The Trail Beckons

Last night I cowered in the dark
I smelt the weasels closing in
I've no use for sun or parks
When I've not had my medicine
I summon demons, fiends and snarks
And send them off again
Last night I cowered in the dark
I smelt the weasels closing in.

What does one do when cash is low, credit is nil and employment prospects limited to jury duty, or, more entertainingly, shaking down corrupt cops with the help of a remote camera and a 18.1 Ghz link to the hard drives? Nothing produces cash from the corrupt like filmed evidence of their corruption...can't kill the golden goose and all of that.

But I digress yet again. Or maybe not.

Solid arguments may certainly be made for fleeing now, while I'm still the shaker rather than the shakee, as it were. Wiser men than I have pointed out there is nothing more dangerous than a wounded animal--or a corrupt pig you're leaning on.

So I figure I make with one more discreet DVD drop-off with instructions on how to buy the original, then get the hell out of here.

Vancouver, BC is sure nice in summer. I suspect I'll head there, though the Urban Shaman, the BC Marijuana Party HQ and Marc Emery's over-the-counter seed sales have apparently never resumed business after an arson on Hastings Street last year. The arsonist(s) were never caught, and one wonders if the RMCP or the Canadian mob saw fit to dispense with the epicenter of the Great White pot revolution--

We'll likely never know, but I suspect I'll be reporting back on whatever I find.

Astute readers will note that I was talikn' smack about walking the 362-mile Oregon Coast Trail, and indeed, I still intend to. Why not take two months and hike all the way to Canada? I mean, who gets to do this stuff anymore?

Frankly, no one else that I know, save a few trustafarian types. Don't get me wrong, these folks are invaluable allies on the trail. But a trustfunder or retiree has the luxury of not having to be out there on the trail. For them, the choice is not between wage-slavery and the road, rather, the road becomes another in a prized collection of idle-rich experiences--and blokes like myself simply provide color to the story they'll tell afterwards--

And they become part of mine.

I'll post when I can, and tell all, changing names to protect myself and incriminate others.

In the meantime, some older bits, including one entitled Burning Man is Dead, lie here awaiting their final edit. I'll try to have them up soon.

Peace out.

The Bleeding Edge

I suspect that humans as a species currently tread heavily on the razor, and we're probably On The Way Out.

And Blanston's financial situation continues to deteriorate. For the first time in his life, he's about to be jobless AND homeless.

But consider:

The Oregon coast has a continuous, 362-mile long trail which begins on the south jetty of the Columbia River and ends in Brookings, about 20 miles from the California border. There are many more miles of trails, thousands of them, that run into the Cascade and Coast mountain Ranges, as well as the Sierra Nevadas, and the Ho Chi Minh-like Pacific Crest Trail, which ultimately takes you to South America, the Hard Way--

I've always been a man who lives by his impulses, and the wisdom of this approach to life can certainly be debated. Its hold on me, however, cannot. Sometimes you just have to take a hard look at the bones on the ground. The shaman clicks and gibbers at me nonsensically, but his message is clear: Get Out. Now.

It literally almost never rains after June 1 along the west coast. Camping requires only a pad and a bag--no tent needed at all. Fresh water, showers, laundry--all are available along the trail.

I paid a lot of money at the turn of the century to fuck about in SE Asia. I can do the same thing here in my own back yard, for almost no $ at all--

Methinks the signs are clear. More on this later.

Hunter S. Thompson is Alive

Yeah, I know. He's alive in his writings, even without his well-known works and Johnny Depp's uncannily accurate portrayal--

No. That's all true. HST lives on, as any author does after death, so long as we read him.

But I'm here to tell you, if any man ever had motive, means and opportunity to fake his own death, Thompson is that man.

Thompson had many reasons to want to disappear, but a simple return to pre-Hells' Angels anonymity looms large and most likely. It is rumoured that his latest book was a debunking of the official report on 911, including proof that the WTC towers and building seven were brought down by controlled demolition, not fire and structural failure.

