Clouds and Water 

These photos were taken at Sugar Pine Reservoir in Tahoe National Forest by myself and Scott Locker. The camping trip was much-anticipated but started off rockily: A misunderstanding started it all out, then the van broke down just at the exit from Auburn. It turned out to be an easy fix (well, maybe easy isn't  the right word....it's guy stuff.) Then we got lost on the way to the campground, then the campground where I had planned to stay was closed for the season (even though I had checked online that morning and it was listed as open). We found another campground, but the only spot left was next to a huge family of dirt bikers with lots of screaming kids, and across from the bathrooms, which were desperately in need of a pump-out. Let's just say you didn't need a flashlight to find them at night, you could navigate by smell. Though it was warm and hot when we got there, it started to rain that night and the for the rest of the trip was cloudy and cooler. It was all enough to give one pause and to make plans for a hotel in Auburn. But, we stuck it out and the next day was wonderful. We got a new spot by the water (with its own private beach!), took a gorgeous hike around the reservoir, hung out around the campfire with wine and good food and lots of good discussion and laughter, read to one another from "The Holographic Universe", and generally bonded and enjoyed our time together.

These photos were taken on the last night, as we drank red wine sitting by the edge of the water. The clouds were spectacular and the water was like a mirror. As the sun sank, the contrast got brighter and the colors deeper; several layers of clouds moving at different speeds drifted north. Some lit up orange and pink while some stayed the grey of a soft longhaired cat....and then, literally in the blink of an eye, the color went out, and all was cool grey, and it was night. It was better than any TV show could ever be.  It was magical. Thank you, Universe, for gently teaching us that letting go of expectations can result in experiences we could never have imagined.

Eat, Pray, Love - The Complexities of the Heart

So I'm normally not one for Hollywood movies, but the other night my mom, my friend, and myself went to watch Eat, Pray, Love after a light mexican meal and several margaritas. It was a regular ol' Girls' Night Out. I really enjoyed the book, so even though the movie stars one of my least-favorite actresses, I decided to go.

Yes, the movie was cheesy and overwrought, with Miss Julia finding beautiful, perfectly furnished quarters to stay in in picturesque towns crawling with cute orphans, crotchety but wise grandmothers, dashing Italians, monkeys, and cows. Yes, she learns perfect Italian in a matter of months, finds a beautiful best friend almost immediately,  and, even though she jokes about gaining weight in Italy, it's clear she never actually does. Yes, she ends up finding, finally, a man who can love her for herself and - literally - motors away into the sunset with him on a boat,  to some small picturesque island off of Bali. OK. I can suspend my disbelief for this one movie, because besides the normal Hollywood claptrap, there were some genuinely touching things about the film that have stayed with me.

In one of the first scenes, she's talking with a Balinesian medicine man and he gives her a picture of a figure with four legs and eyes in its chest. The four legs, he explains, remind us to stay grounded and balanced. The eyes in the chest remind us not to think from our heads, but from our hearts. Even in the moment, in the theater, during the scene, I found this last part to be eye-opening. As soon as he said that, I shifted my consciousness to my chest, and it was like some screen had been pulled from my eyes. The next morning, I spent most of my meditation with my consciousness in my heart, and even though there's a situation in my life that I've almost literally been ruminating about for two years, my heart was steady and solid and loving, and the ins and outs, rights and wrongs of that situation weren't important. I've recently been haunted by an image of my own heart, seeing it as scarred and twisted as the back of an old boat-propellor-torn Manatee from a Florida swamp. I can see it, clear as day. But when I actually went to my heart and saw the world from it, my heart was whole, clean, strong, and juicy. Nothing had damaged it. The world seemed exactly as it was, and I only felt a calm goodwill towards myself and everything else. Try it. Right now. Even if you don't believe me.

In another scene, the lone American in the ashram, a gruff Texan with a dark past, tells our heroine, when she misses her boyfriend, to send him light and love and to let it go. As someone who clings incessantly to people, places, and memories, this seemed a particularly empathetic and kind way to deal with the kind of pain that comes from missing something we have known that is now gone. When we send light and love, we acknowledge the importance of a memory, person, or feeling without needing to go to it. Far from just distracting ourselves from the pain of the missing, we go into it, acknowledge it, and use its energy to send out light - an act which not only helps us, but helps the whole world (at least that's what I believe.) I have used this technique before, and even written about it, but sometimes I forget to use it, and this scene reminded me.

