Prologue: I started going to Burning Man in 1997, taking a step out of my customary isolation to become part of the event's freedom-oriented culture - and to get a life in the process. By my 3rd Burning Man in 1999 I was really starting to come out of my shell, and was experiencing growth in myself that was as often painful as it was necessary.
Going into B-Man 99 I was a bit of a wreck. My girlfriend (a fellow Burner, as most of my friends were by that point) had dumped me 2 months earlier and it triggered what could charitably be called an early mid-life crisis. I was having a hard time focusing at work; I had quit the Black Rock Rangers a month before and was unsure of how I was going to fulfill my volunteer commitments with the fledgling Earth Guardians organization during the event. I wasn't sleeping; I was struggling with substance-abuse problems and severe depression; I was lonelier than I'd been in years; and I was scared as hell of what was going to come next. That's where these pages begin.
At the time I was journaling by keeping Morning Pages - 3 pages of spew each day, just keeping the pen moving on the paper and let good form go to hell. Process, not results; raw emotion rather than chronicle. Because of this my journaling focused more on my internal process and on my spiritual development than on what was happening around me. These entries are adapted from my Morning Pages from that period and as such don't deal all that much with the wonder and glory that was Burning Man in 1999. For that you can go to Dave Gross's B-Man 99 links page; lots and lots of good photos and commentary there.
And quite a few notable things that happened just in my own little world of the Blue Light District didn't make it in here either. Things like my overnight hot springs patrol on Monday with Argyre and a couple of hastily-deputized Earth Guardians, or hosting a dozen people for red beans and rice on Tuesday night, or having tea and discussion with the polyamory folks at my new friend Angela's camp on Friday, or hanging out post-burn in the cafe with the editor of the Black Rock Gazette, or the long-simmering tensions among the leadership of the Blue Light District that erupted into open conflict towards the end - these will all have to wait for the book. This is just a straight and largely unvarnished account of what it was like to be me, to live inside my skin and my neurotic, sleep-deprived brain during those two weeks in 1999.
8/24
I have spent the better part of the last few days growing increasingly terrified about going to Burning Man this year. So far I can pin down 3 definite fears. The first is my car breaking down en route or while there; it's become increasingly cranky and unreliable since I had the head gasket replaced in July. Having a breakdown, far from home, being dependent on strangers and having to spend money I don't have to restore my mobility was a big bugaboo for my father (who hated traveling) and so has come to be for me too. The second is proximity to Wendy - how are we going to deal with each other? I don't know how I'll want to deal with her, as my feelings towards her shift constantly, from missing her and loving her and respecting her to being just flat-out slit-eyed furious at her and frustrated as hell and feeling that we're rightly over and just plain being tired of everything being about her. Regardless, we will see each other, and I am afraid of our first contact there, the first in well over a month, afraid of it defining the rest of our contact out there. I am afraid of how I will act, even more than of how she will act. I am afraid I will not recognize the time when I can best make my approach to her, make it non-threatening but sincere, and afraid that if I do it wrong things will go downhill from there and it will color my whole Burning Man like it did at New Moonie last month. While I have lots of other reasons to be at Burning Man, to be there for myself and for my own growth, I am afraid I will quickly and panic-edly lose sight of these reasons and make it all about Wendy. I cannot believe I am even contemplating this, horrible self-betrayal that it is, yet it has come to feel so very real to me. Which just goes to show how deep and unreasoning this fear is.
The third fear is that I will repeat my pattern from previous camping trips with my diox friends: that I will start to have a bad time (induced by lack of sleep, Wendy-neurosis, too many drugs, or whatever) and withdraw, ruining my own enjoyment of being there and detracting from others', displaying my own group-behavior oriented towards attention-getting that never works the way I want it to, going so deeply into myself and my own distress that I lose any fledgling knowledge I've developed of my effect on the outside world. (Jenna: "You have a very large presence, even if you don't know it much of the time.") Alienating myself from others, alienating myself from myself, alienating myself from my purpose in being at Burning Man. That purpose is to grow and to understand and to truly cherish these gifts of life and love and understanding that I have been given. I fear I will forget that purpose, forget who I am and why I'm emerging, how I'm emerging, instead giving into the patterns of isolation and helplessness and guilt and shame that I've lived with so long, that I've built up as armor against the outside world. And doing that forgetting and giving in in public, with no one who will come to my aid (not that I'd let them anyway). I have friends but I feel so distant from all of them now, and I am afraid that it will only be more marked out on the playa, that my fears will become tangible in my behavior and I will no longer know what I am doing or why I am doing it, just push people away. I want to tell Jenna what is going on with me, what has been going on with me for weeks now, but I am no longer sure I understand myself.
Regardless, I will go to Burning Man and will concentrate on just being there, being present, acting out of truth and grace in the present moment, just as someone spoke in Meeting the other day. I will keep to my stated goal of opening myself to community, to interacting, to moving myself along into this world that is larger than my own. To being born. To coming naked into this world, naked and open and trusting, coming with faith that this is what life - my own life - is about. To understand that now, not too late at 39 years old. But oh god I am so afraid.
I feel the fear mounting, tightening inside me and I want to just puke it all up, give it back to the universe, let it out of my body where I have held it so tightly all my life because it has seemed like a treasure, like a gift of self-preservation, like a useful piece of armor. My mind knows that the fear no longer serves me - that perhaps it never really did - and that I can let go of it. I see myself pouring all that fear out on the playa, just weeping it out until my body is so shrunken and husk-dry that I have no more room for the rich nourishment that this fear requires, until I am ready to begin rebuilding my physical self with the beliefs and knowledge that nourishes me, with a rich inner life of love and understanding.
This to me is holy; it is the greatest gift I can give myself or anyone else: my love, my understanding, my compassion, my forgiveness. My goodness, my existence. As I go along I gain a sense of my goodness and my future and begin to really see myself and my path, and by turning up the wattage of my own light I can light the way for others too. (When I first met Wendy I told her, "You've got a very bright little light inside you." I still see that light in her, in spite of how much she's hurt me. Is that why I still love her so much?) To really be in this world I must shine. My fear cannot stand up to my knowledge of my life and what it's for - which is to shine. Just as all of our lives are. I am no different, no more exalted, no more special than anyone else in this regard. I am special to myself, and that will have to be enough; it already is, when I remember - and when I stop being afraid.
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