This makes you a target in the current version of the USA. When powerful individuals like Paul Wellstone and Mel Carnahan (and a host of other moderate-to-liberal Democrats) take one-way plane trips into the ground with disturbing regularity, what quarter can a self-admitted dope-fiend expect?

In one of his latest interviews, he stressed, and I'm paraphrasing a bit, it is his great shame, a badge of dishonor that he and his fellow journalists never found out who killed JFK. While Hunter has long walked his talk, knowing the bead was drawn on him, he may simply have decided it was time to go underground. In "death" he can complete the 911 expose. If his allegations are sufficiently documented, he could well pull the rug out from the fascists running the game. Without detailing why [another post on that later p'raps] Thompson likely believes that the assasination of the Kennendys marked the beginning of a fascist takeover of his country. Toppling those fascists would surely slake his burning soul.

While the motive I posit is clearly wishful thinking and speculation on my part, Thompson most certainly had the means and opportunity. It is well-known that the local sheriff is his longtime friend. Indeed, Blanston recalls one misty late 90s May night in a tavern in Aspen, where the Pitkin County sheriff mingled with a crowd of NORML (National Organization for the Reformation of Marijuana Laws) lawyers openly smoking glass hookas filled with skunky Big Bud or California Indica--

Later that night, Blanston shared a joint and discussed a bit of politics with Hunter himself. Again, a topic for another post.

The point is, Pitkin County Sheriff and Coroner would have jurisdiction over the body, the investigation, and the official reports--which includes media appearances by Johhny Depp stating that Thompson's body would be cremated, then shot out of a cannon. Depp, who lived with Thompson for several months while prepping for the role of Duke, became his friend. That night in Aspen when I met Hunter, he arrived at the party in a red Boxster--given to him by Depp after the filming of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

Point is, Hunter had all the help he needed--official, media and otherwise-- and the cash--to disappear.

Here's one bloke who prays--to the extent I pray at all--for Hunter to come roaring back, ripping the flesh from our foes.

If he really did check out, we are left to wonder, as noted by the Rude Pundit: If Hunter Thompson can't take it anymore, what hope is there for the rest of us?

The Milk Sours

Copyright 2004, all rights reserved



August 29, 2004


Ah, how quickly it comes around again, eh?

And maybe it’s the last Burning Man…if my ultra-paranoid reading of the tea-leaves for November is correct, Bush will be reinstalled. When that happens, Burning Man will be a gen-u-wine terrorist organization, and the jackboots will come stomping across the Black Rock Desert to herd us all into internment camps.

I’m doing my best to shunt these fears aside, but I’ve read the “Help America Vote Act” guaranteeing untraceable electronic shenanigans in vote-counting, the USAPATRIOT Act permitting W to strip anyone, anywhere, of their rights, including American Citizens… and the memo from White House counsel Gonzales (whom W, incidentally, reaaaaaaaly wants to appoint to the Supreme Court next term) saying torture is OK when the Preznit says—not to mention the torture and porn videos shot by Our Nation’s Finest in the 13 or so (Guantanomo and Abu Ghraib are but two in a huge, heretofore secret chain of U.S. run gulags, where we’ve been torturing and disappearing folks for years) prisons scattered from here to Jerusalem…

The stakes have never been higher, and I, for one, am committed to having the Burn of all Burns this year.

Salvia Divinorum, which somehow escaped the DEA’s list of dangerous drugs, will likely play a role. I purchased 10 grams of this dried herb over-the-counter at The Urban Shaman in Vancouver, B.C. I smoked it once, the trip lasts only six minutes or so, but an eternity passes for you. There is simply nothing to compare it to. LSD, Mushrooms (yeah, even the so-called “philosopher’s stone” caps from the Amazon), peyote, X…these are candy. Salvia obliterates all reference points, all dimension, all time. The entity (or entities, it was hard to be certain) that await on the other side ask only that you not be terrified. Terror serves no function in the realm of pure intellect; it merely prevents you from perceiving reality. Do not be terrified, they seem to say, and PAY ATTENTION.

