To La Playa.
I’m not sure how it happened.
We were rolling down the street looking for a parking place.
He turned the wheel of the RV left and we were on La playa.
We had just left the playa.
The playa at Burning Man.
It’s been a long, strange, dreamy, love trip.
I’m not sure how this blog is going to go, I’m not sure what rabbit hole I fell down into.
But fell I did.
It’s been a while since I have posted a blog, or written a blog, and I have to say, I have missed it, and I have not missed it. I have missed the daily practice of sitting and organizing my thoughts and sorting through my feelings, but I feel a feeling that I am loath to say.
I don’t want to share with you.
I don’t want to tell.
I want the secret space between here and there to be sacred.
“I woke up and there was a Carmen shaped hole next to me,” he said to me last night after coming back into the RV.
It was cold up at Donner Pass and we snuggled together in the twilight that seeped through the black out curtains on the vehicle–it was still covered in shade and playa dust guards, there was still plenty of dust left from our journey back into the world.
But.
For a moment here.
A moment there.
There was no other person.
No other place.
I was completely present with one person.
We had met Friday night.
It was a cold night.
He was dressed up like Santa Claus.
I had just left the Cafe at Center Camp.
It was a cold night and it had been a dusty day, horrid with dust, knock down scary with dust, white out dust, screaming dust tornadoes, knocked over shade structures, throttled with dust, broken with dust.
I had been pretty wiped out by it, especially after my bicycle broke down on the way back from spending time with friends at AV, a village a lot of my friends were camped out at, and was a bit demoralized by the time I had gotten back to camp.
It was far later in the day than I had anticipated getting back and I missed saying good-bye to Junebug and her mama, who had, smartly, avoided the imminent dust storm and hopped off playa before it hit.
When my bike broke I gamely walked it for a while and thought, no biggie, I’ll just take my time and walk it back to camp, but I was on the other side of the world and by the time I had gotten to First Camp I was done with it.
I popped my head into a few places looking for folks I knew, but no one was to be found, all hunkered down with the storm blowing about.
I made it to Media Mecca and stashed my bicycle in the back.
I went in and gratefully found friends.
One of whom, thank you lovely Minx, gave me and my broke bike a ride back to camp on a dusty golf cart.
I arrived dusty, late, and a bit broken from the weather.
Junie was gone, Mama Grace was gone, the camp was rocking with the dust storm and I was exhausted.
I hugged Papa Tom and crawled into the trailer where my fairy godmother and father were graciously allowing me to stay.
I was cold and dusty and tired and wiped the fuck out.
I pulled off my boots and gingerly started wiping the layers of dust off my face.
It took some time.
I ate an apple.
It was dusty.
Everything was dusty.
I am still dusty now, as I write, I can imagine and feel it, and there is no describing it, it does not matter how many pictures you see online or how many descriptions of it there are to read about, until you have lived through a white out dust storm at Black Rock City, you will just never quite comprehend it.
I’m sorting my feelings and thoughts as I write and I know this blog is a bit disjointed.
I am a bit disjointed.
Although I am showered and I have done all my laundry–three loads washed and dried and folded. I have gone to the grocery store up the street and bought a few provisions for my house. I have called and checked in with some folks and taken messages from some other folks.
But my thoughts are often with him.
Mister Claus.
The twinkle in his green eyes and the way he held me close.
I get a head of myself.
Even with no expectations of further engagement, though I am sure there will be, I have a jumble of thoughts and feelings and the price for having been so open and honest and available to someone, the effects have yet not been sorted and this sad, distracted little blog is just a way to sort through the photographs of him in my head.
Four days of spending time with a person is a long time.
Four days at Burning Man is forever.
Was it four days?
Three and a half.
Starting when we met Friday evening to this afternoon, Monday, we spent every moment together.
Exceptions were few, a bathroom break, I took a shower–in the most janky shower contraption ever–while he took a nap, a bicycle ride across playa on Sunday to break down my camp while he broke down his, with these exceptions, we spent every moment together.
From the moment he kissed me at the burn barrel in the six o’clock keyhole outside of Center Camp Cafe.
Until the moment he kissed me goodbye in front of my house this afternoon around 1:30/2pm.
We spent the moments together.
We spent every day together.
We spent every night together.
We rode our bicycles out to deep playa and back.
We went to the Baa’s art car and watched the burn from the top of a gigantic sheep.
We snuggled at Dream Land.
We told each other endless stories under the stars, under the roof of the RV, entwined around each other for body heat and comfort–it was the coldest event I have been to in years.
We walked through the Temple together, the cafe together, around First Camp together.
I showed him the secret spots and introduced him to friends.
We told each other tall tales and laughed and giggled, and ugh, I even snorted, he got me laughing so hard a few times.
It was a grand old-time.
And I am not sure how to reconcile it all and I don’t know that I want to share all the details either.
I just don’t.
Some things belong in my heart.
“Keep yourself open,” he said to me today.
He said so many things to me.
He held up a mirror and I saw myself, sans makeup–when was the last time I spent so much time with someone and did not wear makeup? I had no time to put on a face, he saw it all, every dusty bit of it, and accepted it, embraced it, pleasured it, hugged it, kissed it.
There was nothing I hid or tried to hide.
I was open.
And perhaps that is what Burning Man does.
Or.
Perhaps it is what I allow to happen in my life when I say, fuck the dust, go out dancing, play with your friends, ride your bike into the wind and when a stranger throws a log onto the fire and asks if you have been a “good girl this year,” I can smile and say.
Yes.
I was a very good girl.
And.
I was given the most amazing gift.
A gift that has no strings, no direction, no expectations attached.
Just the sweetness of being in a man’s arms who held me tighter than I have been held in some time and fed me with words and desire and made me see exactly how far I have come.
I have come so far.
I don’t know when I work tomorrow.
I don’t know what I have to do for school–Friday is the first day of the school year, the official start.
I don’t know if I will see Santa again.
But I believe.
I have faith.
I believe in magic.
I have lived to tell the tale.
Even if I have kept some of the details to myself.
I hold them all in the crucible of my heart.
And will move forward with them there, gently held in that space between the bowl of the dusty playa sky and the warm omnipotence of the ocean blue where he left me on the doorstep to a new way of being.
Seen.
Accepted.
Embraced.
Known.
And kissed.
Oh.
So.
Very well.
Kissed.
Auntiebubba 