainly needs to be cultivated. But something just wasn't right about the email I received last Thursday:

Time: Sat Sept 13th 10:35 AM
Place: Foot of Space Needle
Activity: Link arms in an enormous circle, hop up and down chanting 'The Doctor is in!' Disperse.
** PASS IT ON!**

Flash Mobs are interesting because of they are unexpected collective action expressing a non sequitur. Describing the activity in the call to mob robs the enterprise of fun for all considered--unless of course you're just making fun of Flash Mobs and Howard Dean in your very popular comic strip. I don't know what to think about the fact that people actually turned up at the Needle yesterday and engaged in a Halfassed Mob. It probably speaks to the deep desire of people to be part of something; I share that. But it certainly fuels my flip flopping between admiration and annoyance at the Howard Dean campaign. (Annoyance is current emotion, but that might change by the time they send me my next Howard Dean text message.)

Progress
Seattle
Saturday September 13, 2003
A dear friend--one who has been a source of immense inspiration over the past few months--suggests that I've been whiny lately. This is undoubtably true. But I'm embracing the whine. These brief flashes of whining self-pity have replaced what used to be weeks/months of depressive, circular introspection. I consider this progress.

Breakdown
Seattle
Friday September 12, 2003

I am a lousy sick person. I can summon up Zen-like calm when stranded in the desert, but when my body puts things on pause I just get cranky. After a summer that was anything but calm and low key, my worklife is now entering "the busy period." And the leaves are falling from the trees, I'm still glowing from recent infusions of unscheduled love, I'm overcome by desires to nest and make and build, and well, this is the way it is every year about this time. So I'm doing my best to look upon this cold as a symbolic and inevitable breakdown, an opportunity to grab perspective between sweaty pass outs and remember all the reasons I'm living life like I am. Reconstruction will follow.

Falling
Seattle
Thursday September 11, 2003
"The resistance to the image—to the images—started early, started immediately, started on the ground. A mother whispering to her distraught child a consoling lie: "Maybe they're just birds, honey."
via Electrolicious

Sick
Seattle
Thursday September 11, 2003

One of the very few detectible benefits of spending the day slipping in and out of achey consciouness and enduring phlegm spasms was the moment when I heard Garrison Keillor (for whom I have a very unhip soft spot) read this poem to mark the second anniversary of lots of people tragically dying and many many more losing their mind:

To a Terrorist
by Stephen Dunn,
from Between Angels

For the historical ache, the ache passed down
which finds its circumstance and becomes
the present ache, I offer this poem

without hope, knowing there's nothing,
not even revenge, which alleviates
a life like yours. I offer it as one

might offer his father's ashes
to the wind, a gesture
when there's nothing else to do.

Still, I must say to you:
I hate your good reasons.
I hate the hatefulness that makes you fall

in love with death, your own included.
Perhaps you're hating me now,
I who own my own house

and live in a country so muscular,
so smug, it thinks its terror is meant
only to mean well, and to protect.

Christ turned his singular cheek,
one man's holiness another's absurdity.
Like you, the rest of us obey the sting,

the surge. I'm just speaking out loud
to cancel my silence. Consider it an old impulse,
doomed to become mere words.

The first poet probably spoke to thunder
and, for a while, believed
thunder had an ear and a choice.

Triple S on the Playa
Seattle
Wednesday September 10, 2003

Home
Seattle
Tuesday September 9, 2003
As you drive into Black Rock City you stop at the final gate, roll down your car window, and a greeter says "Welcome Home." Like most things Burning Man, writing about this moment saps its power and makes it sound kooky and hippy-dippy if you haven't had the experience. But that's your problem. It's why writing about, describing, even showing photos of the event and place is problematic. Burning Man is an experience--30,500 different experiences this year--and no show and tell can convey the essential information that one feels out there.

BRC felt completely like home to me this year; I wouldn't have put up with the adversity I dealt with just to go to a big party in the desert. You get out of Burning Man what you put in to it, and this year I put in a lot (though want to put in more). What I experienced and took away, well, I'm still processing, but as expected, it was not what I expected.

