Blog (Irregular Reports From the Front)

I’ve been super quiet on social media of all kinds lately (because reasons, but that’s not the point of this post). I’ve just hit what really feels like a big life crossroads, although I’m still mired in the middle of it so it’s hard to say what will stick in the long term and what won’t. But even so I just had to write this story down for posterity. What story you ask? Why, the story of my journey into handpan-land. What’s a handpan? You ask? And well you might. A handpan is a musical instrument that is vaguely related to the steel pan, but is convex instead of concave and is played with the hands (actually, the fingers) rather than with mallets or hammers. It is made of hammered steel and looks a lot like a metal turtle shell or UFO. Go look up “handpan” on YouTube and you’ll see a zillion videos, of which my current favorite of the moment is this one (but believe me there are 10,000 more). They’ve only been around since the year 2000 and there aren’t very many of them in the world (though more and more people are learning how to make them and there is a very passionate community of players.

(Let me digress for a moment and say that I am by no means anywhere close to a trained musician or even a drummer, although many years ago I did play darbukka in the UCSB Middle East Ensemble and I still have several hand drums which I enjoy occasionally fooling around with. These days I spend my creative time as a writer and artist, not so much as a musician: the only instruments regularly in my life have been my kids’ piano, violin and cello.)

Anyway, my recent journey into handpan-land (say that three times fast...it will make you giggle!) was like falling into a whirlpool full of fizzy water, one that lifted me up rather than sucking me down. (Anyone remember the fizzy lifting drink scene from the original Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie? Yeah, soaring and gleeful like that, but without the threatening fan at the top waiting to chop me up into pieces...for now at least!) But it’s also been a crazy ride on the serendipity train. Everything that has happened to me so far on this journey has felt like an incredible lesson in both manifestation, and what my Jewish friends and family call “b’shert” (which is a Yiddish phrase that means “meant to be” or “destiny”).

The journey began in the midst of grief and fear, during a depressive episode brought on by some PTSD trigger stuff related to my cancer diagnosis. (Cancer, the gift that keeps on giving, even 23 years into remission....sigh.) Anyway, during this struggling blue funk time, all I could do was sleep or play brainless little games on my phone or stare glumly at the internet. One day while glumly staring I noticed a video posted on Facebook of some people playing a Middle-Eastern flavored song in the middle of a forest (“Arabesque” by Aikyo). There were these weird metallic UFO drum things in it that made me perk up and look closely at the video...even through my funk I was immediately intrigued and interested. What were those crazy looking UFO things? The sounds they made were incredible! It looked like so much fun to play! I wanted to find out more. I wanted to play one, right now.

A bit of creative Googling later and I found out the metal UFOs were “Hangs” (the original Swiss-made“sound sculpture” that led to the proliferation of similar instruments that most people now call handpans). That led me to handpans as a category, and to an overwhelming (yet delicious) variety of YouTube videos, Bandcamp albums, blog posts, and Facebook groups, as well as the handpan.org forum. I quickly learned that, much to my disappointment, I wasn’t going to be able to just waltz down to my local music store or pop on to Amazon.com to buy myself a handpan to noodle around on--oh no. These were new, rare, expensive handmade instruments with way more demand than supply, and they were nearly impossible to come by. :( Clearly, finding a handpan of my own to play, and learning how to play it, was no simple thing; I would have to be patient, determined, creative, and committed. I would have to passionately want it. 

But I did. Oh, how I did. I couldn’t stop thinking about handpans, listening to handpan music, and imagining myself playing one. As the days went by and my handpan obsession continued I felt better and better, less depressed, more excited and joyful...and that was just from listening to handpans! What might happen if I actually got to play one? I signed up on everybody’s mailing lists, cruised eBay and the internet, and started asking musician friends to watch out for me. I found a charity auction for a gorgeous handpan by Saraz, a US maker, on the Saraz website and after much anxious hemming and hawing, decided I would bid on it...but that auction quickly skyrocketed out of my league and I didn’t even come close to getting it. But I remained undeterred. I would manifest one, somehow.

The next serendipity that came my way was a friend’s reaction to that Aikyo Facebook video which I had reposted, which was something like “oh, you like handpans? You should talk to my friend, he’s super into all things handpan. His shop is just up the way in Santa Rosa. I’ll introduce you.” So a week or so later she set up an email introduction between me and her friend Colin (if you are knowledgeable about handpans, which I have just become, you’d recognize that name...Colin Foulke is a micro-celebrity in the handpan subculture as both a talented player and maker of handpans, and is considered one of the “elders” of the community.) I decided to be brave and wrote him an intro email babbling about how I had just found handpans and was super obsessed by them, and he very kindly invited me to visit him in his shop. So last week (this is just a little over two weeks after I had first discovered the existence of handpans), I got to tour Colin’s workshop and see how the sausage was made, so to speak, not to mention spend a couple of hours with an incredibly kind and talented player who was nice enough to put up with a barrage of eager excited newbie questions and even let me touch and play my first handpan. (Ok, I admit it, I teared up when I first heard one “in person”, and not just because Colin was playing it...but because up until that point, having only seen videos or heard recordings, the *feel* of a handpan and the vibrations it put out hadn’t quite been real for me. Colin made that instrument start singing and suddenly I was more than a little verklempt.) Anyway, after visiting Colin and touching the “real thing”, I was even more determined that this was something I wanted to play, someday, somehow. Colin recommended I connect with his friend Judith Lerner, who lived nearby, and that she might be open to giving lessons and could maybe even help me on my quest to find myself a pan.

I came home dazed and delighted, and that evening, I sat around the living room watching handpan videos while telling Josh about the exciting day I had just had and bemoaning my lack of handpan. Yes, I knew I was going to have to be patient, yes, I would keep the faith and keep looking, but why couldn’t I have a handpan NOW? Dejected but still feeling better than I had in weeks, I decided to check in on all the maker sites I had bookmarked one more time before bed....

...and there on the Saraz site was a flash sale listing. It was almost midnight my time, and close to 3am their time...and as I excitedly refreshed the page to show it to Josh I noticed that the video they’d posted had changed. They must have been putting it up right as I was looking. So I emailed them asking if I could buy the pan, and then, oh then, gentle reader, I had to go to bed and await an answer. I had a hard time sleeping. Seriously.

The next morning though I woke up and checked my email and oh wow hallelujah I had been the first bidder! After taking care of a few logistics, that pan was mine. (It’s supposed to arrive tomorrow, and people, I am over the moon excited for that moment!) Then I wrote an email to Judith, who responded later that day with wonderful enthusiasm and kindness and invited me to come meet her and play some handpans (because she has several!) and talk about lessons. So the day before yesterday I did that, and had a mindblowing, joyful couple of hours connecting with her and some handpans, with the happy end result that we are starting weekly lessons next week once my Saraz gets here.

So wow! Everything is coming together, and apparently the handpan and me were meant to be. :) I’m committed to saying “yes” and riding this serendipity train as far as it will take me, and to trusting in the rightness of the journey without having to know the destination.

I’m also here to testify that active, intentional manifestation works, especially when fueled by passion and determination. I have not only found this new amazing instrument that speaks directly to my soul (and actually drawn one to me), I have also already found some beautiful, heart-full teachers and a community of what certainly seems to be like-minded people. I feel blessed and lucky and thrilled.

I feel change on the horizon, and I am wildly enthusiastic about it (yes, even beyond my usual amount of enthusiasm, so that’s really saying something). It’s been a long time since I was this happy. I’m definitely looking forward to seeing where this journey through handpan-land will take me. ;)

Birthday blogging! It has become a tradition (though like everything else blog-related, I’m a week or two behind on it this year). I blog on my birthday not because my birthdays themselves are necessarily all that remarkable or awe-inspiring, but because this regular anniversary provides me with a built-in opportunity for reflection. And my birthday is a reflection “two-fer”, because for me, birthdays are always double-entendre: it’s not only the day I was born, it’s also the day I was told I might die (to be all overly dramatic about it...what I mean is that it’s also the day I got my cancer diagnosis in the doctor’s office). So every year on my birthday, I get to reflect both about the general place I find myself in in my life that year, and about the continually unfolding, deepening lessons I’ve learned from my trajectory through the identity of cancer survivor. I’ve already done some reflecting on the general place I find myself in this year in the last couple of blog entries, so this one is a reflection on the cancer journey.