The Texan also tells Liz that if she could just get these men out of her head, and all the guilt and recrimination about them,  that the Universe would rush in and would fill her with love. (At this point, my mom leaned over to me and said "Oh, that's just crap!") But that touched me, too. I loved the image of the vacuum created by letting go of all of this complicated stuff in our minds being filled with a radiant, Universal light.

In the movie, Liz leaves a troubled relationship to travel the world for a year. Before she makes the decision to go on her trip, yet knows she's profoundly unhappy in her relationship, her boyfriend holds her to him and says, essentially, "Let's accept what we have here, let's build a future together and accept that we are miserable but that we're happy to not be apart." This sounds ridiculous on the face of it, I know, but in the world of the heart, it makes a kind of sense and I've been in that situation more often than I'd like to admit. I have not seen this kind of situation reflected in any movie or acknowledged as tenderly. I've always thought there was something broken in me that I've considered making this deal in my own life. I teared up at the reflection of these two peoples' pain in a situation that worked for neither of them, but where their love of each other - and dependence on each other and the dreams they held for the relationship - keeps them tied to one another even when they might be happier with someone else. Later in the movie, after spending time at the ashram, Liz writes him an e-mail telling him that they both deserve better than they had when they were together. Again, I was moved by the portrayal of the pain that these decisions - even when they're right, and all parties know it - can cause. Even - maybe even especially - a right decision can be heart-wrenching and sad. I know it, and can relate to the difficulty in walking away, and the sadness of being without a person you love, even knowing you weren't right together.  I thought this situation in the movie was handled in a sweet, profound way that I don't often see. Most often, we're told to "just get over it", with no acknowledgment about how complicated the heart is.

I have no naivete about Hollywood or moviemakers or what's important to them. I don' t believe there's any film company in all of L.A. that wants the best for us. But somehow, in the case of this movie, some true things came through the glitz and the gloss, things I'm still thinking about and digesting several days later.

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

Back from the Desert

Like last year, I'm not sure how to start writing about my Burning Man experience. There's so much, and nothing I write will really encompass the actual experience. But I suppose that's true of any experience. 

Imagine starting out before dawn, and arriving, after 3-hour drive into the desert, in a swelter of dust, to the other side of the moon, populated by aliens - beings dressed in costumes, furry vests, bug-eyed goggles, hot pants, with braided hair and tied all over with string, beads, and charms. You park your camper in between an Airstream shaded by a tarp and lit by christmas lights, and an old bus painted with blue waves. The air throbs with music and it's only 11 am. Friends are there and they greet you, and then you get to work making your new home habitable. And for the next week, you're out there in the grey alkali flats, surrounded by these creatures and the music, and the dust, and the surreal sculptures that look over it all, out there from the deep playa.

Pretty intense, no?

When people have asked me about Burning Man since I've gotten back, all I could say was 'It was intense.' It's the only word that even comes close to telling the truth. The truth is that it was a difficult time. That's not something Burners like to hear - that the experience wasn't really that great. Lover and I were lost in waves of  miscommunication and misunderstandings and tension, and finally had a big fight, in the middle of the week. Meanwhile, I was feeling that old social tension and anxiety that visits me more than I like to admit - surrounded by people who were close to one another, but with whom I've never been able to figure out how to make any inroads. I felt left out, but not because anyone actually left me out. Because that's my story and has been for my entire life. The killer is that I knew it was only my imagination, and I still couldn't get past it. At the kickoff first-night party, I froze up in social and personal terror and could barely participate, and this set the tone for the whole week. I still don't know why it happened. I could only stand by the burn barrel, on the outskirts of the camp, and pretend to be friendly when all I wanted to do was go curl up in my comfy bed in the camper and be safe. I felt unsafe and afraid, and I till can't figure out why - was it just that we had only landed a few hours prior and I was still transitioning to this new world? Was it because I had been feeling such tension with my partner? Was it hormonal?

