Burning man 2007: the Green Man: THURSDAY

Man, times are so-so-so rich and full right now; and again my blog is waaay far behind the reality I am currently living… it is good that we are now at Thursday though, for starting from this day onwards amazing growth and grace enters my life [although this only become apparent by Friday]. Not that it isn’t always full of grace; but my awareness of how lucky and thankful i am for all of the magic that encircles my life becomes quite conscious and focused… so to speak.

Man, times are so-so-so rich and full right now; and again my blog is waaay far behind the reality I am currently living… it is good that we are now at Thursday though, for starting from this day onwards amazing growth and grace enters my life [although this only become apparent by Friday]. Not that it isn’t always full of grace; but my awareness of how lucky and thankful i am for all of the magic that encircles my life becomes quite conscious and focused… so to speak.

So on Thursday morning I wake up feeling even more stressed than before, I’m feeling lonely and bad that I bailed on my friends. I’m also in a sad state cause I left my bike somewhere and I wasn’t exactly sure where…

So I wake up Bibi to tell her that I am borrowing her bike to find it and scout about… I look for at least an hour but I can’t find it anywhere…
🙁

I get back to camp, Ingeborg and Brandon are up and they hear about my funny stories about nearly getting smothered in a cage last night – and my lost bike, and offer to help me find it.

We get back to the last thing I remember [this head-sphere that people were feeding with lumber in the center of a plaza] – and within 5 minutes they spot it! hooray! I found my bike back!

Bibi wakes up a bit, and I go and visit her in her tent and tell her my story of last night. We make plans to go out on thursday night with just the two of us, I applogize for having bailed on everyone the night before and explain as best as I can why I did what i did.

Now I’m in no position on a blog to describe the exact details of the nature of our other ‘non verbal’ exchange – but basically what ensued made me feel taken advantage of and disrespected. Although at the time I didn’t realize it until much later in the day when I had a conversation with Dave – a really cool red neck cow boy, Dave is the guy who gave us a ride up to Burning man from Sacramento.

I had a talk with Bibi later on as well, to tell her I felt like her criticism of me, which was that I was not giving without expectations – was actually not only false; but inverted. I feel like she was projecting her own failures as her behavior was not one of generosity – but of only wanting to receive.

After my talk with Dave I felt so-so-so much better. The stress in my stomach was quite high at this point, and this was the start to being able to resolve the issues. While I was with Dave two men tried to chat me up [Dave is gay and so in his presence guys really get the wrong impressions of me]. Dave showed me some pretty strange tents… one in which there were lots of men + a couple women [for good measure] having group sex together, and another place where if someone asks you something, you have to answer with the words “yes please” [that was the name of the camp]. In the ‘yes please’ camp there was a couple having quite intimate sex [more like ‘love making’] right in one corner.

This might all sound outlandish, but this is Burning man, and part of what burning man is, is freedom of expression… so if people want to have sex in public… go for it [so long as the people involved are enjoying themselves, its ‘ok’ – you don’t have to watch if you don’t like it…]

Dave went back to find his friends, and I had a walk around on my own. I went to an art tent, talked to some nice people and then I went to a tango tent, asked a lady to dance and taught her some moves, we suffered an intense sand storm, then it began to rain, a beautiful double rainbow came out and I ended up in another bar – this time with a big wheel with all kinds of words on it. I asked “whats the wheel for?” so the guy at the bar said “well, spin it and I’ll tell you…”. So niave happy me complied and it landed on “pleasure: 2”

So the guy said to me “ok, place your hands on that bench over there. Now this lady can use this paddle to spank you as hard as she pleases: two times”. I was like “oh dear… ok, well I guess I’m into new things…” so i bent over and got ready…

Man, she certainly didn’t hold back at all! She hit me as hard as she could and it left quite a warm tingle on my ass for at least an hour! After that I got a really nice drink [i figured i deserved it] and meandered away [in a little zigzag as best as I could] off into the playa.

My mood was much-much better, I went back to my tent, bumped into this really sweet guy who had listened in at my string theory class [he had just been randomly married to a girl on the playa – a playa marriage that lasts until the end of the festival, he looked in love, and so deeply happy] – I got my fish head costume on.

This costume was great as it allowed me to walk in the ensuing intense sand storm without the need for goggles… it was great and i made little fish dances for people as I passed them… several people took some Polaroids of me, i danced on seesaw trees in the waves of sand, visibility was about 5 feet [2 meters] or less.

So as far as I knew, Bibi and I were going to hang out together this evening together. But instead she peeled off from the group with Josh, another guy from our camp, and didn’t even turn back to say she was leaving – and as far as I knew, we had still planned on hanging out together. So I see all my friends splitting off into satellite groups; none of them saying bye to any of the other people [naturally i was guilty of this the night before: but this night i was back in my senses]. so here i was standing alone for a second watching three groups all walk different directions… I didn’t know what was best to do, but i didn’t want to be alone again on this night; especially since i had promised Bibi i’d spend time with her… so i walked up to her and josh, and joined them.

The whole time this felt very awkward. i felt like i was intruding on something. i could see josh was really into bibi, and bibi seemed indifferent to anything; including the event – she seemed like a spectator instead of a participant in the things she saw.

when josh started massaging her feet i really felt like the 3rd wheel and asked her if she wanted to be alone with Josh – she said she didn’t; infact she gave me that weird look of ‘what are you talking about’? But surely enough as the week progressed they indded became a couple, so in fact my intuition was correct.

At about 12 or 1 I was feeling quite tired, as were they; so we made back for the tent. I knew Brandon was playing at about 3 or 4am somewhere, but i just didn’t feel like i had the energy to make it – i hoped he wouldn’t mind, i went to sleep…

Why did I get spanked? Probably to snap my senses into place. Infatuation in a situation that needs to be disposed of is a charm that has drawn me in far too many times… sebastian… wake up!

Friday an awaking ocures…