Burning Man Bound

Pink wig...check. Silver vinyl pants...check. Leopard print platform boots...check. Podbelt, platypus, goggles, respirator...check, check, check and check. I am nearly packed for the greatest participants-only show on Earth. Ten days of freedom and laughter and dust and music and bonding and bondage and things I have yet to even fathom that I'll probably never be able to fully describe, with 40,000 of the best friends I just met. Every cell in my body vibrates to the same manic song: in a mere 48 hours I will arrive at the Philadelphia Airport. In 72 hours I'll be standing on a dusty alkaline lakebed trying to help assemble a geodesic dome, bouncing slightly and grinning ear to ear while chanting, "I can't believe I'm really here!" enough times to make my campmates (even the other newbies) throw things at me. No running water, no cell phone, no internet, no parenting, just raw present-only experience, whatever shape it takes.

The only thing between me and the Man at this point is a mountain of minutiae - little details that keep real life running smoothly and keep the landing after the Burn from being too big a crash. Gotta get textbooks. Extra contacts. Take the cat to the kennel. Hug and tickle and read to my daughter before packing her off to her dad's for 2 weeks. Clean out the refrigerator, take out the trash, do all the dishes and whateverallelse it takes to prevent returning home to some sort of insect resort. Wrap up this godforsaken job once and for all. But my mind drifts always back to its images of playa and theme camps and stars in the desert and leaves me in grinny, giggle fits despite my best efforts to focus. If I can just make it to the plane on Friday evening, I'll have six uninterrupted hours of fantasizing about Burning Man, I tell myself. But to no avail. I just have to allow myself these brief reveries before my inner slavedriver cracks the whip again.

So this is it. I'll be back in 2 weeks, either with many stories or just so damn speechless all I'll be able to write here for days is "Oh. My. God." If I can I'll try to write something from the playa before I come back. Rumor has it there's a camp that provides a satellite Internet connection. I promise no coherency, or that I'll even find my way over there. But I'll do my best.

See you on the flipside...or on the edge...or wherever it is I turn up next. Over & out.