Indeed.

What holds true in the Salvia realm holds true for the sober human, as well.

Terror only prevents you from perceiving reality.

So I fear this is The Final Burn….even if Ashcroft’s thugs don’t shut it down, if W “wins”, it means the coup is complete and even our votes no longer matter. The options then are stark: Fight...or Flee.

I’m a poor marksman, and besides, I could never afford that much ammunition.

So I’ll flee the country, somewhere cheap, or maybe a little studio upwind of The Urban Shaman…

But I am painfully aware that most people simply cannot believe that we have descended into fascism, despite the laws passed since 9-11. As an attorney, I promise you, upon my oath and license-- and my mother’s eyes-- that there is no functional difference between the current U.S. law and Nazi Germany, or Stalin’s USSR. But many of you have families to raise, mortgages to pay, “jobs” to do, and you will not be disabused of your delusions until it is far too late.

Peace, o my brothers and sisters. The times, they are a’ changin’, and violence lurks like a sleeping Leviathan, just below the surface. Our Peace is running out.

GB

Hope Springs Eternal

Copyright 2003, all rights reserved.



Yeah. Bloody hell.

Blanston has blown into town with the unusual problem of having lost his Zoloft prescription somewhere along the new Lollapalooza tour, he figures at least a month ago, and, true to the warnings I just reviewed in my trusty hardcover copy of the Physician's Desk Reference, he's plunged into a serotonin-deprivation funk that was far worse than the original depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder that necessitated the drug in the first place.

So last night, as he grew increasingly nasty to us, the cats, and the dog (not to mention a continual stream of neighbors (being friendly, is all) and some female guests (a few UO students swooning for that Dutch prick’s accent and facility with machinery and electronics) here in the hills of Oregon, swilling Irish coffee and sucking down, in my estimation, far too much asthma inhalant, Jens and I beat him silly, fists wrapped in paint-stained rags (lots of pre Burning Man painting going on this week) and left him moaning on the hardwood floor in the dining room, which has been stripped of finish and sanded, but not yet wiped clean. In the last few hours he's gathered quite a bit of red dust, moist as he was.

Rifling through his pockets, I found, in addition to the $800 he's owed me since last years' Burning Man and a fifth of the newly legalized absinthe, a disk which contained an unfinished bit, which apparently he meant for me to distribute. Like last year.

[BTW, if anyone wants his ticket, (Burning Man 2003--Beyond Belief) let me know, because Blanston simply isn't going this year. The poor bastard may not make it through the night. It goes for $200, a steal now that they're getting $250- $300 at the gate]

So I'm plowing through that right now and hopefully will have it out shortly after the Man burns 10 days hence. Watch your inboxes. I hope it slips past your prudish packet sniffers--

As for Blanston, I just checked on him. He twitches; he sweats; he shrieks; he utters unbelievably vile curses that'd make Linda Blair blush. I may just duct tape his face and get it over with, but then I'd have to explain it, to people in charge, and we don't want any government agency snooping about these days, do we? for any reason, esp. since they now require no effing reason at all--

The Burn promises much this year, because Ashcroft and the rest of the Thought Police and Hitler Youth are running roughshod over ways of life that the moneyed freaks in the western states hold dear. Nothing fuels orgies of licentious excess more than the disapproving stare of hopeless squares and the plaintive, self-righteous (and ultimately envy driven) rhetoric of dangerous demagogues, envious because it is not they who are receiving gratuitous, I-love-you-as-a-beautiful-person skull from a shaved nymphet under a new moon in the Nevada desert, or skydiving on nitrous, or adjusting the mix on their handmade flamethrower.

