Blessed With An Extraordinary Life

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27th of August 2008 - Return to Burning Man, Day 3

After the Santa Rampage I drift back to Center Camp again, and once again run into Santi setting up his barbershop. We hang out till almost dawn, and I catch another hour's nap on a bench when he goes back to the camp. When he returns he has a flag and a determined expression. "We're going on a vision quest. Put on some warm things".

At this time of the morning the desert is freezing - I'm shivering in my sleeveless santa suit even in the relative shelter of Center Camp. I put on two more jumpers over my jacket and we set out onto the perfect white expanse of the open playa as the sun begins to climb from behind the circling mountains. Santi is still in his beautiful multi-layered samurai costume (which matches his ferocious beard and topknot) and teddy bear hood.

We find a spot right out in the middle of the emptiness, with the Man, the Temple and the big art structures ringing us on the horizon, sit down and just let our ideas flow, talking about where we've come from, what this week means to us so far, how we see our respective journeys right now and where we need to go from here, what we need to learn. When we're ready we get up and just let our feet lead us. Right away I find a wonderful purple velvety robe with fake zebra-fur cuffs and lapels just lying there on the playa, and add it to my ensemble - a gift from the desert.

We wander for hours as the heat rises, somehow encountering almost nobody, exploring the artworks. We climb on a construction of multicoloured blocks the size of cargo containers and stand and look out at the desert, exchanging a few words as our whim takes us, just drinking in the environment. We weave through a field of 15-foot weather balloons tethered in net bags, a deactivated light and sound installation. Everything becomes dreamlike in the quiet and stillness - I've slept for three hours in the last 48 and I'm drifting on a soft cushion of exhaustion, but I don't feel tired, just calm and free and open to everything.

Finally, feeling our journey complete, we rejoin the city at the 10:00 corner so Santi can do his morning rounds, checking in on various camps to see who's about, what everyone's been up to, who needs what (and can provide what), how interactions between the camps are working, what needs doing later. I meet so many wonderful, warm and kind people in the space of a couple of hours as we go in and out of tents, I'm fed baby carrots and crisps and chocolate, welcomed into a family.

I end up back in Center Camp as usual, and spent the rest of the afternoon there watching a series of acts on the stage - bands, poets and comedians come and go. Finally my energy flags and I retreat to Deep Heaven, a chillout area on the Esplanade just off the Wheel which is full of soft cushions and bolsters and manages to be surprisingly cool as the winds off the playa blow in and out of its open front. I sleep for another three or four hours and wake as it's getting properly dark with a new burst of energy.

Nonetheless, as I go back into Center Camp for more chai, a profound depression starts to settle on me. I look around me and it seems like everywhere there are couples; sitting on the benches, spinning poi together, making out in the corner seats. Burning Man, among other things, has a very sexually charged atmosphere, and sometimes it seems like there's surreptitious activity going on in every tent. It's a place where people open up to each other and share love of all kinds, find partners and soulmates.

Especially after things fell apart with Jewel last week, I feel very alone right now, and despite feeling strongly the atmosphere of warmth and openness, making many new friends and feeling more open and confident myself than ever before, I'm still totally failing to connect with members of the opposite sex here.

Actually, this has been a running theme for some time, and part of a larger personal journey. I talked about it a little bit back in December when I talked about meeting Jewel - having been thrown suddenly into the world of (effectively) single life last year, I discovered that I had no idea how to communicate with women as anything but friends.

I've struggled with a lot of demons since then, including discovering that I really didn't like how I saw myself through other poeople's eyes, and lots of low-self-esteem issues and hangups. But on the whole I've worked through those, though often slowly and painfully, and I feel pretty good about myself and my attractiveness these days.

Nonetheless, on the whole I still struggle in this area, and although I've had my couple of romantic encounters it's often seemed that I was in environments (the youth hostel, for example) where half the people around me were hooking up left right and center while I consistently ended up alone. Here, in what should be the easiest place on earth to find somebody, the pattern continues.

Bizarrely enough, at this moment I run into Joe, my friend from the Adelaide Hostel (and creator of epic pasta), as well as the second most effective chick magnet I've ever encountered. He's digging Burning Man for the second time, camped out near the edge of the city with a group of friends. We chat a little and he quickly realises my mood is down and gets to the bottom of my doldrums - despite being a self-confessed player and man's man he's also very emotive, gentle and caring. But discussing the situation with him I just feel ridiculous and childish. Making my apologies I get out and just wander into the desert to try and clear my head.

