Date: Sun, 12 Sep 1999 03:10:15 -0700 (PDT) From: lenara@scribble.com To: usa98@sito.org Subject: I'm on the road again! For those that don't know, I'm in the US again, in Portland to be more specific. After years hearing my friends talking about a great festival called Burning Man, I decided to see it by myself. After some 24 hours of flying from Porto Alegre to Portland, with lots of layovers (less than we tought though, thanks to my friend Brady's good use of brazilian "jeitinho" at the Continental boarding booth) we arrived, dirty and tired, in the city. Our friends were already in Nevada for Burning Man, waiting for us. After getting Brady's VW bus from his relatives and seeing pictures of my sister Ivana's graduation ceremony on their webTV (www.verle.com/ivana/grad) we proceeded to buy supplies for our stay in the desert. Those consisted basically of tons of water (you're supposed to drink water all times, and always piss clear) and some thai food called tasty bites that comes in handy bags that can be cooked/heated by just leaving them on the desert floor (they tasted great too, by the way, and had a good trade value :) I was also counting on the charity of wealthy americans that would certainly bring more food than they needed. I was also pretty sure that Bianca (www.bianca.org) loved me and would provide me plenty of grilled cheese. :) Of course, I turned out to grill some cheese till dawn myself at Bianca's kitchen along with veterans Brady and Jon, and serve it to the hungry crowds that danced there 24 hours round the clock. But I'm getting ahead of myself... Before we arrived at BMan we had to say goodbye to Brady's bus (and Brady's wad of money - www.sito.org/~lenara/usa99/pics/bman/byemoney.jpg) and proceed in a rental car. Apparently, we got too excited about driving and forgot to give the bus a rest, continuing to climb gorgeous hills one after another until we killed its engine from exhaustion :( :( The whole experience of Burning Man was very nice. When you arrive you're greeted by endless funny road signs that I don't really remember except maybe for "you will be tested on theses signs"... I missed the newbie lecture at the entry gate because Brady said, very casually, oozing coolness, that "yeah, we're with Bianca's". As the gateguy revered at us with awe, I missed at least a bunch of free cool stickers, and who knows what else! (hey, Brady, this is irony! don't beat me up, please! ;) After some driving around the solar system we happened to find first Bianca's, and then our camp, located at 2:15 just outside of Jupiter. (Since planets and times were already taken for location purposes, we tried to use feet and inches for times, until we realized that nobody really cared about time, with most events ocurring "at dusk" or "at sunrise" or "whenever") The little Sito/scribble camp was inhabited by Ed, Bethany, Jon, Megan, Mykle, Jane and Jesse. Next to us was Obssessive Camp, with two nice canadian guys, Lu and Greg. As I've been told, the location of the camp was carefully chosen to be near, but not tooo close to both Bianca's and the portapotties, so we would get fun and relief but not noise and bad smell :) When I first arrived I thought this was lot of planning but the thing is, when you leave Burning Man you're absolutely full of ideas about what to do next year, and with some luck 9 tenths of them will vanish with either time or the scorching sun of the playa, and only the really good and worthwhile ones will survive. Or, if you're crazy enough, you'll implement them, like the guy that handcrafted 2 thousand lights controlled by hundreds of pieces of custom hardware and buried them in a circle around the man. The effects was reeeally nice, but he worked for half a year, two months full time, on this project alone. One of the nicest things is that people all wear either beautifull costumes or nothing at all. Fortunately, Brady provided us with a full big bag of costumes. Bethany provided make-up, and everybody added creativity. I was so dissapointed when I had to dress up "normally" again to join the "real world". I was a bit embarassed about taking pictures of naked people, especially after hearing the rants about "these people that come here just for the boobs and butts". So blame me. Later I read about this proposal that anybody taking pictures of naked people should be naked him/herself. It sounded pretty fair, so I'll try it next year :) I guess among the things to try next year are: bringing a bigger brazilian flag, setting up a "trio eletrico", teaching at the Black Rock College, making cool stickers and other treats to give away, helping Brady at Gracie's Spoon, and arriving early, to cite some. One weird thing about the desert is that you don't really get dirt, except, of course, for playa dust, which is omnipresent. Well, you may frown your nose and think that that's because my standards dropped, but even when accounting a plummeting standards fall, I was still a _lot_ cleaner than I would expect. Maybe because I'm naturally oily and the desert was dry, who knows? Or playa dust maybe happens to double as dry cleaning! Ha! OK, enough crazy theories. :) This is getting too long, and since most of my memories are now envolved in a cloud of fog (either a side effect from not sleeping enough or protective subconscious blocking), I'll just trow a list of remarkable ones: - chasing the Ice Cream truck as it was a mirage in the desert - squirting drinks into peoples mouths with a big watergun at Bianca's - seeing Ed and Bethany being baptized by Megavolt's tesla coil shocking stick - freezing at night and toasting at sun - biking to the edge of the playa in the search of an ocean I've dreamed about - hunting for glowsticks at night - noticing that the "take a picture of your penis" camp had lots more photos than the "take a picture of your vagina" one - being interviewed by a clueless but good-looking radio reporter girl - watching the sunrise with the yoga sun-greeting people - wearing jumpsuits and screaming "caw-caw" most of the time - watching things burn - watching people watchin things burn - burning things - getting all sort of things from nice strangers - giving all sort of things to nice strangers - having tons of fun - meeting again my Sito friends and camping with them for 4 days at a great place Well, just to finish this I should add that on our way back we spent one night in a so-called "anarchists tree-house" in the woods. I've been told it would be good for "decompressing" purposes, as when people come back from BMan they can't really adapt themselves back to urbanity for a couple of days. I don't know if it worked or not, but I feel pretty confortable again in urbanity, especially when it consists of living in a house that belonged to a mad scientist which basement had been unradioactivised just a couple of days ago. So now I'm back to friendly Portland and its wonderful bins, where I've alrady bought more little coloured toys that can't possibly fit my bags. You know me :) I'll send more reports when I feel like it, this trip is supposed to be filled with lazyness, as opposed to last year's when I hiperactively rushed between places. Beijos for everybody, Lenara P.S. english-speaking people: I'm sure this is full of funny, weird and insulting typos. I count on your forgiveness. Don't bother to correct me, though, Ed and Brady will be happy to do it :) :) Hopefully, the typos will even add some wit and laughter to the text, as it happened before, and I'll consider myself even.