Friday morning after our sunrise Temple visit, I managed to grab a few hours of sleep before our tent got too hot. I had to get up anyway to go do my final SSV Temple Guardian shift with Anjanette. I was tired, but not unhappy—in fact I felt pretty relaxed and mellow, which was just the right space to be in for serving as a Temple Guardian. This time Anjanette was the greeter, and I was the one who “held the space”. In addition to my cool crystal Guardian staff, this time I also had a big beautiful hand-tied sage bundle that the previous Guardian gave me, which I used to smudge the whole interior space and all the doorways, as well as various guests who asked me for it. Most of the shift I stood in the middle of the interior courtyard space with my hands on the staff and my feet rooted firmly on the earth, swaying back and forth to the music a little. I felt very solemn and present and powerful. Several times random people came up to me and thanked me for holding the sacred space, which was really gratifying. At one point a shaman who was leading a workshop in our Nigredo dome (temple of primordial forces and transformation) came out and asked me to make sure to be aware of keeping things held in light because they were doing a workshop on Dark Deities and she wanted to make sure that no one would sabotage it. I wasn’t entirely sure what she meant or how to respond, but I just kept trying to project love and light and protection out around me and towards everyone who entered. Towards the end of my shift, SSV played an audio presentation built around a previously unpublished speech by Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., from his early days. It really touched me, even though now I can’t clearly remember any of the specifics. It definitely reminded me yet again though that I want to read more of King’s writings, listen to more of his speeches and study what he had to say more deeply. He was an incredible man.
After our Guardian shifts were finally over, Anjanette and I went back to our Yaboogie pod to change and chill out a bit, then eventually decided that we would go out into the city again, with the eventual goal of visiting my flags and changing the batteries. When we set out it was getting dust-stormy again, so rather than set out across the playa we decided to bike through the city. The dust conditions combined with my general lack of sleep was making me a little grumpy, but then we serendipitously came upon a camp serving shave ice and once I had some of that, my mood improved tremendously. There is very little better than having unexpected sweet cold treats in the middle of a dusty hot place! Anyway after fortifying ourselves with shave ice we continued on through the city. The dust got worse and worse, until by the time we got to my flags, it was nearly a white out. But we were no strangers to whiteout conditions at this point, so we just kept going like the blasé burners we had become. This led to one of my favorite whiteout memories: as we were struggling with the batteries, we heard the BMIR radio station camp across the Esplanade from where we were start to play “Dust In the Wind”. We sang and danced as we changed those batteries, and it was awesome.
After that we headed over to look for Angela and Liam, who were staying in a camp called “Dye With Dignity” that was part of the infamous Barbie Death Camp (I have to say I did not like the whole concentration camp aesthetic of Barbie Death Camp). She wasn’t there, so we headed over a different camp to see if we could find Chris, a friend of Anjanette’s. She wasn’t there either, so we gave up and biked back through the city towards SSV. On the way we saw lots of fun camps and a really neat art installation of hundreds of thin strips of ribbon suspended from archways of PVC pipe that you could ride your bike through (it felt like a carwash). We stopped to have “ice cold lemonade” (with vodka shots). We probably did other stuff too but whatever it was is now lost in the mists of memory. I do remember that I was getting pretty sore (especially in my delicate lady parts) from riding my bike over bumpy dusty roads, and I was glad when we made it back for dinner. There was a beautiful sunset that night with leftover rainclouds and dust in the air.
After dinner (which we had started just bringing back to our own camp chairs since sitting at the dining hall was grubbier and less comfortable) it was still dusty and windy enough that they cancelled the big art piece burn that was scheduled for that evening (Burn Wall Street was supposed to explode and burn at 9pm, but they moved it to the following night). Even so, a group of us (Josh, me, Eileen, Mark, and Anjanette) decided to go out to the Esplanade for a bit. A friend of ours (Trey, aka DJ Laetor) was spinning that night at his camp, Want It!, but not until 10:30 or so. We made plans to meet other friends there, but since it was still early we wandered around the Esplanade for a bit. It was still pretty dusty so Eileen decided to go back to SSV, but we walked for a ways looking around. We did come upon the most amazing enormous blue robot spidery spaceship tank thing (you couldn’t really call it an art car, because it wasn’t wheeled--it walked under its own power with giant thumpy robot steps. It also had a giant spoked, rimless wheel at the end of a huge robotic arm that protruded from its underside and which it planted firmly into the ground and used to lever itself around (that’s how it turned). And as if all that wasn’t cool enough, it also had two big flame cannons mounted to its back (which made it look even more like a sci-fi tank), but sadly we didn’t get to see those in action. I was amazed that a) anyone had been able to build something so huge and heavy with such beautiful aesthetics, and b) that they’d been able to transport it out to the playa and make it work.
We made our way back to Want It! and lounged around a bit until our friend Trey finally started his set. We met up with Ian and Angelique there, but I don’t think anyone else made it out there that we knew. Trey’s set was smokin’ and we joyfully got our groove on in the dusty inside dance area (which was at least a little less dusty than the outside dance area). I finally got to play with my Toroflux, and I had a great time dancing with it. I finally got enough practice with it so that I could figure out a few things about how to make it work more fluidly while dancing. Trey’s set ended around midnight or so, and Ian and Angelique and Mark all left. Josh and I went to talk to Trey and see if we could hang out for a bit. But once the adrenaline of dancing had worn off I realized that I was honestly too beat for another all-night adventure, so I decided that I would head back home to SSV while Josh went out with Trey and his buddies. (There was supposedly a big “Blue Moon” party happening at SSV anyway, which I’d wanted to check out, and I figured that if I got a second wind there would be plenty of opportunity for fun at home.)
By the time I got back to SSV there was indeed a party going on, but it wasn’t tempting enough to keep me from heading back to our Yaboogie camp and crashing out. (A girl can only party ‘til the wee hours for so many nights.)
[To Be Continued in Part 6...]
[To see more or full sized pictures, click here for the full set on Flickr]