-Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
We were somewhere outside of Reno when the drugs began to wear off and return what was left of our sanity to our tattered minds and withered bodies. I had been told by a close friend and emotional confidant that many things in my life were in danger of setting me on an inescapable course that could make me into one of the things that I hated most, a zombie.
I can clearly remember as a boy, lying to my mother that my schoolwork was too hard. I remember a doctor, some greasy, ratfink, manipulative, lying, bastard of a quack, telling my mother that he could “cure” my bad grades with a pill. I remember my mother telling him (right in front of me, mind you) “I don’t want a zombie for a son.” Finally, I remember her begrudgingly giving me the pills. To her credit, she only gave them to me on school days, before and after class (for homework), never over the summer, and only for 4 years until I got into sixth grade and told her I didn’t need them anymore.
Zombies are mindless drones capable of thought only in quick bursts and only for very basic things such as cold or hunger or fatigue. They can readily be seen in any typical office building wearing ridiculous neckpieces that serve no purpose and drinking bland coffee out of a mug and making small talk about the weather and the showings on local or cable television the night before.
To be a zombie, as my mother knew, was not acceptable behavior for a young man, such as myself, who had never taken seriously the word of any of the ridiculous forefathers who had handed him this world of cyclical violence, lies, and dead-end roads. There was only one thing to do: in the words of some long forgotten poet, “Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
So I left… I left everything behind and wandered into the desert in search of answers; some kind of vision quest which would lead me to a new evolution of being like Jesus did, so I packed a suitcase full of temptation and turned west. What I had not realized at the time was that the answers were for later. No, this trip was about finding the questions.
When I arrived in the desert the landscape was like nothing on Earth or even imaginable by man; not possibly one man you understand, but possibly by all of mankind. There was most notably, the sand which was thin, alkaline, and omnipresent. It possessed a chemical composition which could eat away at your flesh. So much so, that your sweaty feet could not help but act like a magnet for the dust and the skin between your toes would turn green like the terminals on a car battery and so people would walk around and pour cool vinegar on your tired feet. The sand stretched out far in every direction and the wind would often blow it around in to your nose or eyes if you let it. Whiteout conditions were common and did little to stop the joyous atmosphere around me. No, all the sandstorms did was add to the disorienting nature of it all. Disoriented I was, but not lost.
Secondly, there was the art. Huge, shining beacons to creativity, freedom, happiness, imagination, and at least a partial disregard for safety. “Safety Third,” as they say and leave you wondering what comes first and second. Don’t let me be misunderstood, the whole event could probably be called one of the safest gatherings of over 50,000 people ever, if it weren’t for the god forsaken heat during the day, which makes going nude a totally viable (and socially acceptable) thing to do.
As I hung over 30 feet in the air above the hard desert floor from a huge phallic misshapen metal sculpture, I had to ask myself a number of questions: 1. Why would someone build this thing? 2. What was it supposed to be? And 3. What would happen to me if I fell? To the good people of this fabulous desert oasis, the answers to these questions didn’t really matter; after all, safety third.
This brings me to the final and possibly most important element to the Burning Man experience: the people, oh god, the people. Every kind of person is already there. You can’t begin to possibly imagine with whom you could come in contact. A pot smoking, behavioral psychologist that drinks white wine straight from the bottle? Or possibly a mushroom eating, radiologist from the bay area who rides a motorized skateboard? Or maybe a polyamorous, nudist, fireman whose wife was recently diagnosed with cancer?
Perhaps you’re thinking, “I could never strike up a conversation with those people.” Luckily, you don’t have to. Those people think of each other like family. No need for money, either. People share the way children would. Remember when you were a kid and you opened up a box of cookies in a crowd. Everyone reached inside the box and took one. And you felt special to be the one holding the box. That’s everyday over there.
Now it’s all over. Another Burning Man done and in the can. “See ya next year, Charlie!” We all dust ourselves off, try to focus our vision, and steady our hands as we got behind the wheel and started the long drive back to wherever we call home. Burning Man doesn’t exist in the real world; only for those seven days in the sand. My travelling companion is asleep and I’m left to ponder the surreal series of events which have transpired in the last week, but really, over the course of the last year.
My sister once said, “Burning Man is the place where you can do your favorite thing all day long with other people, no matter what it is.” Sometimes I’m in the room when someone asks her about Burning Man. All she can ever say is, “Dude… It’s crazy.” I always need to be careful around these people. It is a logical train of thought to realize that it IS crazy. Sometimes they figure out that the people they’re talking to voluntarily lived in the desert for a week. They always seem to get a very strange, distrustful look in their eyes. It’s always around this time that my sister tells them I’m going to be a writer… “My brother’s a writer,” she says, “you should hear him read something he’s written, it’s so crazy,” she says, “he’s amazing.” And sometimes, when I’m feeling overly sentimental, a tear runs down my face… and I say, “I’m going to start writing more.” My sister knows that’s a big decision for me. I figure, if you're going to be crazy, you have to get paid for it or else you're going to be locked up.
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