And they want to be, deep in their sour, milkfat hearts.

And I thank them, because now everyone will be that much more determined to push the envelope, causing much Fundamentalist bile to rise, p'raps enough to choke them--

Move over, right wingers. The Left is coming for ya, crazed on dope and sex, wielding crossbows and witchcraft, and sharpening ceremonial knives for the letting of Bush sap,
for beheading straw men like Howard Dean and Ahnuld, cooking the poisonous brews with which we will induce one massive, mind-wrenching psychic rewiring which will render the survivors incapable of a malicious thought. Those who don't survive, well, they'll compost well. And we'll grow flowers from your bones, Bush et al. Flowers from your bones. Though I may make a pipe out of a cranium or two--

Talk to y'all soon. Should you happen to make it to Burning Man on the spur of the moment, you can find us at 3:00 between the outer and next-to-outer ring. Street names are Absurd between Theory and Vision. That will only make sense if you go.

Burning Man 2002

Copyright 2002, All Rights Reserved

A letter to my lawyer

Becker--

You wretched shyster scum. I'll snap your SPINE like a female mantis in a week or so, that is, unless you wise up and clear the fuck out of all known hideouts...Burning Man is over, and when the smoke clears from the Playa and my aching synapses, I'm comin' for YOU, because I have one clear memory left from BTB [Before the Burn], and that is of you, my twisted so-called Friend and Advisor, dumping me off with the Dutch speed freak [velocity, not pharmaceuticals] and his '74 VW pop-top microbus [into which he's lashed a turbocharged Porsche 6-banger, a killer sound wall w/Bazooka subwoofer, and maybe 100 blue/white medical LEDs scavenged from endoscopes which cast a sheen of light on the road under the perimeter of the bus] in Eugene...who turned out to be Very Cool, but the "chocolate" you gave us to keep us going for the twelve-hour hump over the Southern Pass from Oregon to California was laced with many grams of our friendly mushroom so WE WERE DOSED AT 12000 FEET as we began our descent into the desert for a week of "Burning Man"--and we didn't even know what the fuck Burning Man WAS--

What follows is a random synopsis of events I think happened from that point on. Most is recreated... though I did have audio tapes and lots of stills, the Black Rock Desert dust is hard on equipment...the most reliable source was ironically the most primitive: my scrawled notes. As my ‘editor’, I insist you forward it on to the usual suspects. As my friend and associate, when I find you, I'm gonna kick your lily ass--I suspect you've holed up with the yoga-hippie chick for post-Burn recovery, if you ever made it Down There, but you hafta come out from the Pleasure Dome sometime...

Christ! [Or as my Brit friends might say, in a similar fit of pique, Cunting Jesus!, which we inscribed at an undisclosed location near Death Valley on our merry way to see Phish in Las Vegas, but I digress] I'm still thinking like I'm on the Playa, madness and nakedness in all directions at all hours, Amsterdam and even Bangkok lame/dilute/weak imitations, pedaling in stoned and tripping on my $4 junker bought and painted esp. for Burning Man, to some random camp--not specifically the Pleasure Dome, but maybe Lesbian Love Rumble, the Illuminaughty, the Mutaytor or Alien Love Nest--and I'll detail these and other entities which appeared and vanished in the seven day Experience which is Burning Man below, but a bit of Set and Setting first, with the obligatory tip o' the hat to Kesey and Leary, may their souls forever trip the night fantastic--

You assured me that Jens is a mechanical genius, a veritable McGuyver (sp?), able to launch and track a satellite with nothing more than a slingshot and a police scanner wired into a car battery--

And so he was. We had walkie-talkies, scanners, recorders, various microphones, solar panels, cameras--and the growling turbocharged Porsche lurking in the back bay of the bus. Trust me, vintage microbuses abound on the highways here in the freak-friendly northwest, but these are plodders, all. NO ONE expects to get their doors blown by a rusting orange hippievan over the pass--Jens delighted in clogging the slow lane, letting a few folks get frustrated as we wound upwards, then jamming it down and shrieking by, LEDs painting an electric flash on the retinas of startled drivers, pot and cherry tobacco smoke billowing out the back--

Which brings us to the first little snag in the festivities, motherfucker. Jens, the mechanical-fucking genius, had a burned out License Plate Bulb, so somewhere east of Ashland (where the Toyes of Smoke 2 Joints fame reside) we were pulled over, shrooming and holding maybe half a dozen felonies between us. I'm not at all certain how we maintained composure...