And what a long, strange journey it’s been. January 22^nd, 2015 marked my 23^rd anniversary of diagnosis with Stage II Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. I was 23 when I was diagnosed, so this year also marks a strange kind of halfway point—as of this writing, I’ve now been a cancer survivor longer than I haven’t been. This cancer survivor piece of me is thoroughly integrated now, and it’s harder and harder for me to remember being any other way. (Not that I particularly want or need to, except as a personal archeology issue.) Though the active part of the cancer experience (diagnosis and treatment) was “only” about 4 months of my now 46 years on the planet, the impact that the cancer experience has had on me over the years has been significant. It rearranged my priorities, gave me a new identity, taught me a bunch of lessons, and, as I’m continually learning to appreciate, had a huge impact on my psychological processes. Even 23 years later, I’m still finding new insights about the ways in which that diagnosis and treatment time affected my personality and the way I now live my life. Some of those ways are useful to me, and I want to keep them; some are not useful any more (though they might have been at some point), and I want to let go of them.

So in the spirit of this anniversarial opportunity for reflection, here are a few things I’ve recently been musing on when I think about the ways in which the cancer experience impacted my psychological processes. These are things that I want to try to heal or let go of (saying them out loud and trying to accept them as real is the first step, right?)

• Cancer’s threat of personal annihilation came at a time when I had just made a big life decision, one of the biggest I had ever made up to that point (and my first real decision about what kind of adult I wanted to be): I had decided to move to Santa Barbara to go to graduate school at UCSB and get my PhD in Sociology, in hopes of at some point becoming a professor. I had just finished my first quarter of my first year in the program at UCSB when the diagnosis came down, and in looking back on it, I can see how in some ways that diagnosis felt like the Universe giving me a big, neon “nope, wrong way” sign. Have other big life decisions I’ve made since then been complicated by the learned experiential anxiety of expecting the Universe to slap me down with consequences if I make too big or bold a move? I don’t know if I have an answer to that one, but it’s an interesting thing to go back and look at in my life history. I didn’t seem to have a problem with decision making when, a little over a year after I was pronounced “in remission”, I made the decision to jump pretty quickly in to a love relationship that led to a marriage only a year later (said marriage has lasted nearly 20 years now, so that seems to have turned out to be a good decision...). I did have a hard time deciding to quit grad school and move back up to the Bay Area soon after we were married, but that decision was complicated by many factors besides the cancer diagnosis. I didn’t struggle with deciding to have children. But I certainly have struggled with a variety of “what do I want to do with my life” decisions since moving back up to the Bay Area (both before and after we had kids). If I’m being honest (and I am), I have to admit that I live with haunting, persistent doubts about whether or not I’m doing what I should be doing with my life (and about whether or not I’m doing what I’m currently doing “right”). Is that because I keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, and to be slapped down again if I choose poorly? Or is it because I really feel like I was “saved” for some greater purpose, and if I don’t figure out and fulfill that particular purpose clearly and quickly, the extra lease on life will be revoked and I’ll get sick again? I want to rid myself of this fear of conditions or consequences, and get back my confidence that life is given to us as an unconditional gift without strings attached, that my life is mine to use how I please and that what and how I choose to live is just right and as it should be. (Within reason, of course...I’m not trying to make a case for oppressive, destructive gluttony here or anything.)

• Cancer certainly taught me to live with a greater awareness of the present, and to appreciate the gifts of any given moment right now, while I’m in it. That has been a huge gift for me. But did it also leave me with a greater anxiety around making sure not to “waste” any given moment? I find that, especially in the absence of some clear and specific obligation, expectation or deadline, sometimes I have a hard time ending my day with a positive sense of accomplishment. It always feels like I “should” or “could” be doing more (and/or doing it faster or better or more consciously), that each day should be/have been more meaningful and important. Why else would I have been “allowed” to live beyond the cancer, if not to live a more “important” life more intensely and towards some greater purpose? The dark side of that “live each day like it will be your last” thing is that it makes every day feel full of pressure to make it the Best Day Evah—and what if it’s not? Is that a failure? Or is that just the way it goes, and you have to have some contrast in order to appreciate the extraordinary? I worry that in some crucial way, I’ve lost the ability to be comfortable just having an “ordinary” day, performing “ordinary” tasks at an “ordinary” pace. What does a persistent, daily low-level sense of disappointment and failure do to my sense of self-worth and capacity for self-love? And more importantly, when (and how) can I finally let that go and just accept each day for whatever it brings, without judgment or fear thereof?

• Being diagnosed with cancer was a big deal: a hugely disruptive, clear and obvious tragedy. And therefore, it was in many ways a supremely clarifying experience. It was easy (or at least much easier than it had been) to pinpoint my priorities and what really mattered to me, and to jettison the rest. I had a lot of epiphanies, and leveled up in wisdom a lot faster than I might have otherwise. While on the one hand, I don’t want the drama of tragedy to visit me ever again (no, really, I don’t); on the other hand, I have to admit I liked that clarity, and the ease with which epiphanies and enlightenment came to me when spiced so with danger. I don’t want to fall into the trap of believing that wisdom only comes through suffering, nor to feel like the slow, drip-by-drip wisdom that comes from time and experience isn’t as good as the bright, explosive kind that comes from tragedy. I don’t want my life to be defined by its tragedies, though they are vitally important pieces of my backstory and do in many ways affect my current abilities and actions, so I don’t want to deny them either. I sometimes feel like “cancer survivor” gets to be the most privileged identity in my collection of identity labels, maybe because it was the biggest or most unusual tragedy or because it was imposed from the outside instead of something I chose. But maybe that’s just because I’m still fiddling with balance in my own identity work, yes, even this far out from that experience. I have to remind myself over and over (and here I am doing it again) that on the one hand, cancer was a definitive, identity-making and identity-shifting moment, and on the other, it really didn’t change the basic core of me. (This is like the Jewish teaching to hold two thoughts simultaneously: “The world was made for me” and “I am but dust and ashes”.) I have to hold both simultaneously. That’s hard work, and part of my life-practice. But maybe I also need to keep reminding myself that just because it was dramatic and impressive to others, I don’t have to hold cancer as the most important thing that ever happened to me or as the biggest shaper of my self. I have both before and since had many life experiences that were equally as impactful on my identity. (And besides, who cares what other people think?)

All right, that’s probably enough public navel-gazing for now. It’s been an interesting process trying to think through and pick apart some of these relatively subtle reflections. I’m still musing, and still healing, and probably always will be. Still, I’m grateful to have the opportunity to be doing so. I’m sure next year will bring even yet more insights.

I’m much later in putting my New Year’s intention down in print than I usually am, but that doesn’t mean I haven’t been thinking a lot about it for the last few weeks. For whatever reason, this year’s intention was a little harder to articulate than previous years have been (hey, some years are like that), but here’s what I’ve come up with so far: in 2014 I discovered that trust breeds trust, so in 2015 it is my intention to keep the trust cycle going by...trusting more. What do I mean by that? Well, I’m still feeling like I may have to talk around the concept a bit before it completely crystallizes, but let me have a go at it.