A relatively brief list of things to remember, meditate on, and maybe write about:

• I like having blond hair (really more of a mottled animal print at this point, perhaps more red than blond). The blond hair is staying until it decides it wants to be something else.
• Not sure if it felt better to have the stuff that was in our backyard all summer setup in our camp or better to burn it.
• I lived in an outstanding neighborhood at Revered and Authority.
• The first night on Pastor Jack's Cosmic Joke Bar, exhausted, energized, surrounded by familiar faces and warm hearts.
• My one regret: being unable to paint James' effigy which was burned, with his ashes, in the Temple of Honor. Dehydration, exhaustion, and a whiteout got in the way.
• Coffee in the Cafe with Kelly and Chris, watching as the remote controlled gifting mobile couldn't give anything away to save it's life--people just kept adding to the booty.
• I've decided tutus are an incredibly flexible fashion item that demand further exploration.
• Being very comfortable with Plan B.
• Sunrises.
• Mark and I traipsing across the city, enjoying the fresh grass at Xara, delighting in the fact that we were no longer in Ridgecrest, laughing our asses off at the temporary realization that noone knows what Monet looks like and you can turn carrots into high energy plasma in a microwave oven (well, maybe it wasn't carrots . . . or a microwave oven).
• My first (and only) professional foot wash administered to woman from Tickle Camp while her partner asked if I had drugs to sell them (I did not.).
• The new energy that flowed into our camp each day with the arrivals of Paula/Lisa, Robin/Sara, Jane, Josh/Helen.
• Watching people ponder Gina's giant heads/brains.
• The drugged out woman who passed out next to our dome, threw down the water I gave her when I asked where she lived in BRC, but was eventually saved (momnetarily at least) by the good graces of the Smile Bar which conveyed her to the Med Tent.
• Being dependent in an environment that demands self-reliance, and having it all work out because I was surrounded by people who love and care for each other.
• Driving with Mark, Phil, and Corrine alternating as shotgun.
• The Eyes of God, the Spheres of Transformation, the Temple of Gravity, the giant shark, Moby Dick, the human hamster wheel, the DIY crucification installation, the Desert Flower, Draca the Dragon, the Space Cowboys mobile plasma screens/disco moving like the Pied Piper across the Playa, the Kangaroos, the BlueHouse dome and grass compound, the Roller Coaster (and the video footage of Corinne and Lara riding it), the Bayou, Conexus, Temple of the Feral Kitten . . .
• Watching La Contessa sail across the Playa and remembering last year when, for a day or so, you could still tell it was a yellow school bus.
• A superb fish taco given in exchange for my one joke ("What did the Buddha say to the hot dog vendor?").
• Seeing Daniel Glusenkamp for the first time twelve or so years while I stood atop a ladder, watching him play giant skee ball, meeting his charming girlfriend, crashing his happy hour, wanting to talk more, but, well, we'll get to that.
• Being lost in the extraordinary Flight to Mars funhouse, watching our scout Lara escape from a trap with a ball stuck in her boot, and making a Scooby Doo-like exit thanks to Corinne.
• Trading my soul for a snow cone at Necronomicone.
• Getting to know the beautiful people at Necronomicone who gave my soul away to someone named Jessica dressed as Snow White--thanks guys, my soul is now in her scrapbook with no hope of return. But Mars, Nono, Todd, Thomas, Hedra, Lisa, RJ, Sandy, Jasmine, Mike, and others who I'd know (just not their names) were extraordinary.
• Watching Justin and Randy get dressed.
• Seeing the SiniMart come to life, finally.
• Being incredibly moved by Trevor and Sara's kind words and firm hugs.
• Come to think of it, being incredibly moved at some point by all of my friends.
• Listening to Jane play her pink furry cello in Boo's dome.
• Cheese and nectarines provided by Sara & Robin just when I'd hit my limit of instant mashed potatoes.
• The night of the Burn on the Buddha Bus, meeting Seattlites and then careening across the city with Paula and Lisa who, when they move, careeen.
• T's blanket innovation on the Smile Bar and noting how Zen-like she was in the face of things not going according to her plan (but being beautiful nonetheless).
• Talking with Lisa, who made it there, had a transformative year, and who I wished I'd had a chance to talk to more.
• Sharing a Guniness with Fuzee, talking about things, James, and (again) wishing we'd had more time together.
• Semi-naked, highly educated men carving rubber stamps (with mixed success) in the dome.
• An exquisite evening/morning that involved, among other things, dancing my ass off, comandeering an art car, working a greeter shift that started at midnight, being acosted by a pack of bears, kissing a particularly nice bear, giving three bears a ride home, caring for an injured bear, and walking across the Playa at sunrise to spray paint my shoes red before I fell asleep for two hours and dove into another beautiful day.
• Thinking about Dia and knowing that this wasn't her year to be here, but it will be.
• Watching the Lara and Corinne deathmatch at the base of the Man and not being able to figure out precisely how it started.
• Hathor, the Goddess of Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll telling me not one, but two stories that were really very good.
• The necklaces currently around my neck: the bone choker from Sara and the metal heart from my bear.
• The spectacle of unpacking/repacking the rented SUV at a Casino in Reno.
• Corinne, generally, but particularly the fact that she's still using the fur bag I made and gave to her last year.
• Dancing for hours at Paddy Mirage on the night of the Burn with the Irish DJ wearing one of my EL Wire concoction around his neck.
• Paula and Lisa screaming "GET OFF MY LAND" in the midst of a whiteout while the city disintegrated on Sunday.
• Jane, Josh/Helen, Randy/Justin pitching in to make sure we moved all our trash off the Playa.
• Burning the Triple S Spiritual Service Station and being amazed at how hot a fire can get.
• Sharing a particular, really big hug with Lara.
• Giving away much of what I brought.
• Scheming with Mark F about how we could build really small cars shaped like stuffed animals.
• Nearly spent, having a conversation with Mark H on the night of the Temple Burn, and realizing we haven't had too many of these conversations but I would like more.
• Oh my, the Dollar Stores in Ridgecrest are second to none.
• Carrying expectations and letting go of them.
• Pissing clear (except once).
• Bestowing critical "don't hit me lights" on two unprepared, possible frat boys that part of me wished would be get run over by an art car . . . and receiving a gifts in return (the biggest gift being the look in their eyes that maybe the world didn't have to work exactly how they thought it did).
• Thanking the nurse who took car of my bear only to have him thank me and gush about how he'd never experienced anything like BRC.
• Paula sewing the red fur I brought for who knows what reason into a nice skirt--the perfect complement to my red bow.
• My yellow hard hat, which blinked.
• My tent, adorned with a nice thick layer of Playa, and every important thing I needed tucked safely away in a special place I could not remember.