Cops always start out polite: the reason we're stopping you tonight, sir, is the your rear plate light is burned out-- which means, effectively, we pulled you over Because We Can--and somehow they didn't see me jamming things into my pockets, maybe because I removed my wallet at the same time, ready to flash ID, my Policeman's Benevolent Assoc. card and a Hugs Not Drugs sticker on the credit-card caddy--

But they didn't give a fuck about me. They ran the plates and Jens through their checks and he emerged as clean as a baptized babe. He's a legal alien, got his green the hard way, a decade-long marriage to a Very Bad American Woman. The cops bade us a good trip to Black Rock City, and we rolled.

The Black Rock Desert lies at 4 thousand feet in the northwest corner of Nevada. The descent over the pass is treacherous at night, but a waning half-moon under clear skies set the rocks along the road aglow with silver fire. We actually had to stop to convince ourselves they weren't capped with snow at the end of bleeding August. So the trip down from the mountain and the mushrooms was unspeakably peaceful and beautiful. Jens kept asking me what Burning Man was and I kept saying things like think Summer of Love meets Mad Max meets techno-anarchy, white witchcraft and pagan/goddess/gaian/phallus worship, set off by every genre of art, music, bodypaint, and other sundry self expression and crowned with an hour long blast of just-short-of-nuclear pyrotechnics that make Walt Disney look like a fucking pansy--

And he seemed to understand, despite the drugs and the language barrier. Face it, native speakers have a hard time with me, but this Dutch bastard truly seemed to be meshing with my karma--but the truth was, I didn't really know. I'd read a lot, I'd visited the website, but I figure reading about doing major brain surgery on yourself and actually wielding the laser/scalpel are different things.

One thing I'd gathered: I would be transported, transformed, transmogrified, achieve transcendence, even. I feared the Hype, the inevitable letdown. But before we'd even arrived at the mythical-and-only-temporary Black Rock City, the energy and tension began to build, the rising curl of a tsunami that would crest and crash multiple times over the week, one psychic orgasm pounding after the other--

We had a brief and potentially nasty run-in with a local proprietor in Gerlach. As the sun began to show behind the black mountains we pulled in to the last place for eighty miles that could recharge our propane. A huge military truck with an armoured personnel carrier in tow was parked across the street. Military equipment, land and air, are common sights in the remoter regions of the desert west. But I thought it odd that the carrier had several gun turrets open, evil black muzzles poking through. Turns out it wasn't military. The aged bearded freak in charge gleefully told us he was on the way to The Burn, the truck held hundreds of gallons of fuel, water and booze. The personnel carrier was a WWII-era British Ferret, the black muzzles were water cannon to cool the naked beautiful people prancing in the Playa, and the Ferret itself would tow a full-service Tiki-bar behind it--

The three of us talking there apparently looked odd to the station owner, who pulled up suddenly in an immaculate yellow pickup, stomped on the brakes and demanded to know what we were doing with his propane tank. He mellowed and smiled when we told him we were waiting for him to open. Ten minutes later we were fully gassed, propane, gasoline, and nitrous, the latter courtesy of the Ferret-freak, promising to find him on the Playa and we headed for the last narrow stretch of macadam which the downloaded map told us ended at Black Rock City. Grinning madly, puffing on freshly rolled cigarettes, mine laced with sweet Humboldt juicy fruit, I took the wheel and raced into the vortex, the vibes touched off by the Ferret-freak rising with us, Jens swearing in Dutch and the now-dead Entwistle beating bloody fuck out of Naked Eye live as the sun broke over the hills and we looked for the first time upon Black Rock City.