So as background, let me say that the last few years have been an interesting journey through identity work and personal growth (yeah yeah, I’m in my 40’s, and this is not unusual, I realize). One of the big issues I’ve been grappling with during this phase of the journey is trust. (Yes, I have trust issues. How frightfully pedestrian of me, right?) Precisely why I have trust issues and under what circumstances they flare up and get triggered is a complex and tangled story that I’ve spent lots of time picking apart with my therapist and won’t go into here, but suffice to say that sometimes, I have a hard time believing that things will work out without great effort and a certain amount of defensive contingency planning on my part. Much as I *say* I want to be the kind of person who lives in the moment and believes that things generally work out favorably in the end, and often preach the efficacy of this approach in my advice to others, I often have a hard time actually doing that. (Oh well, you know they say you teach what you most need to learn...) I get scared, I get anxious, I get triggered, and I go right back to “no one else will notice there’s a need here, so I’d better take care of it myself, and well ahead of time, too, just to make sure it doesn’t fall through the cracks.” I juggle faster and add more balls and fancy footwork, and for a while I feel like a super circus queen...until inevitably something gets missed or tripped over and everything overwhelms and falls apart. But I have only myself to blame, which is really uncomfortable, so I try blaming other people for not rescuing me, but then that isn’t very comfortable either, so I resolve to not even involve other people next time, and just try a little harder to do everything better by myself. (Whew. I’m a little freaked out just typing all that.)

Now, I’ve been working on all this stuff, as I said, and one of the things that happened towards the end of 2014 is that life circumstances were such that I got super overwhelmed by all the Things To Do (admittedly, that’s the passive voice...in many ways I knowingly and willingly set myself up for much of that overwhelm, it didn’t just happen out of nowhere). Travel, high school applications, social and family obligations, Dickens Fair, Josh starting graduate school, kid care, housework, holiday hoo-ha...there was so much going on that I just couldn’t juggle it all myself in the pro-active ways I was used to. I had to drop some Things, and give some of the Things to Josh or other people, and just trust that it would all somehow work out ok. And you know what? It did work out ok. It totally did. Sometimes just barely, and sometimes at the last possible moment or not in the way I thought it would, but overall: Things worked out ok. And in acknowledging that fact, I found myself feeling more confident, and yes, more trusting, about the possibility that this whole “trusting that other people will help do the Things and that Things will work out ok” process might be repeatable. And get easier each time. It was kind of exciting, and made me want to trust some more.

Huh, would you look at that: the more I trust, the more I trust. Trust breeds trust. So maybe I should do that some more, if trust is something I want more of in my life. So there’s my intention for 2015: more trust. I will trust that Things will work out ok. I will trust that people want to (and can) help me. I will trust that people can (and will) think positively of me, no matter what happens with getting the Things done. I will trust that I am (almost always) in the right place, doing the right things, at the right pace. And when I doubt, or feel anxious or triggered, I will go back to the examples of late 2014 and remind myself “hey, look, it worked out then, it’ll work out again”. Then hopefully, thus watered, trust will flower, and make some more trust.

Whoosh, the time flies. The holidays are finally past us and what a crazy packed busy time they were, with all the usual Thanksgiving-Black Turkey-Hanukkah-Christmas stuff combined with end-of-year kid school stuff, Josh writing final papers for his classes, and Dickens Fair taking up all the weekends. We did things a lot more last-minute and off-the-cuff this year, which is not my preferred management style (I am much more a “plan all the things and do them before deadline” kinda gal), but I will note that everything worked out pretty well and all the things that had to get done got done, though we did abandon several “optional” holiday activities and projects. However, I was so overwhelmed and exhausted by Doing All The Things that the day after Dickens Fair ended (a couple of days before Christmas), I was sick. That sick carried through until the first day or two of our family vacation at Stinson, so mostly all I did at Stinson was rest and read and hang out (and spend hours flogging Eli through his essay writing for high school applications). Didn’t write, didn’t do the usual end-of-year/new year’s intention blog, didn’t journal, didn’t make any progress on my backlog of photo albums. But considering how hectic life had been, resting and rejuvenating seemed like a good idea and I’m better for it now.

So here I am, seven days into the new year, four days after getting back from Stinson and one day after the kids’ school started up again, finally ready to do the now-traditional Parentheticals blog entries for the end-of-year-wrapup and beginning of year intention setting. I figure I might as well do them now (“Late But Great” is, after all, our family motto) before the year gets too much farther away from me and we go hurtling off on January’s rollercoaster of all the new things that need doing. We are still somewhat in a quiet time now, at least compared to the previous couple of months, so it seems a good time for reflection.

So how’d 2014 go? Thanks for asking. Overall it was a full and generally happy year, and since last year’s intention was “find satisfaction”, let me now declare that I think that it was also a very satisfying one, and I am generally happy with the way I went after satisfying experiences and enjoyed them while I was in them. I think I will always struggle with my impulses to make others happy at the expense of my own time, energy and projects, but this past year I was at least aware of the need to prioritize my own satisfaction, and sometimes even successfully did so.

And now, the month-by-month review for posterity, at least those things that I can remember from this far away. I really wasn’t journaling in 2014, so I’m mostly just looking back at my raucously multi-colored, ever-crammed calendar and trying to reconstruct activities, if not feelings. 

January 2014 was fairly quiet, as most Januarys are, though with a looming pressure of getting everything prepared for the upcoming big event in February: Eli’s Bar Mitzvah. We worked on his drash and our parent blessing, shopped for a suit, met with the Rabbi and Cantor, sent out invitations, made a slideshow, made afterparty arrangements, and all sorts of other things. There was some low-key birthday celebration in there too, and the usual reflection on my cancerversary.

February 2014 was full of Bar Mitzvah, and what a wonderful day it was. We had lots of family and friends come witness Eli (and his co-Bar Mitzvah Ben Robinow) lead the services, give a drash, and chant from the Torah and Haftorah. Despite some typical teen angst and last-minute prep, Eli did an incredible job and we were really, really proud. Afterwards we had an intimate dinner party at Left Bank with family and a few friends, at which we showed the slideshow, had toasts from and to Eli, and generally celebrated the newly minted man who was now responsible for his own moral choices.

Unfortunately, February also included a health crisis for my independent elderly friend Marian, who broke her hip and had to have a hip replacement surgery and then weeks of recuperation at a care facility. I wound up being the point person during her hospital stay and visited her almost every day both at the hospital and at the care facility, and then helped her transition back home. The silver lining in all of that was that we became much closer friends, and she recovered well and is mostly back to living her independent life.

In March, I went to FOGcon and had a writer’s retreat afterwards at Stinson Beach, celebrated Purim with silly dressup (Isaac played along this year, with a hilarious costume he called “Intergender Power Pufferfish Girl”), and celebrated a variety of birthdays. There was also a lot of prep time spent getting the kids ready for their big competitions for Odyssey of the Mind (both kids were on teams this year), and I once again ran a big art fundraiser for our elementary school.

In April we went to the Odyssey competitions and happily celebrated with Marian at her 90^th birthday party (made extra sweet by her recovery from the hip surgery). Anji and I got all dressed up and went to the Opulent Temple White Party in the city, we celebrated Passover, and Josh and the kids and I went to Chico to visit my brother and family. I helped put together and hang an art exhibit at a local gallery for our third grade class, and there was also a pretty cool lunar eclipse in there somewhere.

May was chock full of Freak Flag Flying: Anji and I went to the How Weird Street Fair (outer space themed because it was held on Star Wars Day—May the Fourth), I once again had a big booth at the Maker Faire where I had a blast making freak flags with hundreds of people, and I went back to WisCon (the feminist speculative fiction convention in Wisconsin), where I had fun flying my authorial freak flag. I also started co-planning an Indiegogo campaign with my friend Kim to help my publisher, Hadley Rille Books, stay alive and solvent.

June is when things revved up, as they often do. There were birthday parties, end-of-school-year parties (goodbye, 3^rd and 7^th grade!), and a Giants game. There was more work on and the launching of the Hadley Rille Indiegogo campaign. My nephew-in-all-but-name Jonah graduated from High School, and we went to the Pirate Festival in Vallejo. But most memorable of all, in honor of the aforementioned Bar Mitzvah, we went on a family trip with my parents to Israel, where we spent two weeks touring and experiencing all we could. It was truly a life-changing, incredible trip that we will always remember.

