Burning Man 2004—4 of 4

It's about time I finish this up.

The Temple of Stars

For the last few years, Sunday nights at Burning Man have been beautiful, moving and somber occasions. During the preceeding week, people write obituaries and post pictures of passed loved ones in a large temple-like structure, and on the Sunday, the temple is ceremoniously burnt.

This year the temple was called the Temple of Stars. There's a really cool panoramic, interactive rendition of it here (requires QuickTime). Previous temples have been taller, but this one was the first that had multiple levels. It was beautiful, and in my opinion, it was the best one ever.

As I do every year, I marvel at the fact that I've never been close to anybody who's died. I always wander through the temple feeling a bit lost, as if everybody else there is sharing some kind of a connection that I'm not part of. I'm in no hurry to be in their position, but still, it's weird. But this year I realised my role: remembering those who have been forgotten. Nameless victims of war, homeless people who have died in the streets, sad people with sad lives who have never been missed. I wrote about them along one of the long banisters, ten metres of black textaed words that flowed from my mind. At last—a connection with the Temple!

Most of my campmates left town before Sunday night and lunatravels and Rrrob wanted to go on their own way, so it was just sethml and me who stuck together for the ceremonious burn. We jumped on the art car that the snow cone people were too slow to board, and chatted with a 20-year-old woman from Minnesota who decided three days before the event that she was going to go to her first Burning Man. My admission that the only thing I knew about her home state was what I learnt in a song by Weird Al Yankovic got lost in the energy of hundreds of weird, flashy vehicles converging at that point in the desert, over a kilometre from the nearest camp, where the ceremony was to be.

The vantage point we picked happened to be near a whole group of people who camped with tobyiceblueeyes and poetgrrl, including a young girl from Chicago who made sculptures out of glow sticks to pass the time. Three metallic copper-coloured kites hovered above us... well, two did; the third one kept falling down, prompting heroic group efforts to launch it again. Another woman in our proximity managed to delay the burn because she wanted to scatter the ashes of a loved one on the Temple just before it was set alight. They apparently belonged to somebody to whom Burning Man was as much of as home as it is to me.

Finally, the temple was lit, and the fire was incredible. The heat was almost too much to bear, even though we were over fifty metres away. At its brightest, nobody could look at the light. The fire creeped along the catwalks, flames danced along the banisters, and within a couple of minutes, the steeple was overwhelmed with flames. It hesitated, swayed, and came crashing down... or at least, that's what it was probably supposed to do. Its support turned out to be a steel frame, and although it buckled and fell over, it ended up being a support for the steel A-frame that the rest of the structure rested on. So an hour later, we were still sitting there, most of the temple reduced to a pile of flames, but the main support still stood tall. A bit of a snafu, in my opinion. Hopefully nobody was too offended!

Photos

karenbynight found my belt and camera in Black Rock City. This surprised me only slightly less than if ozgenre had found it in Sydney or science_vixen had found it in Amsterdam. Anyhow, as a result, I had no battery power for the thing, so I didn't take any photos.

Fear not, though: paisleychick took a few shots of me on the playa and posted them here, along with photos of the drive to the Burn, her camp, giant pink bunny slippers on wheels, a political piece on so-called 'free speech zones', and other cool stuff. And despite my appearance, I was not stoned when the final shot was taken... well, not yet, anyhow. My only regret is that they'd already removed the art from under the man when that photo was taken, but I'm sure there are plenty of photos of it elsewhere. Please include links in comments, people!

Also, here is a site with other cool shots from this year's Burn, which I found while searching for something else. Particularly noteworthy images are the reason hopeforyou didn't cope that well with the weather, and the reason I like to leave Burning Man at daybreak, instead of during the day when everybody else leaves.

Returning to the Matrix

Even though I managed to fit Hope in the car for the drive up, and I'd consumed a lot of the stuff that we brought, and Hope and some of her stuff had already gone back, it was a challenge to get everything to fit in the car for the exitus. But I still made it out before most of the traffic, and the journey home was uneventful.

It took longer than usual for me to reaccustom myself to everyday life, especially since most of my plans for that week fell through. I'm back in the swing of things now though, and even though the Burn seemed way too short, it's refreshed me and improved my attitude towards life.

I still have a lot of stuff to return to all the wonderful people who loaned it to me. Let me know if any of it has to get back sooner than in a week or so, when I'll finally have the car back on the road.