Two signs posted along the entrance read:

For those who have attended Burning Man, no explanation is necessary.

For those who have not, no explanation is possible.

The City appears on the 400 square mile dry lakebed of nearly white, hardpack alkali dirt. At one end is the entrance and the airport. The airport, like the city, is temporary. Ultralights to turbo-props fly above the Playa at all hours, even now on Day one. Skydivers became so common you ceased to look up at them unless they landed right in front of you, forcing quick brake-and-pedal response on the bike. But that was what I saw first: Planes and skydivers, and what appeared to be just a few tents in the brilliant distance.

But the Playa is so bloody flat you can't see past anything. We would soon discover those few tents were several thousand people and maybe half of the structures, vehicles, and alternate dimensions which ultimately would make up the City for six nights hence, until the night of the Burn. We rolled right up to a gate and were stopped by a smiling nymphet in gold strap-sandals and little else, nipples and navel and clitoris pierced and connected by a fine gold chain. She played with the chain while she gave us printed matter, which for obvious reasons we didn't even glance at until later. But we learned that camping rules were Leave No Trace, be discreet if you plan on doing drugs, no money could be used to purchase anything, except ice and coffee. Everything else you obtained in Black Rock City was either a gift or a trade. I figured once we got in there cash would be changing hands, but it didn't. People gave us food, water, wine, drugs, trip toys...our neighbor Arvid laid another solar panel on Jens for repairing his truck.... it was incredible. You just carried stuff around you could give. On Day two I was having my 10 a.m. spliff when I noticed a young dude walking towards me, shirtless, unshaven, bandana wrapped around his head. I offered the spliff as he passed. He stopped, grinned, took a huge hit and released the smoke slowly through his teeth: Thanks, man. Just what I needed. I'm camping just over there why don't you come by wait fuck it I just got back from Peru and I've got somethin for ya--

And off he went. I shrugged it off as a typical drug conversation then zow he was back on a bike and carrying a large plastic cup, which he offered to me immediately. Peruvian cactus, man, about half as strong as peyote, we just blended this here, drink up--and pow, my second trip of the burn, this time mescaline, which fueled Huxley's Doors of Perception--

But back to the quadruple-pierced masochistic beauty who greeted us-- that is definitely the Second Thing I noticed about Burning Man after the crowded airspace: clothing is optional, and in the dry white heat of the Playa, most people Opt Out. Nighttime attire, we would learn later, consisted of layering, the layers to be shed to expose truly bizarre costumes and nakedness as physical activity increased (read tripping/dancing/biking/bungee-jumping/or maybe climbing on the back of a fire-spewing dragon lumbering across the desert--) in short, the place reeked of sex, naked dancing, drinking, drug taking, biking, eating, a fair amount of public sex acts, including a two-guys-and-two-girls multiple-orifice fest just beyond the guests seated at The Pufferfish on our first night on the Playa, and an hour long/nearly motionless tantric love-fuck in front of two thousand people in central camp at high noon between a couple who appeared simply to be madly, blissfully in love--

And at this point, we still didn't know what we were in for, but the energy was as big and boundless as the burning sky. We drove in at 5 mph, the maximum speed near the camps to keep the dust down, and found a fairly remote spot to set up and try to get on top of the weirdness that was closing in around us--

We pitched camp by parking the sliding door of the bus away from the prevailing winds. They reached 70 mph at times, and though the desert dust was fairly hard, a fine grit blew constantly, punctuated by the occasional 300-foot dust devil blasting through and grabbing dishes, cups, poorly-pitched tents and debris and carting it a mile or so away--