In July, we came back from Israel (literally days before all the rockets started flying and the newest conflict in Gaza broke out) and celebrated the 4^th of July with the usual Marin County Fair and fireworks. The kids went to all kinds of fun summer camps while Josh taught summer school classes. We had a fun day at the Rivertown Revival in honor of Angelique’s bachelorette party, and I took Jonah to go get his Driver’s License. We also, sadly, had some car shenanigans (including a minor fender-bender), but they got cleared up satisfactorily. My grandma came to visit from Florida (so there was a lot of family dinner and get together time), and we started prepping for Burning Man. (Luckily there was no huge construction project on our plates this year!)

August was busy and full too. The kids went off to sleepaway camp and Josh and I made a quick trip to Ashland to see some Shakespeare and have belated anniversary time together. I helped Mom set up and show her baskets at the San Francisco ACC show at Fort Mason. Josh and Bert ran a week of gaming camp at our house, the kids started school again (4^th and 8^th grade) and then, of course, there was Burning Man, which was pink and awesome and full of love. One downer note that started in August and would continue through the next few months is that we discovered that both Josh and I had been the victims of identity theft, and we had to wind up dealing with hours of bureaucratic hassle because of it.

In September we planned and then celebrated my parents’ 50^th wedding anniversary at Ondine’s Restaurant in Sausalito, which was a beautiful evening. We celebrated the Jewish High Holidays and created a new neighborhood tradition: the “pop-up café” (where we serve coffee and pastries to fellow parents and neighbors in front of our house while waiting for the bus on Fridays). We also celebrated and helped make the day happen for our dear friends Ian and Angelique’s wedding.

In October Isaac ran for School Treasurer (and won!) and we finished out the High Holidays. I volunteered to help with our synagogue’s bone marrow testing drive, because as a Hodgkin’s survivor I couldn’t donate but I certainly could encourage others to. We went as a family (including my mom!) to the SF Burning Man Decompression event, and went without the kids to two different lovely weddings: one at Stern Grove for our friends Alessandro and Abby, and one “Take 2” wedding for our friends Daphne and Keith. I finally got back to hosting my “Swap ‘n Shuffle” women’s clothing swap (and got a killer leather jacket for freeeeeee!) And then of course there was Halloween with all its accompanying hoo-ha (including a fun time at Ghost Ship again this year with Anji and a couple other girlfriends). We also started visiting Open Houses and doing shadow tours of various high school options for Eli.

November was the start of an increasingly hectic couple of months, starting with workshops and build for and eventually performances at the Great Dickens Christmas Fair (Eli and I were part of the Paddy West School of Seamanship again this year, and I got to model corsets at Dark Garden for the first time, which was lots of fun). I also took a chunk of time off to go out to Washington D.C. for the World Fantasy Convention (and a tiny bit of touristing). We got to see yet another fabulous Cirque du Soleil show (Kurious: Cabinet of Curiosities), which was so full of steampunky French goodness that we decided to take the kids as a Hanukkah present. Towards the end of the month we did the whole two-days-of-Thanksgiving-with-family hoo ha (which, especially when combined with a three day weekend of Dickens Fair, was a lot of hoo ha). There was also more visiting of high schools and much discussion about where to apply, which finally narrowed down to two choices.

December was really full. There was Dickens Fair, there was Hanukkah, there was our Black Turkey holiday party, there was Christmas. There was also a huge winter storm that we at first pooh-poohed until our giant backyard elm tree fell over....but luckily (oh so luckily) it fell away from the house and “only” crushed our back fence and planter boxes. We worked on high school applications, frantically shopped for and wrapped presents, and ate a whole lot of fabulous food with some of our favorite people. Unfortunately, after a triumphant final weekend of Dickens Fair and a looooong night of breaking down our stage areas at the Cow Palace, I got sick...which lasted all the way through Christmas, and then Josh got sick too. We muddled through Christmas (and actually had a very nice time hanging out with Josh’s parents and grandparents, despite not feeling awesome). But the day after Christmas we caved and went to Urgent Care and got antibiotics, just in time to feel better to go out to Stinson with my parents and brother and family for a week of much needed rest and relaxation. We exchanged presents and ate outrageous meals mostly prepared by Josh (5 Ducks 5 Ways became an instant classic), we shopped in Pt. Reyes and walked on the beach and hung out with friends for New Year’s. It was over all too soon, though, as all good vacations are, and now we are already a week into the New Year and (mostly) back to the usual routines of school and work. 

It was a full year, and a satisfying one. I am looking forward to 2015 and all that it will bring us. Here’s hoping it is even better and more satisfying than 2014!

We had to get up early Sunday morning for strike, which is something that they take very seriously at Pink Heart. We put on our grubby work clothes and jumped right in to dis-assembling the Pink Lounge with a bunch of people. I spent a bunch of time pulling down and un-knotting pink fabric that had been draped in various places around the shade structure, and then I helped Terri clean out the freezer that had held the ice cream while we gave it away. That was a disgusting and difficult cleaning job considering that it was covered in melted ice cream that had combined with dust and dried, and we couldn’t just hose it out. After that I mooped (picked up any and all bits and pieces of things that didn’t belong on the playa) and wiped and schlepped and generally tried to make myself useful wherever it was needed, until finally most everything was gone and it was time for Josh and I to turn our attention to breaking down our own stuff and mooping our own camp.

It had been our intention to do all the breakdown and then just leave our yurt and bed up so that we could stay to watch the Temple burn that night, and get a few hours of sleep before leaving BRC early Monday morning. But as we neared completion on our own teardown and packing, we both realized that we were kind of done and decided to just pack everything and leave during the burn. We didn’t want to repeat the experience we had had the previous year where we had to wait for 8 hours to get out of the city, and when we checked the radio it was saying that there was hardly any wait, so it seemed like a good time to go, even though it was getting kind of late. We said farewell to our friends that were still there, and got in the car and headed out around 9pm.

We had pretty smooth sailing out of the city, only stopping for about an hour at the end of the gate line. When we finally hit pavement we were hungry and had to pee, so we stopped off in one of the small towns along the way at a roadside stand to have Indian tacos (which are really more like thick frybread with lettuce, tomato and meat on top). The food was hot and tasty and we chatted with a few other burners who had also stopped, so overall it turned out to be a good transitional experience that I would do again next time (I don’t know why we never tried it before, eagerness to get in and out I guess). We stopped again at Love’s for gas and texted our friends and family that we’d gotten out safely, and then pretty much had a straight shot home in the dark without any incidents of note. By the time we got close to home Josh was super tired and we were a little worried about falling asleep at the wheel but we pushed on through and made it home around 5am. Everyone was still asleep at our house so we had a quick shower (oh bliss!) and crawled into our quiet, soft bed (oh super bliss!) for a few hours.

And now, as per custom, it’s time for the bullet list summary of lessons learned and final thoughts about this year’s burn:

• We’re kind of getting this burner prep thing down. We have most of our equipment and survival strategies down, so we can focus on improving our experience instead of “oh god what’s going to happen and how do I do this and is everything going to be ok”. That’s really reassuring.
• Rain and other uncontrollable weather events are not as scary or difficult to deal with as you think. But it does help to be as prepared as possible.
• When you bring love with you, you find love everywhere.
• You don’t always get the burn you want, but you get the burn you need. Clearly Josh and I needed to spend some heart time together.
• Camping with a group of people committed to being as mature, responsible, real and loving as possible while at the same time sucking all the marrow out of life is definitely my favorite way to do Burning Man.
• Giving people something delicious is really, really satisfying.
• Self-love is good too. Drink, eat, sleep, and sit on your butt if you need to...forget about FOMO.
• Naps are key. Finding (or making) a space that’s comfortable enough for daytime naps will save your butt.
• I like making costume pieces, especially the fabric mosaic kind of stuff I’ve done the last two years. I want to do more of this.
• Hugs are awesome. More hugs are clearly the answer to personal, familial and world peace.
• It takes courage to sacrifice something—anything—to a volcano.
• Change the mirror, change the perspective.
• I just have to keep on shining that awesome Supernova light, and not let fear or judgments block the light for too long (if at all).
• Trampolines are awesome....in small doses.
• Indian tacos are tasty. Try again next year.

