The Desert Lays You Bare

 

I'm back from Burning Man. Again. And I'm reeling.

Whenever I come back from an intense journey - as when I came back from my monthlong retreat to New Orleans a little over a year ago - I dread the inevitable question from well-meaning people: "So, how was it?" There's nothing wrong with this question, of course, but it's impossible to answer in a short sound bite. How was it? Well, here are a few descriptors:

Gorgeous. Dusty. Complicated. Exhausting. Scary. Adventurous. Surprising. Difficult. Dusty. Wonderful. Draining. Challenging. Entertaining. Dusty. Glittery. Fiery. Cold. Hot. Dusty. Inspiring. Disappointing. Exciting. Dusty. And did I mention Windy?

I'm not sure if it's possible to explain to someone who's never claimed Burning Man as part of their culture (by this I mean: someone who's gone more than once and who participates in the community even off the playa, who looks forward to going year after year and who includes it as part of their life) why we do this crazy thing: go out to the desert with camping gear and a cooler full of food, dress up in weird outfits, dance in the cold, get altered, and spend the rest of the year trying to get the dust out before doing it all again.

I've been back for five days and I've been severely depressed since the morning after my return. Wonderful friends had taken care of my cats and plants and home while I was gone for most of 2 weeks, but I came back to a feeling of deep loneliness. I felt like the only people who understood or cared about my experience were scattered throughout the country, and I had nobody who understood who could wrap their arms around me and lie with me to help keep the cold out. I cried to a loving, special Burner friend on the phone more than once about my loneliness, while pretending to everyone else that everything was OK. I lay in bed for the better part of 4 days, shaking with night sweats and other flu-like symptoms and watched movies and season 4 of Breaking Bad. My cat clung to me at night like a little furry baby, and I gained some comfort from him. At a couple of social gatherings, I watched myself keeping careful distance from people; my skin felt so thin that I halfway suspected people could actually see my nerves through it.  I've never been good at projecting my voice, but lately my voice seems to have crawled back up under my breastbone to hide, and I can't cough it out.

I came back to the things that used to shore me up seeming boring and inconsequential. I came back to regrets about things I did and didn't do on the playa. Within a day I wanted to go back, even though, after nearly two weeks there, I had wanted nothing more on the last day than to be back in my clean house in an environment where green things grew. As the kids would say: WTF??!

Today I realized, at least in part, what's been happening with me: That my experiences on the playa had stripped me of all my preconceived notions of who I was, had shown me the reality of the situation: that all my stories about myself and others are just there as a distraction. When the stories and fantasies get stripped away what we do we have? Only our innocent flawed, complicated, boring, fascinating, fearful, joyful, fumbling, humble selves.

A Good Buddhist would say, of course, that this is the most blessed place to be: the place where there's no ground under our feet. Personally, I say it feels like shit even as I - counseled by my wise (and wise-ass) friend - do my best to sit with it, even enjoy it as the transformative experience the person I was before I went to the playa would have believed it could be.

Even Burners don't want to hear this stuff: that reentry or decompression - as we call this period - can be difficult. We're told we're focusing on the negative if we admit that we had anything but a fabulicious time on the playa. Of course I've never shied away from communicating my struggles, even though I've repeatedly been called crazy and depressive for doing so, and this time is no different. if you're struggling like I am and reentry has been difficult for you, let me reassure you that you're not alone. And that we'll get through this.

And why DO we do this anyway? I do it because Burning Man pushes my limits like no other place on earth. It's a crucible, not just a playground. It's a deep valley of self-exploration, not just a huge rave. Also there are glittery things and a lot of things get put on fire (including, as it turns out, my hair when I spun fire before the Man burned.) Or wait, maybe I really don't know why I do this. Maybe I'm just a masochist.

On Happiness, Rainbows, and Icebergs

I usually write by the “Poison Snake” method, in other words: I wait until the inspiration jumps out and bites me, and then I write.  Since coming back from Burning Man, I’ve wondered what to write about.  Things have been pretty normal:  I’ve run the gamut from despair to contentment, even felt bliss at times.  I’ve surfed the waves of relationships, and have fallen off the board a few times over the last couple of weeks, while triumphantly staying upright at other times when the waves hit. Mainly I’ve just been doing my thing: working, playing, loving, making mistakes, doing the right thing. Big whoop. Nothing exciting to write about there. So I asked sweetie today: “What should I write about?” Not fair, I know. It’s my art, and I should take responsibility for it. But my self-imposed deadline is coming up tomorrow and inspiration is out hunting field mice, for all I know. So I asked, and the answer was: “Write about something happy!” 

Of course, me being an Overthinker, my immediate response was “Why, Is my blog not happy enough?”, a question which he, smartly, did not answer. We won’t get into the rest of the conversation, but this exchange brought something up for me that’s probably a part of my resistance to writing. I feel like this blog – and by extension, myself – is a bit of a downer. I feel like I should be happier and write about happier stuff, like sunsets and rainbows. Really, I’m not being sarcastic. I do want to be able to craft beautiful, uplifting words about the loveliness of nature and the basic, core goodness that exists in all of us. Because I actually believe in those things and think they’re important. 

But something stops me.

I think the thing that stops me is a deep feeling that , while happy, light topics can be important and inspirational, they’re  easy to appreciate and to write about;  but what I feel compelled to explore – in my own life and in my writing – is the deeper current, the stuff that’s more complicated, intricate, sometimes hard to appreciate and even dark.  I love rainbows, who doesn’t? But if I were to write about one, I’d write about the beauty AND the shadow side of the rainbow. I can’t help it. It’s in my blood. 

To me, the beauty of life includes the darkness and the things that are hard, unexpected, or intense. In my own life, the most powerful lessons have come from difficult situations, even when it’s taken me years to digest the lesson. But I also know that more people want to read about rainbows and goodness than about struggling with intense emotions or difficult feelings, or even of exploring the nuances and complexities of a situation. I’m often the one trying to fill in the shades of grey to other peoples’ black and white understanding of people or situations – often to the frustration of the person I’m talking to. I can’t hold grudges for very long because I can understand other peoples’ motivations so well. I can’t write about blissful beauty without acknowledging the other things that come along with it, even if just my own complexities of mood as I observe the rainbow. 

But then I wonder if my propensity to swim in the ocean of complexity and nuance – to acknowledge all facets of a situation, including the difficult – actually contribute to my frequent depressions and other mood troubles. Maybe they’re right, that optimists are happier, that if you look on the bright side, good things will come to you. I know people of whom this seems true. 

Perhaps I should try to write about rainbows more frequently, or things that bring simple joy without complexity or darkness. I’m not sure; I don’t want to subvert my particular gifts at seeing  the whole iceberg, but I also don’t want to crash into the iceberg and sink into an ocean of despair. Maybe there’s a balance to be struck between swimming in the dark waters and basking in the sunlight that breaks through the clouds and creates the rainbow. 

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The photo at the beginning of this post was taken by Scott Locker, follow his blog here