In today’s #RandyTales, our hero kicks off the next couple of weeks of #PlayaTales by starting at the end…
11pm on Monday night, technically Day 9 of my Burn Week. I was sitting in the backyard having a cigarette and looking at the pool, going through all my notes from the previous days. I had been awake for the better part of 40 hours and had no idea how I was still awake.
Seriously, the drugs were gone a long time before then.
After you have done this Burning Man thing for a while, you start to collect axioms related to this experience. I have relayed a lot of them over the years. Some are silly, some are very profound. But one that I haven’t used a lot was running through my head:
“You don’t get the Burn you want, you get the Burn you need.”
I went into this year pretty sure it was going to be a shit show. But muscle memory took over and we pulled it off. Sure there were hiccups, but you try surviving for a week in the desert without some issues. But the biggest shitshow of all was my own mindset going into this thing.
It was a brutal year as far as the weather went. Massive white outs and oppressive heat took their toll on lots of aspects. I rarely left camp during the day, and alternated my going out at night – when it wasn’t yet another whiteout. Some times I pushed myself too hard and didn’t leave camp. Sometimes I left camp and pushed myself too hard anyway.
I didn’t get to see most of the people I wanted, but got to see the ones I needed to see. I got to interact with some amazing art, despite not getting out as much as in previous years. I got to share some experiences with that pretty girl who I am crazy about. They may not have all been good, but a bad day with her is still better than a moment without her.
I got to meet a lot of people while tending bar at Hair of the Dog – the best damn bar on the Playa… maybe the planet. I got to hang out with the same people who made me feel so welcome after a decade long break and that whole cancer thing. Hopefully they let me camp there again next time.
So now, I start to compile all these notes and blurbs into actual stories that will become memories. To look back with that all important hindsight and maybe kinder eyes than what I perceived at the time. Celebrate all the amazing people that I got to experience this with… especially the amazing guy who writes these silly things.
Because it may not have been the Burn I wanted, but it was the Burn I needed.
So – in the paraphrased words of a bald Scottish man – LET’S GO DO SOME #PLAYATALES… RIGHT NOW!