I find a large, quiet spot out in the dark between installations and lie down, trusting my LED blinkies to protect me from being run over by something. I stare up at the stars, and it seems that all the ideas about journeys and paths and my place in the world which rose up during our vision quest in the morning merge with my current concerns, and swim between the thousands of huge bright lights overhead. Slowly, a huge deep calm comes over me, and perspective starts to wash in.

Back in January, I wrote a post about contentment versus yearning in which I proposed that some people are contented with their lives and some always want more, and basically put forward the view that the latter group (in which I counted myself) are the ones that will achieve great things while the former will accept humdrum, pedestrian lives. My great friend Sharon shot a bunch of holes in my argument and challenged the implicit arrogance of my stance, and I withdrew at least some of it, but didn't really change my thinking on the matter. I saw myself, with hardly a hint of irony, as a lone rebel, unwilling to settle for ordinariness, striving for greatness and pushing back barriers.

Now it comes to me that in always looking to the horizon and the next thing, I've become utterly ungrateful for what I have and what I'm given. It's tied to my philosophical path, too - when I broke away from my Christian beliefs in my mid-teens, I swore I'd never bow down to a greater being again, but after years of feeling I should always thank God for every blessing in my life I also decided never to be grateful to a greater power for the good things that came to me. And somewhere along the way that absence of gratitude became an arrogant unwillingness to acknowledge that I was blessed at all.

When I've had good friends, a secret part of me has been bitter that they weren't lovers. When I've had wonderful times, I've secretly always found something missing, even if it's just the fact that they would end. I've thanked those who were generous to me and often talked about their generosity here in the blog, but where things were missing in my life I may have said out loud "I failed to make this happen", because that's what I've learned to say as the self-actualising human being I consider myself to be, but inside I've thought "It's so unfair! I never get what I want!".

And the more blessed I've been the more I've become lazy about working for the things I don't have, including relationships. Joe's not magically blessed with luck with women (the fact that I've called him a "chick magnet" is a dead giveaway), he works at it. I've seen him approach eight girls in a couple of hours at a bar. I almost never approach, citing shyness or tiredness or the fact that I've got a cough or that it's just not the right time. And then I go home and sulk that I didn't meet anyone, or I just get throwing-up drunk and morose and bring people down.

Now, all these realisations wash over me in a flood and are blown away on the cold desert breeze. The starfield overhead seems to grow brighter than ever, and for the first time in a long time I feel not just fleeting pleasure in my situation or anticipation of the next good thing but gratitude for how incredibly blessed I am. It strikes me as suddenly hilarious that I'm here, now, having seen everything I've seen and done everything I've done, and I'm still handing out cards and writing a blog that say "Seeking an Extraordinary Life".

The gratitude fills me, so big and warm and joyful that it feels too big for me, almost painful, swelling my body and spirit, and I open up and release and offer it to whatever greater power - naming it may come, or may never matter - has given me this amazing life.

I stay there for maybe an hour, just staring into the stars, exploring this newfound feeling of love and gratitude and most of all contentment. Then I stand up and look around, and see the tower of the Man on the horizon. Without needing to make a choice, I head for it.

The tower on which the Man stands is built entirely of wood, with a double spiral staircase running up the inside and four levels inside on which one can stand and view the playa and the city. I go straight to the top. The tower is filled with people, and I can see the change in me reflected in them every time our eyes meet. My love and gratitude is shining out of me, and when our eyes meet, male or female, we strike sparks. I remember that I still have a bag of sweets in my Camelbak, and I work my way down the tower handing out orange jellies to everyone. I get hugs and big smiles and thankyous and get into great conversations all the way down to the foot of the tower.

So, I've been waiting to do this all week but I wanted to explain why first - from tomorrow the blog, and my journey, get a new name. Where I go from here, and what changes, is still unclear. But it's a very different me who walked out of the desert on Monday, and the journey is going to be very different from now on.

A few highlights for Wednesday from the Black Rock City Events Guide:

All day: Socially Appropriate Fart Day, citywide (hosted by Twisted Quackers and Camp Skinny). "It's time to celebrate our farts. Today you can feel free to fart any old time as loudly and as smellily as you want!"

11:00am: Clinch Fighting, at BRC Combat Club. "Learn how to subdue campmates-gone-wild! Closing distance, clinching, and takedowns - oh my!"

12:00pm: How to Start a Housing Co-op, at Lothlorien.

9:00pm: Strap-on-a-Thon, at Beaverton.

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