Re-entry
Seattle
Monday September 8, 2003
I've been off Playa for seven days--physically anyway--and am still adjusting to this weird otherworld that represents my reality for fifty-one weeks of the year. I've come close to killing several people with the superhuman hugs that are the norm in Black Rock City and every night when I sleep those warm surreal dreams I remember show up to keep me company. Returning to work last Thursday was not bad at all--in fact I enjoyed being back, which I take as an excellent sign of things to come in the next year. I am lucky. One campmate was greeted at work on their first day back with a proposal to cut his salary by 40% and a neighbor from Revered and Authority returned to his job to be told it wasn't his anymore. There is a consensus among my friends that the tear in the fabric of the universe that Burning Man creates each year often unleashes pervasive wierdness and discomfort. It's kind of like anti-matter. Case in point: within 36 hours of my return Concetta broke her back. She's not paralyzed and will recover, but much of Friday and part of Saturday was spent at Harborview, watching trauma teams swirl about, watching Concetta writhe in pain on a stretcher in the ER, and generally trying to be supportive of her and of Lara, who camped out at the hospital for almost 48 hours. Meanwhile, a dear friend cried on my shoulder, Dia was sick all weekend with a cold, and some inconsiderate lout sideswiped Zippy the Wonder Car, removing his rearview mirror. All these things that will pass, of course, but if I seem a bit dopey or shellshocked, well there reasons . . .

Stranded
Ridgecrest, California
Sunday August 24, 2003

Thirty one hours ago our RV broke down in the middle of the Mohave desert.

The Ridgecrest Chevron is populated with very nice people including Denis, Kelly, Cathy, Patty, Dennis Jr., and Roger. I did not get the name of the guy with the bad teeth and the missing finger.

We have consumed vast quanities of water as it was 107 degrees today.

This has necessitated frequent trips to the bathroom, which has given us the opportunity to really get to know Herman, as we've affectionately named the cockroach in the urinal. I no longer try to drown him for sport which, anyway, I came to recognize as pointless since I'm fairly certain that cockroach living in the middle of a very hot desert simply cannot be killed.

We've learned that the engine configuartion on the Tioga Montara by Fleetwood with it's Elixir 1000 cab is particularly difficult to work with, that the replacement fuel pump and fuel pump regulator seem to working fine, but that there is some sort of vaguely understood electrical problem. The modified RV vehicle configuration is not in their computer, thus diagnosis is difficult, so mostly it's been trial and error. Someone (currently in Las Vegas) is getting back into town tonight and he is a "fast troubleshooter."

Plan B involves some sort of SUV/truck/van rental, a slimming down possessions, and a charge to the Playa.

Our day was mightily improved by the arrival of Kim and Lisa, also headed to Black Rock, also in an RV, also broken down. They are currently creeping up to Carson City to have a radiator replaced.

We have eaten twice each at Denny's and McDonalds, which have air conditioning.

You probably don't know this--we certainly did not--but Ridgecrest is just lousy with Dollar Stores. In our five visits, we purchased approximately 50 item, including a Jesus who look like Edward James Olmos, according to Mark.

Adding, inult to injury, the s key on my keyboard jut died. thi i probably a good time to wrap thing up. We have been very zen throughout thi whole thing, are lodged in a Bet Wetern down the treet and will be on the Playa tomorrow one way or another. I'm ure that there i ome leon in thi experience but right now I jut want to get the hell out of Ridgecret.