In this, the Ninth Burning Man, the City was laid out as always--a gigantic concentric wheel with spokes radiating out from a huge (think the entire University of Illinois campus huge) central hub. The Central Hub is the actual Playa. Each year the theme changes and the flavor of the Burn is altered accordingly. This year the theme is The Floating World. At the center of the central hub stands The Man. 150 feet tall, constructed of wood, The Man is perched atop a Lighthouse, upon and into which you can clamber about and explore. By day it is unimpressive... a bland stick figure.... but at night it is outlined in electric-blue neon and a green laser beacon as fat as your arm blasts through the desert night casting solid green beams at 90 and 180 degrees. After a few hours, you quickly learn to navigate along the spokes and circles, and if ever you get lost, simply head up a spoke toward the Man and find your street--

The whole week you gaze up at the man in all manner of consciousness and you know one thing--that that fucker is gonna BURN--

People are camped in the areas beyond the central hub. Camps range from single tents to multi-semi-truck extravaganzas with bars, bands, film, fire dancers. like the Damsterdam a club where you have to check your soul at the door and must do whatever the bartender tells you to do, in a window facing the busy public street, prominently lit and labeled WHORE, to get your soul back and leave--

And rereading this I can see that any attempt to logically tell the beautiful phantasmagoria that was and still is Burning Man is futile...it's like trying to explain transcendent sex to a lifetime nun--so I'll just rattle on, trying to hit the high points and stressing the underlying peaceful anarchic lawlessness of the place...the police were there, but largely a non-issue.

So here we go--

Burning Man is an experiment in temporary community. It has police, fire and public works. Public works includes portapotties and watertrucks that drive by a few times during the hot desert day, blasting its airhorn to announce its approach, trundling slowly and spewing great founts of cold water out the back. As the truck approaches, people rise from their camps where much of the day is passed, (the real action at BM is at night) stripping off their clothes and jogging behind until thoroughly soaked, cooled and refreshed, 19 year old thoroughly shaved beauties running laughing alongside me, other men, older women, and some folks whose gender can best be described as indeterminate--

It has an airport.

It has coffee and ice for sale, but everything else is gift or trade. You are responsible to bring your own food, shelter and water--at least 1.6 gallons per person per day. You are not permitted to enter unless you can show the Greeter that you can provide for these basic needs.

Most people bike. Vehicles are not permitted once you set camp, unless you have a DMV (Dept. of Mutant Vehicle) permit from Black Rock City...and they are not kidding when they say Mutant. No minivans here, pantyboys, think back to the above-mentioned Ferret....and that was nothing. Buses, trucks and cars are welded cut hammered and bent to create fantastic sailing ships, submarines, octopi, jellyfish--all manner of strange craft and creature which pertained to the sea, the Floating World--and these vehicles were permitted to blast along the central hub at jackrabbit speed, stopping suddenly to disgorge or pick up passengers. There was a giant yellow rubber duckee, the vehicle that appeared, through computer controlled glow-wire, to propel itself by massive hands grasping and pulling it along. Fire-throwing capacity was popular. Pirate ships, sea monsters, the Deathguild vehicles (these guys were the living/breathing embodiment of Road Warrior, studded leather and crazy chases through the Playa, machine guns firing blue flame and flame throwers arcing beautiful napalm....) Some of the vehicles, particularly the large ships, had bars, with massive sound systems, smoke bombs, strobes, etc., effects, and booze, bongs, X, nitrous. You name it, it was out there, and you'd get a bit as a gift or in exchange for a cigarette, a brownie, etc., or even once to my utter delight, a lovely naked girl sat down next to me handed me a joint and asked if she could kiss me in exchange.

Needless to add, I bartered for more.