Of course I always want to add: "But there were good times, too!" Finally reconnecting with my love on Friday night, almost too late but not; bicycling out into the desert to look at the art and the great, old, wrinkled hills; moments with friends in the afternoon when people gather under the shade structures and hang out and talk; walking into the playa at night on the traditional evening walkabout, led by a man with a plastic lit-up sword; riding in the camp art car down the dusty streets to discover what we could discover, like bacon and avocado thrust at us from one camp, and a ball crawl and bad advice - and stencils!- in another. Exploring the city with my sweetie on our bikes and decorating one another with a rubberstamp that read 'tramp stamp', while drinking Snakebites; being visited unexpectedly by friends one morning at the camper, and having a relaxing morning (well, OK, it was after 11 am) drinking Heinekins and hanging out and talking.

The best time, honestly, was the last day in the desert when we decided to leave a day early - after helping break down camp, an effort that left us sprinkled with grey playa dust that seemed to age both of us by 40 years. My love had talked with the representative from the Bureau of Land Management - who had a camp across the street from us - and he had told us of a campsite and hot springs about 2 hours' drive up the playa and into the hills. So on Sunday, we left Burning Man, drove up the road a mile, and got back onto the playa, on a rutted track that went for 30 miles, skirting Black Rock City and curling into the brown hills peopled with jackrabbits and Russian thistle plants (better known as tumbleweeds.)

En route we realized we didn't have enough gas to make it to the campsite and back, and, as we pondered what to do, we rounded a curve and saw water, which literally made me gasp - water in the desert! It was a small reservoir, and we decided to camp there for the night, the way the old explorers and cowboys probably did, knowing that water was the symbol for safety and survival in the desert. It was quiet. No throbbing music, no people in costumes except for a couple of hunters in camo who drove past us on the gravel road. The wind whipped the water. We joked that this was like one of those movies where the couple is hunted by psychopaths while trying to survive in the wilderness. At night, the sky blazed with stars and, with no moon, Mars took over and was reflected in a silver path on the reservoir. We could see a faint glow in the blackness over by Black Rock City. Sweetie thought it was the Temple burning; I think it was just the lights of the city. A few coyotes yipped. But other than that, there was no sound.

In the spaceship of that camper, we heated up leftover lasagna, poured some cocktails, and talked about astronomy and astrology. We fell asleep to the wind rocking the camper like a mother rocks a cradle.

The next morning, we awoke to bright sunlight and silence - and to a flat tire. Luckily, my man did the manly thing and changed the tire while I made breakfast, and we dined on a blanket on the shore of the reservoir. After that, we emptied all of the water out of the van and camper, keeping only two Nalgene bottles full for drinking, and drove back to town, hoping we had enough gas to make it.

It's always been my contention that it's not an adventure if everything goes right. If everything goes right, it's just a trip.

We coasted back into Gerlach - whose combined population with the neighboring town of Empire is 499 - and into the town's only gas station right when the fuel gauge touched E. There was barely any line at the pumps, and then we were back on the highway, on our way home.

Burning Man or Bust

Burning Man is coming up. We leave in a week and a half. Yipes! For those who have never been to this festival in the desert, it's pretty hard to describe. Burning Man is like a combination of camping trip, class reunion, art festival, music concert, spiritual retreat, gynormous bar crawl, and hippie love-fest all rolled into one - with costumes and 50,000 of your closest friends. Set in the high Black Rock desert north of Reno, it's usually described as an experiment in intentional community. For most of the year, the desert is as nature intended, a moonscape;  for one week out of the year, it's transformed into a working city, complete with its own economy (no money is exchanged) street signs, a police force, medical personnel, its own rules of conduct, a schedule of events, several radio stations,  a coffee shop, and even a beauty pageant. One Christian gentleman described it as "Satan's Birthday Party." It's more than an art or music festival, more than a retreat, more than a camping trip in a beautiful natural setting, more than a ritual, more than a gathering of hippies and freaks, more than a big party. You have to experience it to understand.

Last year was my second time, after an ill-fated first trip 8 years before after which I swore I'd never go again. A man persuaded me to go again, and this time, with the help of a wonderful new camp of friends, I had a transformative time. Still, Burning Man is not, at least for me, some carefree jaunt of parties and half-naked women. It's tough, too.  In the desert, I confronted my deep inner stuff. My fear of and discomfort around people, my deep inner insecurities, my relationship troubles, old grief, the gaping hole of need that I carry around with me, my judgments of others and myself, my fear of letting go. At the same time, I came back with a desire to live that creatively in the rest of my life - to be my true self, no matter how weird or different.