[Caravansary Part 1]

[Caravansary Part 2]

[Caravansary Part 3]

[Caravansary Part 4]

[Caravansary Part 5]

[Caravansary Part 6]

[Caravansary Part 7]

[Full Set of Caravansary Pictures on Flickr]

Josh and I woke up early on Saturday, and stumbled out around sunrise to go to the porta-potties. On our way back we decided to go look for the camp near ours that supposedly served coffee, which we eventually found. They were just brewing a new batch so we lounged around in their camp lounge for awhile and had a fun time talking to a few other caffeine-craving early morning burners, most of whom were just rolling back to camp after a long night rather than early risers like us (but we were all equally tired and punchy). I met a nice older man who gifted me with a carved wooden spoon/fork combo that he’d made and we had an especially fun time bantering and telling bad jokes with John the Irishman and Gaby from Sebastopol, who were camping down the street at Campoline (a camp with a bunch of giant trampolines out front). We said we’d come see them later if we could, and then they took off and we slowly made our way back to Pink Heart.

Josh went back to the yurt but I sat outside in the Pink Lounge for a while, doodling in my journal and talking to people who came by to get water. I worked the water bar for a little while too. 

Josh and I were thinking about heading out for one last exploration adventure, with Center Camp as our loose destination, but as we were getting ourselves together I wound up talking to Anjanette about whether or not she’d gotten back over to the roller rink we’d seen farther down the Esplanade, like she’d wanted to. She said she hadn’t, and I felt bad that she hadn’t gotten to do something she had really wanted to do (plus I realized at that point that she and I hadn’t really had much time for playa adventuring together this burn) so I said “come on, let’s go right now!” and when she said ok, I asked Josh if he’d wait to go on the Center Camp adventure until Anjanette and I went over to the Black Rock Roller Disco. He was fine with that, so Anjanette and I hopped on our bikes and off we went.

The Roller Disco was not too far down the Esplanade, and when we got there it wasn’t even particularly busy, so after locking our bikes we walked right up and found some skates in our size and put them on and went out on the rink. I have to admit that I had a really hard time keeping my balance (I’m not an especially good roller skater and both the skates and the floor were battered and dusty and added extra difficulty) so I only wound up making it around the rink once, and then I gave up and watched Anjanette skate. They had good booty-shaking disco music though so it was fun even to stand around and observe.

When Anjanette was done we walked back across the Esplanade to where we’d locked our bikes, and as we did so the wind and dust kicked up and the rink was playing an old funky Prince song and we looked at each other and started laughing and dancing in the dust, just like we had so many times before. It was a great little "I love my BFF" moment and I’m glad we had a chance to share it.

Eventually the dust died down somewhat and we headed back to Pink Heart. Anjanette stayed at camp and I went back out again with Josh. We rode down the Esplanade towards Center Camp, looking at art cars and theme camps as we biked by and enjoying the usual dusty, colorful “you just can’t make this shit up” chaos. We stopped to see Cosmic Praise, a two-story tall twisted minaret with an observation deck built around a “Spark Chamber” cosmic ray detector on top. This was another project I’d supported on Kickstarter and I really wanted to climb up to see the Spark Chamber, but after waiting for awhile we got impatient and decided to just keep going to Center Camp.

At Center Camp we poked around a little and waited in line for a cup of iced coffee. Fortified by our cold caffeine, we headed out to wander slowly back to camp via the city streets. It felt like the city was already beginning to shut down and pack up, but we saw lots of neat things anyway (how could you not?) We didn’t stop for any adventures until we got close to home, where we saw Campoline and decided to stop to a) jump on the trampolines and b) look for our friends from earlier that morning. Josh went to go sit at the Campoline bar while I jumped and bounced (yay bouncing!). We didn’t see our friends so after exhausting myself on the trampolines (which didn’t take long), we went back to Pink Heart to rest up and pack a little and change into our Burn Night outfits.

We’d made an arrangement to meet up with Mary and Evan and Oliver around 7pm out at Between Dimensions to stake out a spot to watch the burn. We got there before they did and spent a while waiting around in the dust (it had been getting increasingly windy and dusty all day) and watching the art cars, bikes and people streaming towards the Man. There wasn’t anything going on yet since it was still daylight, and when we went a little closer to go look, we could see the giant piles of kindling that had been placed around the Man’s feet. This was going to be a huge burn, and we were really looking forward to it.

Finally it got to be sunset and our friends showed up and we spent more time waiting anxiously, listening to the competing thump thump music of the nearby art cars and worrying that it was going to be too windy/dusty for a good burn. But the excitement of the whole city that was building around us and our appreciation of spending this time with our friends again helped keep us excited and upbeat, and we took turns making little explorative forays into the rings of art cars to see what was going on. One of my favorite art cars, the one that looks like a giant lit up boom box, was parked nearby so I went to go check out what they were playing. As I cruised through their temporary dance floor, someone called my name and I turned around and found Joyous, one of our friends from 2012’s burn. It was another beautiful serendipity moment.

We were so excited to see each other and it turned out he had been with friends but was now on his own so I told him he had to come back and hang out with us at Between Dimensions. So he came back with me and we had fun showing him the sculpture and passing out lollipops to people for awhile. Then he had to go to the potties and set out by himself (rookie mistake!) and never did come back. (Apparently he got lost.) That’s the way the playa goes, though.

Finally with a burst of fireworks and a sudden increase in noise and energy, the Man exploded. We whooped and cheered and hugged and danced and as always, were completely awed by the sheer scope and size and beauty of the fire, which is so amazing and so unlike anything else in the world. We were farther away from this burn than we’d been in past burns, though, so even though it was HUGE, we didn’t feel the heat or the thrill of dangerous proximity this time. It was such a giant structure this year though that it took a loooooooong time to burn, and eventually we (like the rest of the city, I suspect) got kind of blasé about it and decided we were done watching the actual burning, and were ready to go elsewhere. We didn’t really feel like hitting the rave parties or pushing out to deep playa though, so we bid farewell to our friends at that point and headed back to Pink Heart. (This just wasn’t a party burn for us, for whatever reasons.) 

Josh and I spent the rest of Burn Night hanging out in the Pink Lounge, having deep conversations with nearby random strangers about their life stories and what they were burning away. Eventually we bid the three boys we were talking to farewell though, and went back to wipe down and lie on the air mattress inside our yurt and vibrate along with the bass from Buddha Lounge (which is what passed for sleeping most nights.)

[Caravansary Part 1]

[Caravansary Part 2]

[Caravansary Part 3]

[Caravansary Part 4]

[Caravansary Part 5]

[Caravansary Part 6]

[Caravansary Part 7]

[Full Set of Caravansary Pictures on Flickr]

Early Friday morning, Josh and I managed to get ourselves up and out again right before sunrise to go see Embrace burn. (They put this burn at sunrise when it would be less windy because they were concerned about the cinders and ashes being a danger to other art.) The sky was pinkening and the weather was perfect, if a little cool, as we biked across the playa to join the gathering crowd of people who wanted to see this beauty burn. We found a temporary bike parking area and left our bikes and then walked as close as we could get to find a viewing spot.  There were a lot of people there so we really didn’t get too close. We wound up behind/next to a ring of art cars, which provided a big enough hole in the crowd so that we could get an unimpeded (albeit fairly far away) view. We waited and waited and amused ourselves looking around at the colorful crowd while the day grew lighter and started in earnest, and the dust and wind picked up enough so that we had to use our dust masks. And then finally, just as we were fearing that we wouldn’t be able to see or it would be so windy that they would call off the burn, the dust settled and the flames showed up and we all cheered and settled down to watch something huge catch on fire.