Don't ask me how no one got hurt. I don't know. Despite the craziness, the explosions, the skydivers, the endless dark expanse of the playa at night, foot and bike and Mutant vehicle traffic all buzzing and crashing around the desert on drink and drugs and the sheer mental psychic energy of the place--

Art was everywhere. Gigantic moving sculptures. Billowing tapestry. Burning metal gardens. Mind-blowing psychedelic displays generated by I don't know what technology. Film (like at Lesbian Love Rumble, a large white enclosed canvas tent into which no male was allowed. Various footage of lesbians and the like was projected from within the tent. The entrance was guarded by an adorable woman in a fur coat and a thong. She sweetly explained the LLR was for women only so we asked her what she had for two straight guys. Her smile broadened and she pulled out the Rolodex and started flipping through the various sex-oriented camps--) and painting and dance...all of it happening at all hours, slightly subdued during the day.

There were 45 or so (temporary) radio stations, some typical rock and jazz and techno, etc, and others broadcasting nothing but bootlegged live Pink Floyd, or maybe Burroughs narrating the hotshot sequence from Naked Lunch [a poison fix, usually strychnine, given to a known addict-informant for liquidation purposes. Strychnine is preferred because it resembles heroin in taste and appearance] or Terence McKenna waxing philosophic on the mechanistic soul-herding elves you experience and communicate with after smoking a single hit of Dimethyltryptamine--

And through it all, the gifts. Chocolate covered strawberries. A cool water shower. Glowing hula hoops. A beautiful chillum carved from an Oregon coast volcanic rock. Mushrooms. A huge phosphorescent skunky north-slope bud. A valium. The Peruvian mescaline-cactus drink. An acid-etched gaian pendant that I'm wearing as I type. Kisses, hugs, and outright sex. These are some of the things I received. I gave away a lot of joints, apples and sips of water as I had little else to trade. I didn't really have the balls to offer kisses, etc., but when requested I usually yielded them up. But if your batteries died way out in the darkness, someone would proffer a glowstick to get you home, or they'd toss your bike into their monstrous mutant sub and Dive!Dive!Dive!, complete with warning claxon and water-whooshing sounds, plying you with glowing blacklit gin and tonics until the sub finally rolled up to your camp--kindness, rampant human kindness. Most strangers you met offered at least a brilliant smile and maybe a jolly Holy Fucking Shit! as a greeting---and people simply having fun, checking out the art, the fire, the madness, and most of all, Each Other....Burning Man is a place where beauty is manifest and the people are destiny. Hugh Hefner? A punk, a poser in the prelims, the double A league. Burning Man is utterly rife with Spectacularly beautiful men and women in all form of dress and undress. Body paint is de rigueur, underwear and the majority of pubic hair verboten. Teeny fur or leather or lycra skirts, translucent dresses, or nothing but a bit of body glitter, the people on the Playa are there for each other to look at, to strike sparks and communication---

This went on every night until Saturday. The Burn itself is truly impressive, I mean, they fucking napalmed that thing, a fire so intense it created a flaming funnel cloud that seemed like it could kill us--and I'm leaving out so much, Critical Tits (the topless all-female version of the Bay Area bike protest Critical Mass), the evil sadomasochistic clowns that sporadically erupted into your space, leering and wreaking whips-and-leather havoc, sculptures, the four young women who set up their tents, shower and open-air dressing room right behind our microbus and ended up partying naked with us a lot throughout the week, the Bay area hipsters who invited me to come stay on their boat this summer, the beautiful Northern Coast girl who 'found ' me after a few days-she'll be manicuring the harvest this fall and invited me to the farm to house-sit with her. You can write all day and have me at night, she said, as she handed me her address and numbers on a scented sheet--

And that is where I am headed, Becker. I'm a bit ragged and need to hunker down and sort it out. So I guess I'll leave you alone. You're safe, for now. You have your darling hippie goddess, and I have mine. I've done the best I can to give the flavor of Burning Man, which has indeed changed my life, and I can only add one thing:

I'll Never Miss It Again.

Peace, you evil bastard. Watch your back. Because I will come out eventually.

--GB