Back from Beyond

Well, my friends, I can now safely say that I have returned from the wasteland and kicked it squarely in the face--- only to have it bounce back and beat the snot out of me. Suffice to say that the desert is still not my happy place (unlike Kathy, who seems to revel in it), but I'm thankful I tried again even if both my legs from the knees down are swollen to freakish proportions.

I collected a lot of wonderful interviews from burners and am in the process of transferring them to my computer and doing a write up for them. All of that will be posted here when I'm finished, so keep an eye out for experimentation with media. We'll see if I can master this whole 'internet' thing yet!

Currently I'm in Nahunta with family to collect a few things before I head to Chicago on Friday morning for grad school. It's still difficult to believe that I start orientation on Monday. I am at once excited and terrified at what lies before me. Luckily, after walking into the desert and living there a week sojourning to Chicago doesn't seem so daunting. Well, at least not in the same way. There I have people I know and I have a fairly good idea of what is going to happen. That said, what needs to happen in immediate future is another load of laundry. Wish me luck!

**Photo above taken by Kathy Lemberg and used with permission.

Sometime in January of this year I lost my mind. I haven no other explanation for the fact that I took more than half of one paycheck and bought a ticket to Burning Man after barely a few days of learning it existed. I sort of skimmed over the Wikipedia entry on the event and, gripped with the reverent belief that I shall become a journalist, I jumped feet first into an event I'm discovering I am woefully unprepared for even now. Initially, my dear friend and cohort Rose was going to go on the trip with me and it would be some madcap adventure out in the desert. Well, things changed. Rose quit her internship, moved to California and is currently gearing up to spend six months in Antarctica (no, I'm not at all kidding). Rose is sort of a badass on epic Joan Jett-level proportions. All that aside, I did manage to talk two friends into coming with me so no matter what played out it wouldn't be all bad. Also, there was less of a chance of me dying in the desert alone.

Have I mentioned to you how much I loathe the desert? It's a deep-seeded hatred that stems back to just after I graduated from undergrad and left home to journey west to my first after college job. In Utah. Back then everyone pretty much thought I was crazy. If they weren't complaining about the heat then it was the Mormons, but I insisted I had never had a problem with either of those things. And thinking back on my experiences that isn't what makes me want to vomit every single time I see the craggy red landscape of the southern Utah desert pop up on some Discovery channel special or another. Part of it stems from the vast emotional desert I experienced there and part of it, well, part of it is because it just seemed to have it in for me. More than once I thought I was going to die. Now, I'm not talking about the sudden adrenaline rush you get from a so-called 'close call' that probably didn't have any real likelihood of killing you. I'm talking about the life-flashes-before-your-eyes-make-peace-with-your-Maker kind of run-ins. So, it's fair to say that the desert and I are not friends in any capacity.

That said, the fact that I am starting my journey the day after tomorrow has me more terrified than I have ever been in my life.

Granted, I have tried to make up for this fear (something which feels not unlike a small animal slowly devouring me from the inside out beginning with my stomach) by being as informed as possible. I have signed up for the Jack Rabbit Speaks which, for those of you in the know, is a newsletter sent out to all Burners past and present to help get people prepared for the adventure. I've read the website a thousand times and nearly committed the newbie survival guide to heart. I've googled past Burners and looked up their packing lists: things they brought, things they used, things they wished they had. Apparently each year hundreds of whole, unused watermelons are left behind. Because when I'm getting ready to spend a week in the desert the first thing I want to go to Kroger to get is a watermelon as big as my head...I mean...really?

But maybe I'm over-thinking things, as I am sometimes known to do. I've tried my best to step back and just let it go. I've volunteered to run the sound board for several shifts and I am bringing my digital voice recorder along with my trusty blue spiral bound notebook and various writing utensils. Maybe something interesting will come out of this yet. We'll see. At the very least you should expect a run-down when I return on Sept 9th or 10th.

Until then, later days!

The Whole of It

The future seems like such a nebulous, far away thing. There seems to be a definite path which I'm following for the moment and my (not to scale) map has scribbled in blobs at random points along the horizon which I am supposedly walking towards. SOLAR. Burning Man. Grad School. I want to add in question marks along the edges to punctuate the absolute lack of certainty which seems to have me in its grips at any given moment. Time keeps passing but it is hard to tell with me looking at my shuffling feet instead of the horizon. Maybe I should keep track by the declining numbers in my bank account. It seems to be what I'm judging everything by these days.

Ah, the life of a gypsy. I feel I've earned the title now with traveling adventures as well as abject poverty. Although it's difficult to be truly poor when you have friends and family. Love and hope go quite a long way.

And it was with those self same thoughts in mind which I hugged the puppies goodbye (for now) and pulled my last $50 I'd been saving out of the crinkled Wachovia envelope in my purse. Nearly a month ago when I first left Fernandina after a visit with my parents my mother had slipped it folded into my hand as I was heading off to Atlanta. "In case you should need to come home." I hugged her and promptly forgot about it. It was as if she had issued an incantation. Even when there were things I wanted to do it never occurred to me to spend the money. Maybe it was just that it was specifically earmarked for something else. Or maybe I just didn't feel that it was mine in any concrete sense. But putting $20 into Starla in the form of gas was the appropriate thing to do. The remaining $30 went back into my pocket as a woman with gold teeth and a shiny SUV came to a screeching halt beside me at the gas station.

"Bless you, baby! I love you. Now, you don't think that I do but it's true! See, this here is my mother and I take care of her and I need to get to my son... I'm barren but I have a son and.. I need a few dollars for gas."

I stared at her for a second, trying to make out what she had just told me. The words sort of blurred together around the edges and faded away every time she turned to face the old black woman in the passanger seat who was doing her best to not pay attention to this entire exchange. They both looked tired. As it turns out, however, I am not a good Christian. And rather than split up my money for oil I just started laughing. I couldn't help it. It was that edgy, crazy kind of laughter that isn't so much mirthful as unraveled. I felt a little unraveled. I told her that I was putting the last of my money into my gas tank as we spoke. I don't know if she believed me, but in either case she was quick to get away from me. I don't blame her.

The trip itself wasn't bad. The sun was bright and the traffic was light. It wasn't until I hit Savannah that the sky seemed to open up and my visibility went to nil at about the same time as my gas light urged my attention. It took me ten minutes to get off the exit ramp and then a bit more to figure out where I was and how to cross the median. I probably should have paid a little more attention to just why the gas station I was eyeing was empty in all this rain despite the crazy number of cars getting in my way. Maybe then I wouldn't have wound up in a puddle that made my engine lurch as water washed over the front of my car as I took a nose dive. Amazingly I made it to high(ish) ground in a McDonalds parking lot and waited 45 minutes to figure out a plan to get me to 1. a gas station and 2. the interstate. It took some creative driving and a good amount of praying but I made it. Hopefully my car isn't the worse for wear. We'll see.

Safe in Fernandia I'm trying to keep in mind all the things I'm thankful for and try not to spin off into an anxiety fit as I check my bank account and make lists of things I need to accomplish ASAP. It's hard, sometimes, to keep in mind that this is all part of the adventure. That life is all in the messy bits and how you come through it matters more than if you succeed perfectly on the first go.

And you know what? I may not make it to SOLAR this weekend, but I found my travel snail and it's enough to get me to Burning Man. Things are looking up.