The burn was incredibly beautiful, and the first daylight burn I had ever seen. It was a whole different kind of dramatic than a night burn, but equally as gorgeous against a blue sky background. First the skin around the two figures caught flame and shot out the top of each head, creating twisting tornadoes of smoke and cinders that billowed out of the back of each figure’s head and lit up their eyes with flame. Eventually the skin all burned off and what was left standing was the sturdy towers that formed the frame inside each figure that had allowed all those people to climb up to view the playa from inside each head. Those towers burned and burned and eventually they drove a big crane up to one of the towers and poked at it, trying to bring it down (probably to reduce fire danger). That tower finally buckled and slumped into the other tower, and burned down until only one tower was left standing. Then after some deliberation with firefighters and whomever else was responsible for these decisions, the crane drove over to poke at that single remaining tower. It took several pokes from several different angles before finally that tower began to topple, and it toppled right towards the crane. The crane was hauling ass in reverse away from the toppling, flaming tower, and it just barely made it away safely as the whole thing came crashing down in a huge whoosh of flame and sparks. It was very dramatic and everyone who was left watching hooted and hollered and cheered with relief (because that really could have gone so horribly wrong).

After that dramatic moment, we decided to go. It was getting really stormy and dusty, the worst it had been up until that point. By the time we got back, we were covered in dust and exhausted, but happy. We cleaned up and had some food and hung out in our camp for a bit until it was time for a camp meeting, where we talked about strike and other end-of-week issues and then went out front to take our camp photo for the BRC yearbook.

Right after that it was time for my Fly Your Freak Flag High Workshop. I was still collecting up all my stuff and getting ready when someone came and told me that there were already people out front asking when the workshop was starting (that was actually cool...I liked knowing that people had come on purpose to do this with me, rather than just stumbling upon it.)

Like I had done at Pink Heart the previous year, I went casual and made it a sort of rolling art activity rather than a formal workshop. I didn’t really have any helpers (though I could have shanghaied some campmates if I had really needed them). I started by walking around in the Pink Lounge asking people if they’d like to come do an art activity with me, and when I collected enough people I stood them in a circle and explained the project and handed out flags and newspapers and the bags of sharpies and told people to go for it. As the first batch sat around on the floor and colored their flags, I stood out in front of camp with a handful of flags and invited more people to come join us. (“Hi beautiful burner! Want to come make a freak flag with us?”) Then I would explain what we were doing, give them a flag, and send them to find a spot on the floor somewhere.

I alternated between explaining the project and walking around checking on people and eventually, once people finished, I took pictures of each finished flag and its maker. I had a steady stream of people both coming in wanting to start and finishing up wanting to take a picture and go, so it got a bit hectic, but never unmanageable. My estimate is that over the course of nearly three hours, we made about 100 flags, and I got pictures of most of them. It was still blowing a lot of dust out on the playa so some of the pictures came out dustier or clearer than others, but fortunately my camera did not seem to mind the dust.

Although I didn’t get a chance to encourage people to interact with each other and share their freaky bits like I usually do, and I was running around so I wasn’t able to keep a close eye on people who were coloring, I am pretty sure that people did interact with others doing the project and actually get to know other people while doing the flags. (And if that’s true, that’s awesome.) I did get to interact with people when they came to get their picture taken, and I always asked them about their flag and why they’d drawn what they did and what the various things on their flags meant to them. I asked people to tell me a story about something on their flag, and many people did. So at least I hope I got them thinking about the project a little more, even if I didn’t structurally encourage it in more traditional workshop fashion. Many people thanked me and gave me little gifts, and overall it was another successful year.

By around 5 o’clock or so I was mostly cleaned up and hanging impatiently around the Pink Lounge waiting for the last few stragglers to finish their flags, and I was getting really, really tired. I was heading down into that limb-deadening energy crash that comes after putting out a sustained burst of enthusiasm and performance and crankily wishing that people would just finish up already when one of those perfect playa miracles happened. (They often happen right when you really need them, and this one was a true beautiful serendipitous moment.) There had been a woman with a massage table set up in the back of the Pink Lounge for the last hour or so, and I had been aware as I wandered around picking up sharpies and talking to flag-makers that she was giving Halcyon and a couple of other Pinkies massages. But then just as I was feeling at my crankiest, she finished up and said goodbye to someone she’d just massaged, and then looking around, she said, “does anyone else want a massage?”

I was sure she didn’t mean me, she must be asking all the important people, or friends of hers, or someone else who had been waiting for her to finish. But then I looked around us and...there was no one else within earshot. So before I could even worry about it, I said “me! I would soooooo love a massage. That is exactly and perfectly and totally what I need and want right now.” And she laughed and said “well ok, come on!” So I dropped my sharpies and shed some clothes and lay down on her table and what do you know, yes, it was in fact exactly and perfectly and totally what I needed right then. J I had already been talking earlier in the week about how I was tempted to go over to Sacred Spaces or Heebie Jeebie Healers or somewhere I could get a massage (I get massages regularly at home because I need them to stay healthy and keep going in my crazy busy life, and I knew I’d benefit from one even more on playa where the physical demands are even tougher to endure for a week), and here it had magically, perfectly come to me right when I really needed it. Serendipity win!

So after that beautiful massage I thanked Lauren profusely and stumbled back to camp, triumphant and exhausted. I saw Lauren again at dinner time (and got to thank her again) because it turned out that she was a friend of some of our camp mates, and was hanging out with us for dinner too. Josh and I hung out with our fellow Pinkies during dinner and for a bit afterwards, but we were so beat by then that despite plans for going out and dancing and exploring, we pretty much just crashed out in our dusty clothes and never got up again until the morning.

[Caravansary Part 1]

[Caravansary Part 2]

[Caravansary Part 3]

[Caravansary Part 4]

[Caravansary Part 5]

[Caravansary Part 6]

[Caravansary Part 7]

[Full Set of Caravansary Pictures on Flickr]

On Thursday, after a slow and lounge-y morning, we got all dressed up in our finest pink attire and went out to the front of camp to hear Halcyon do a talk for Hug Nation and prepare for the much-anticipated Pink Ride event. What’s the Pink Ride? Well, you can click here for the full explanation but the basic concept is pretty simple, really. It’s all about spreading love. Everyone who wants to join dresses up in pink, hops on a bike, and rides in a giant pink parade down the Esplanade to Center Camp. Along the way we make an effort to give all the people we pass a compliment and tell them that we love them. When we get to Center Camp, we make a biiiiiiiig circle outside (and this year it was a BIIIIIIIIG circle!) and hold hands and then spiral slowly inside to the center of Center Camp, and when we are all twirled in we break up into a giant group hug. Then everyone hugs everyone else they can and eventually we all wander off and go our separate ways.

I was distracted for most of Halcyon’s talk, but I do remember standing around outside in the blazing sun admiring everyone’s pinkness and waiting for the ride to get started. One highlight was being introduced by Anjanette to Tex Allen, who runs the “Why The Nose” project. I admire this project so much...it is so similar to a lot of what I am trying to do with my Fly Your Freak Flag High project. Tex gave me a pink (!) nose, which I am very sorry to say I lost somewhere on the playa between Pink Heart and Center Camp. I hope someone found it and put it on and it made them smile. 

Anyway we finally “saddled up” and started riding to Center Camp, and it was really a ton of fun waving at people on the sides of the road and telling them how fabulous they were and how much we loved them. Then it was really impressive looking around at the giant circle of pinkness before we went inside Center Camp. Once we got to the group hug part, I was amazed at how good it felt to just hug and hug and hug so many other people who were happy to give and receive hugs and who appreciated being there in the happy huggy pink vibe. Seriously, this is one of those goofy Burning Man events that sounds like a bunch of hippy dippy bullshit but which is incredibly, powerfully, impactful in its effect when you are in it.