At Burning Man, you dress how you want - the more creative the better. Almost everything is participatory and nobody tells you what to do (unless you're a real danger to yourself or others). Art and self-expression are everywhere you turn, sometimes to physics-defying degrees. At Burning Man, you rely on yourself and your friends. You haul in your own food and water and necessities and haul the waste out again, and if you run out of something, there's no corner store to go replenish your supply. At Burning Man, there's music, dancing, yoga, meditation, art classes, lectures, nature walks, fire displays, bars, and performances 24 hours a day - and no money is exchanged. At Burning Man, you can't drive your car around unless it's a permitted "mutant vehicle" - a vehicle that's been modified in some creative sort of way.  People-watching gets raised to a whole new level as folks go by in outlandish outfits, sometimes no outfits, and often being transported by strange devices  (stilts, pogo sticks, unicycles, cardboard fish, cupcakes). In the desert, it's hot during the day (temperatures of 115 degrees are being reported) and cool at night, and sometimes the alkaline dust gets kicked up into whiteouts that shroud everything in what looks like talcum powder. Oh, and did I mention that there are no showers unless you bring them (and the water) yourself?

I've heard it described that at Burning Man, everything is love and there are no judgments. I don't think this is strictly true; on the playa - as the Black Rock desert is called - people are the same as they've always been. There are the assholes who get too drunk or high and act like jerks, or just generally don't act with common sense; there are the hotsy sexpots in their 15 revealing outfits a day who stand around and preen, and the lazy ones who disappear whenever work needs to get done. There are the flakes and the users, just like in the 'default world' (as Burners call where we are right now.) But in general, I would say that Burning Man brings out the best in people. Or maybe it's that the people who go to Burning Man are generally more open, more creative, more flexible, and more expressive than others. 

The experience of Burning Man begins when you get in the car and start the trip. You drive further and further from your life, and your entire new life is packed as tightly and efficiently as possible in your car, RV, or van. Civilization passes behind you. As the hours roll by, you pass green trees and lakes, and then you get further into the desert, and things get more sparse. The weather gets hot and dusty. You start to see other Burners on the road - vehicles piled high with bikes wrapped in pink fur, hula hoops,tents,  rugs, and other assorted items, the vehicles often painted with slogans or crude depictions of the Burning Man logo. The highway, your fellow travelers,  and the barren, hot landscape are all you see.

Then you hit Reno and it's like someone dropped a huge pot of gold paint onto the desert floor. It's so surreal to have this gigantic mass of lights and glittering buildings rear out of the desert that it seems like a mirage. In Reno, you finish buying supplies, the way the old timers did - stocking up on the essentials before heading out into the brush.

As you leave Reno at 4 am, you know you're heading into the wilderness. You hope you didn't forget anything. The air is quiet and cool, the stars sparkle. Others are on the move, too; the string of red lights ahead of you on the road tells you that. You're all heading to the same place. The further you go, the more Burners you run into, until they are the only people on the road - Burners and the people who serve them.

The closer you get to the playa, the more of the default world you slough off. Cell phones don't work (much), radio is spotty, there's no e-mail. You no longer care if the dust gets into your hair or your fingernails break. Your body adjusts to the heat. You braid your hair to get it out of your face, and you stop looking in the mirror to check your makeup. Then you're there, and the culture is totally different, with different rules and expectations. The first thing you see that lets you know you're on another planet now is a huge metal dragon the size of a bus - oh wait, it IS a bus! The guy getting something out of his RV in front of you in the line to get in the gate is wearing tight silver bellbottoms, platform boots with flames on them, and has a red mohawk. BMIR (Burning Man Information Radio) is the only station you get and it's pumping out music to welcome the hordes. You're not in Kansas anymore, Toto.

A week from this Saturday, I'll be on the playa trail. I hope for myself and everyone else who attends, that it's a vibrant, transformative, creative, challenging, fun, laughter-filled, connecting time. I hope for new friends and for old connections to be strengthened, for joy in the sun- and moonrises, for the time to sit in the shadow of the great, wrinkled mountains and absorb their calm presence. Have fun, y'all!