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Take a breath and think about it

Hey you….. Burning Man guy…before you go on and on.  Allow me to point something out.

1. you have a booger hanging out of your nose.

2. There are more than two adjetives in the English language. Awesome! Amazing! Ya.. okay.We got that part. How about a little more reflection on your experience before you start spraying it. Or just flip it on over to that thesarus widget.

awesome

adjective

the Grand Canyon is as awesome as they say it is: breathtaking, awe-inspiring, magnificent, wonderful, amazing, stunning, staggering, imposing, stirring, impressive; formidable, fearsome, dreaded; informal mind-boggling, mind-blowing, jaw-dropping, excellent, marvelous; literary wondrous; archaic awful. ANTONYMS unimpressive.

amazing

adjective

the interactive exhibit at the planetarium was truly amazing: astonishing, astounding, surprising, stunning, staggering, shocking, startling, stupefying, breathtaking; awesome, awe-inspiring, sensational, remarkable, spectacular, stupendous, phenomenal, extraordinary, incredible, unbelievable; informal mind-blowing, jaw-dropping; literary wondrous.

Burning Man 2012 - Temple Crew - 1st report

I am back in the land of showers, flush toilets, and beds. I’ve been working and playing as a member of the Temple Crew in the desert since Aug 12. with a couple of breaks to do my real world job.

I got off the playa on a Monday after putting half a day breaking down camp. I was riding a KLR 650 and needed to be back in Portland, OR by Tuesday night - fresh and ready for work on Wed. morning.  

This is the 5th temple crew I’ve been on. As temple crews go, this is the classic coke of them… the David Best temple crew - a mix of odd ball/super heros with various abilities and disabilites.  Many new folks but many folks with David Best temple’s notched in their belts.

Last year’s crew was a big international youthful crew.  For most of them, it was the first time being on any crew.  And many others had a background with the DPW.

I love both crews, but what can I say. I’m a classic crew guy. There are folks on that crew that are very dear to my heart.  I hadn’t seen them since the last DB temple in 2007- yet these are my homies and we picked up right were we left off.

David’s wife Maggie was our chef and the food was off the hook.  Gourmet viddles in the desert and her warm indefatigable sense of humor are the glue that hold it all together when the bolts start popping off the ship. There are several other grounding forces on the crew - without which, there would be no temple.  Bill Codding.  Jodi.  Jack. Sage.

Then there is the man himself - DB - a psychedelic visionary cloud man. He is impressive - sometime frightening to watch in action.  You can tell he puts a lot of effort in to setting things straight for himself and the crew at the get go.  The right people… the right intentions.  The right systems and process… but then after about the tenth dust storm - it’s all soaring at great heights.  Precision cracks of the whip rein down. Bellicose howls and laminations of what needs to happen… what just happened. He moves like a teenage gazelle.  I like to think that I can bust a move up a temple wall as fast as anyone, but I developed the worst case of playa foot and hobbled around trying to keep up with him. 

The closer we got to finishing this thing off and handing if over to the community… and then later burning it…. the more distant I felt from our leader. I’m okay with that.  He was moving down the line with perfect vision of what we had created. And I was just starting to wake up to it.

I believe it was Thursday night, people started standing up and testifying - sharing their stories openly with each other.  Apparently it went on for hours and by all accounts, it was an incredibly beautiful  communal experience.   To my knowledge, this has never happened before. 

What we built was a communal porthole to new dimension.  A peephole into an alternate vision of reality.  A place for people to come together in mindfulness. And when you are surrounded with so other places where people are losing their minds - it’s really something special.