After things broke up some, Anjanette and Josh and I sat around for awhile in Center Camp and enjoyed having iced beverages and chatting with random burners (Josh even saw someone he knew from back home, who was in his crossfit class). Then eventually Anjanette went her separate way and Josh and I biked over to go visit Evan and Mary at their camp in the Burning Man ‘burbs. We hung out with them and their friend Oliver, and they made and treated us to pancakes and bacon, which was awesome. We hung out for a while and then made plans to meet up and go explore deep playa together later that evening.

On the way back to Pink Heart, Josh and I decided to go visit Sacred Spaces Village (the camp where we stayed in previous years). The layout and look of camp was completely different this year, much more open and less grand without the Guildworks shade canopies and fabric walls. We walked to the back of camp and were greeted by Kennedy, which was great. Then we walked around some more, saw what had been resurrected of the Temple of Renewal this year (it was mostly just the basic shower tower itself, without the walls and the decorative altar, shelving and dressing areas), and found our brother B Love. We had a nice time chatting with him for a while, and with another ex-campmate Raven, and then we got back on the road. Josh and I both agreed that while it had been nice to reconnect and see old friends, we were really glad we had chosen Pink Heart for this year’s burn.

We got back to camp sometime in the late afternoon, and had dinner with the Pinkies and then took a nap (afternoon naps turned out to be key because we slept so poorly at night) to prepare ourselves for some late night adventuring. We met up with Evan and Mary and Oliver around 10pm at Between Dimensions, and then set out to explore some nighttime playa art. We detoured over to MoonCheese first because we wanted to show it to them (and also showed them the glowing globe project we’d played with back on Tuesday night), and then headed towards deep playa, stopping to climb things and look at shiny bits. By around 1 or 2 it was getting kind of dusty and we were getting pretty tired so we gave up on going any deeper and headed back to camp. We wanted to catch the sunrise burn of Embrace, so we figured we might as well go try to sleep for a few hours and then get up and go out early.

[Caravansary Part 1]

[Caravansary Part 2]

[Caravansary Part 3]

[Caravansary Part 4]

[Caravansary Part 5]

[Caravansary Part 6]

[Caravansary Part 7]

[Full Set of Caravansary Pictures on Flickr]

Wednesday it was Josh’s birthday, and we decided to take the morning to go tour some of the big art on the playa. We got ourselves dressed, caffeinated up and grabbed our bikes and went out into the mild and beautiful playa morning. We started out close to Pink Heart and then headed out via the serendipitous “what’s THAT?” factor towards the Temple, because I had a delivery to make to the Temple for my friend Eileen (she gave me a big box wrapped in rainbow paper, full of something she wanted burned). We saw all kinds of great art, some of which I remembered to take pictures of and some I didn’t: giant mosaic daffodils, a laser cut wooden alligator head, the infamous Hug Deli (at which I tried a gangsta hug), a twisted wooden tunnel you could bike through, a giant sculpture of the word “INSANITY” (which we’d seen last year), a clutch of big lacy golden polyhedrons, a giant antlered skull with stuff inside it, an enormous climbable human-powered merry-go-round, a giant welded octopus-ish bike rack installation called “The Racken” and miscellaneous wacky art cars. Eventually we made it over to the Temple, and after finding a good place to leave the rainbow box, we explored the Temple complex a little and left our own offerings there to be burned up and set free/empowered. I wrote two things, one a wish for healing for some friends of mine who were currently going through illness or grief, and one a wish for myself: “May everything that holds me back or hides my light be burned away. I will be a supernova.” I also left a freak flag with the words “Fly Your Freak Flag High” tucked into the decorative fence that enclosed the Temple complex. 

After the Temple we headed over to Embrace, the giant wooden busts of a man and woman embracing that was nearby. Embrace was made by the same people who had made one of my favorite pieces of playa art in previous years, the sunken pirate ship, and I loved this installation nearly as much. It was thoughtful in concept, emotionally resonant and interactive on many levels. You could go inside each bust and see the giant heart that hung inside each chest, and then climb up stairs and go down hallways until you reached the viewing platform up inside each head, where you could look out the eyes and view the playa from two stories up. We did that inside the woman’s head, and I used a sharpie to write a “JD + JA TLA” heart on the inside because I wanted to empower that through fire’s release too. The craftsmanship and attention to detail in each one of the busts was amazing (though I didn’t go all the way up into the man’s head, because the stairway was really steep and I was tired after going up into the woman’s head) and the whole installation was really moving. Josh and I took some sweet pictures together while embracing in front of the sculpture (they had cleverly provided a platform for people to do just that, painted to say “Embrace Photo Spot”). Yet another instance of a love moment during a love filled burn.

After spending a good long while at Embrace, we headed over to the Tower of Babel installation, which looked like a big mosque with a golden dome from the outside, but inside was a gorgeously sculpted library. The library was full of handmade books with handmade paper. Participants could add their own bits of wisdom (or babble) for others to read. I looked through some of them, but didn’t spend a lot of time reading because we were in more of an itchy “see all the things” mode. I did have my sharpies with me though so I added another “JA + JD” heart to one of the books, and then in another I wrote one of my favorite quotes, the one from Dr. Seuss that says “Do what you want, and say what you feel, because those who matter don’t mind, and those who mind don’t matter”, plus a “Fly your freak flag high!” for good measure.

After that we went over to a volcano art installation called “Paha’oha’o”, which means “transformation” in Hawaiian. I was excited to see this project because I supported the project on Kickstarter and I wanted to make sure we visited it before it burned on Thursday, plus other people had been talking excitedly about the slide inside it and I wanted to experience it myself. It was basically a big slide covered on the outside by a volcano-shaped structure that was “skinned” with burlap bags. You grabbed a burlap bag from a loose pile of bags at the foot of the sculpture, and then climbed with it up a set of steep wooden stairs on the outside of the volcano until you reached the top. Then while other participants down below banged on a big drum, you “sacrificed” yourself by sliding on that burlap bag down a nearly-vertical drop that smoothed out into a horizontal slide, and emerged transformed. The moment of dropping into the hole was definitely scary and required a moment of courage to overcome, but that just made the rest of the slide more exciting. Josh and I both sacrificed ourselves and emerged transformed by that experience of screwing our courage to the sticking point and jumping out into the unknown.

After courageously transforming ourselves, we felt ready to approach the Man again. So we rode over to the Souk and spent awhile appreciating the art (especially the big surrealist painted murals scattered throughout the Souk) and visiting the exhibits. The first one we saw turned out to be another of my favorites of the burn, the “Bizarre Reflection Correction”, which was full of mirrors that showed you your “true” (e.g. non-reversed) reflection, instead of the traditional reversed reflection we are all so used to seeing. It was a great idea for an exhibit that worked on many levels, both physical and metaphorical, and it was nicely executed. I spent a little time talking with the artist and telling him how much I appreciated the exhibit.

We also visited the “Burnerwood” exhibit (put on by the Los Angeles regional group) and got to act out a few lines from the Princess Bride, which was fun because that’s one of our favorite movies. I also got to spin a wheel and in return for singing/acting out “I’m a little teapot” (which I choked on some of the words for but which turned out entertainingly anyway) I got to go make a tie-dyed pink and white silk scarf, which was fun. (Sadly, I tied that scarf to my tricycle basket and it got caught in the wheels and got bike chain grease all over it, so now it’s a pink-and-white-and-black scarf). We went to the exhibit of the Minnesota regional, where we chose from a menu of mysterious experiences and wound up learning how to tie knots, and to the New Orleans regional where we got to leave a prize and take a prize from a set of drawers (I left a Pink Heart sticker and took a little stoppered plastic vial which I wound up putting some playa dust from our camp in). There was a bunch of other stuff too, I’m sure, but those are the ones I remember.

