All the avid amateur photographers are posting their Burning Man albums on Facebook. If an album is from a "friend" of mine, or a "friend" comments on a picture and the album isn't locked down, I find out about it and can go see.
Just from that, I've seen well over a thousand pictures so far. Some of them are very good, with better pictures than mine. All of them have some pictures of the same thing (e.g. the Temple burning). Some of them have amazing pictures of interesting people. I guess what strikes me this morning is how much fun everyone seems to be having. Closeups of people I don't know reveal more relaxed smiles than I generally see here in the normal world.
One problem with the normal world is it isn't very much fun. I plan to have fun tonight (basically dressing up like an idiot and going to a bar party in Nevada City where a bunch of other Burner types will be doing the same), but it's Friday, an exception. Normal
days are just days. My perspective shifts away from being happy by default. And so when I look at the pictures, I get a sense that Burning Man is really a very trivial art- and adult-themed vacation spot for a whole lot of stressed out middle class Americans. And I can start to see what the cynics and nay-sayers think of it. And I have to go, wait, no, but, who cares?
Seriously. Who cares? I gotta lighten up. It's Friday.
I wish I could go through all the albums and steal all the pictures, at least the ones with people I know in them. In far future years I won't remember who's who and I will look back on this as a unique
time and will want to relive it, especially when I'm doing as my father these days and lying in constant pain and beginning to realize there's really only one way out and will want something fun to think about. I have stolen pictures that have me in them, and I suppose I could post those and tell a story or two. Thing with stories, though, is real-life stories don't really begin and end. They just sort of have their had-to-be-there moments. Oftentimes I'd rather just not bother, and go forward. After all,
NaNo starts in three weeks and ten days.
10 comments:
Just as I thought, you are a hopeless libertine. Not like me at all. Uh uh. You should be publicly flogged with overcooked spaghetti by a gang of short, fat, naked software engineers.
i am a short, fat software engineer. I hereby volunteer to head up the gang.
Don, you're in luck! As I perceive you to have been for Lo! these many months. Yep.
I just wish there were more opportunities to get naked in my current life.
I wouldn't mind normal days if people weren't so FUCKING IRRITATING. Like I just was online chatting with Time Warner omg... They reset the wrong password. I still can't get into the new services part, only the pay your bills part. Banging head on wall. And then there's Daddy Demento and Bank of America. You see what I mean? I don't need more nakedness, I need more bullets.
@Throckey: I am naked now.
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Thank goodness for wood stoves.
I guess what strikes me this morning is how much fun everyone seems to be having.
The photos show the fun. The shots that capture the people melting down probably don't get posted.
I know the hardcore and longtime Burners say to take the Burn back to the default world. I've done a little of that. Not nearly enough.
At any rate, it's easy to think the normal world not being much fun. The "work" on the playa is different enough, exotic enough that it doesn't seem like work. It's a giant camping trip which is actually more work than staying home, but we think of it as fun and as relaxing. So, yeah. For the Burners, BMan is fun. Even the DPW guys, who do a hella lotta work, seem to think of the prep as fun.
I guess the challenge for each of us is to make our every day lives seem more fun. Tough, maybe impossible to do, yes?
So what would happen if you walk around your office with that utility belt with all the hooks and pouches, and your mug? And what if you had, like, a crock set up in your cube filled with iced tea and offered it to people walking past your cube? Handed out little bead necklaces? Would the Super Mega Multi International Mindless Corp culture be able to handle that?
I remember having loads of fun at work when we started getting super stressed out and the management required us all to work on Saturdays to support the test team that was under the gun to make a deadline. I came in in my bathrobe and slippers and walked around with a coffee mug (like Maxine) and traded wisecracks with everyone. Read the newspaper aloud to people. Passed around the bagels that the managers brought in.
We corporate drones should do more of that.
LOVE the bathrobe bit. Brilliant. People got that. A utility belt (even sans skirt or tutu) would be puzzling.
"Is Don working too many hours?"
People do hand out fruit off their trees and setch.
More fun, yes. I've a feeling when I put this together it was late on a workday and I had fun to go to and wasn't in the mood. Among the corporate drones, there are actually quite a few more fun than me. (In the office.)
I love, by the way, that expression of relaxed amusement on your face in that last photograph.
I was watching someone I like.
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