After we had our fill of the Souk we headed back to Pink Heart, where we finally motivated ourselves to go take a shower (yay!) Once we were clean and dressed again, we spent a little time hanging out in front of our yurt, and then I went up to the Pink Lounge and spent some time serving ice cold cucumber water to thirsty playa pilgrims who came by. Just like serving ice cream the day before, it was really satisfying to be able to give something so simple, yet so appreciated, to people who needed it. After a few hours of doing that, though, I was tired again and went back to the yurt for a nap.

After dinner it was time to get all glammed up in our white outfits and head out to the white party at Opulent Temple with Anjanette and our campmate Manamana (yes, like the Muppet song). I was really excited to wear the long white “feather” vest I’d made for the occasion (this was a pointier, white version of the scaled green dragon-ish vest I had made the year before). We stopped at MoonCheese on the way over, which I’d heard about in years past but finally got a chance to try. MoonCheese is a camp with a really simple concept: they make grilled cheese and serve it to passersby every night after 10pm. Their camp was right next to a camp with a big live music stage, so you could stand in line for grilled cheese while grooving to live music and talking to random strangers...pretty fun.

After fortifying ourselves with melted cheese and toast, we walked over to Opulent Temple. We found ourselves a spot in the crowd and danced for a while. The floaty white jellyfish on poles made an appearance, which was fun, and we tried to get a groove on, but at some point Anjanette and Manamana left and when we tried to go find them, we couldn’t. By that point Josh wasn’t feeling well and we decided to bail on the white party and just go back to camp. We detoured to the porta potties first, but then headed back to Pink Heart, where we spent a little while out front sleepily sitting around and then gave up and went to bed.

[Caravansary Part 1]

[Caravansary Part 2]

[Caravansary Part 3]

[Caravansary Part 4]

[Caravansary Part 5]

[Caravansary Part 6]

[Caravansary Part 7]

[Full Set of Caravansary Pictures on Flickr]

Tuesday morning early Josh and I dressed up in our tutus (Tuesday at Burning Man is traditionally Tutu Tuesday) and went out for a quick potty run and a little more exploration of some of the art that was on the way there and back. One of the most fun things was a circular swingset installation. (It was fun during the day but at night it lit up and got even more awesome, as we were to discover later.) There were 6 or 8 swings set up in a circle, and each swing was set up so that when you swung vigorously enough on it, a ball set high up on the metal cable on the swing’s left or right side would collide with a bell and make a nice chiming noise. If there were many people swinging at once it made some pretty, temple-bell-ish music. I love it when an art installation is able to be appreciated as both as a solo and a collaborative experience.

After we got back, we spent some more time setting up our yurt and shade structure, and then there was an all-camp Pink Heart meeting in our communal kitchen area, where we got to meet or at least see most of our camp-mates and spend a little time together. Halcyon gave us some inspirational meditations and words, we got to go around in a circle and introduce ourselves with our names and one word that was how we were feeling right then, and/or our intention for the burn (mine was “serendipity”), and we talked about camp activities and expectations.

After the meeting, we spent some time helping to set up and serve at Pink Heart’s ice cream giveaway (on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays, Pink Heart gives away scoops of vegan coconut-milk ice cream on gluten-free cones to anyone who wants one). First I served toppings to people (because, as I told the people in line, “you know what makes free ice cream in the desert EVEN BETTER? Toppings!”), and then when the toppings ran out, I gave people ice cream cones. Giving out the ice cream itself was particularly fun, and I really enjoyed playing around with people in line, telling them “oooh, I have YOUR ice cream! And YOURS! And look what I have for you? Ice cream! Yayyy!”) Our campmate Karpo was cracking me up too: as he served people (especially the women), he would drop to one knee and present the ice cream cone as though he were presenting a diamond engagement ring or a gift to a Queen. As I have personally affirmed in prior years, there is nothing quite so fabulous as a frozen treat in the hot dry desert, and nothing quite so fun as giving people something they are really, really happy to receive. There were a few people who were kind of fussy (“can I get a chocolate one instead?” “Nope, you get what you get and don’t throw a fit. Trade amongst yourselves if you must”) or maybe just too tired to do more than say “thanks” and walk off with their treat, but for the most part people were so grateful and happy and all that joy just went round and round and created a big pink lovey smoothie, metaphorically speaking.

I did that for hours, until the ice cream ran out for the day, and then realized that I was both physically and energetically exhausted (even though I did sample the ice cream myself and both Anjanette and Josh had come round to make sure I was drinking water). I staggered back to our campsite and drank a quart of recharge, had a snack, peeled off some clothes and took a nap in the yurt that lasted for several hours, and felt better after that.

Right around sunset it was time for a Pink Heart wedding. Two of our camp-mates, Ian and Millie, who had met the year before at Burning Man, were getting married, and the whole camp was all excited and caught up in the planning. Josh and I got re-dressed and lounged around Pink Heart while waiting for the wedding to start. Waynerd came by (the guy who does such beautiful playa portraits who took pics of Anjanette and I last year) and Josh and I took some cute couple pics with him, and then finally it was time for the ceremony. The wedding was officiated by Halcyon at the pink fur-covered Heart Arch across the Esplanade from Pink Heart. There were lots of people there and though we couldn’t hear or see it too well from where we were back in the crowd, there was clearly a lot of love and good feeling all around. The bride and the groom were gifted with amazing, elaborate new playa coats and backpacks shaped like jetpacks, and there was cake and champagne and a whole lot of yay. Anjanette was serving pink champagne to everyone, which was also fun. I adore watching people publicly declare their love and Josh and I had some happy teary moments basking in the reflected glow and remembering our own wedding and declarations of love.

After most of the well-wishers had gone on their way, a group of Pink Heart campers all headed over to Apex (a nearby sound camp) for celebratory dancing. There turned out to be another happy love event to celebrate that night also, as at some point our campmate Joe/“Sexy Situation”, the man who built the Heart Swing, proposed to his darling girlfriend Karen, whom he had also met the year before at Burning Man. It was super sweet and cute and I was honored to be able to share in the moment.

We stayed for a few hours at Apex (I even got to watch some killer fire poi dancing out front at some point, which made me really happy), but eventually the Pinkies started to move on and we decided to go back to camp and try to get some sleep. I say “try” because our immediate camp neighbor, Buddha Lounge, had their speakers set up probably only about 10 or 15 feet away from our yurt, and their bass was so incredibly loud that it vibrated our yurt and the ground and came right through our bones. It was inescapable and very, very loud and even with earplugs and playa-induced exhaustion on our side, we couldn’t so much “sleep” as “pass out from time to time”. (That turned out to be the one major bummer of the whole week, but it was totally balanced out by all the other good stuff so we didn’t mind it too much.)

Anyway on the way back to camp we detoured by the potties and some more nearby art, and discovered yet another interactive, collaborative installation that turned out to be one of my favorites. It was a roughly 10 x 20 metal frame with a whole bunch of different sized globes suspended from it on vertical cables.  It looked at first like it wasn’t working or that it was something that was a daytime exhibit, but much to my delight when we got closer and examined it we discovered what it was. (Love that feeling of discovery you get when you experiment with something and figure it out!) When you tapped each ball you got a light and a sound for about 3 seconds, and then it turned off. So the challenge was to tap each ball as fast as you could (and ideally have other people in there with you doing the same) to see if you could get as many going at once as possible. I had a really fun time running around inside the installation and whacking the globes and encouraging other people to do it too.

[Caravansary Part 1]

[Caravansary Part 2]

[Caravansary Part 3]

[Caravansary Part 4]

[Caravansary Part 5]

[Caravansary Part 6]

[Caravansary Part 7]

[Full Set of Caravansary Pictures on Flickr]