The best I can estimate the time is that it was after dark … or before light … some time between sun setting and rising. On the playa it makes little difference. There are marginally fewer people about when it is two hours before sunrise than when it is two hours past sunset. But only marginally. The rave clubs are raving as hard as ever, the bigger art cars are cruising and blasting music; but there is also a sort of hush underneath, the collective silence perhaps of thousands of people sleeping, soughing somehow under all the noise.
It was probably about four in the morning. We had left the dancing behind to go see who was hanging out on Arboria. We found our way across the flat desert floor, navigating by the other effigies and, as always, the main landmark, the Man. Arboria’s rope lights pulled us in, and the sight of people up on the platform. Atop the spiral stairs we found people we knew, and people we didn’t, and sat among them, drank their booze, smoked what was offered, looked out over the darkened playa with its dim glow and drifting lights, and talked in the quiet tones of night of deep and silly things.
Sunny’s psiatica-stricken leg continued to scream at her and she let escape a tiny moan. A young Swedish man (neither tall nor blond) heard her and came to her and took his hands in hers. He fixed her with his eyes and spoke softly of taking her pain away and into his own body. He said this a few times, in reassuring and gentle tones, and then was silent as they sat for a long time, hands gripping, staring into each other’s eyes.
His friends talked among themselves in their Swedish accents, and the people we knew chattered away, and I watched the operation, wondering and sort of hoping. He showed no sign; but she allowed that, for a little while, the pain was gone.
Not forever, unfortunately, but it was a trick I’d like to learn. He said it takes absolute faith. That is something I haven’t yet learned.
1 comment:
I read y'all's stories from the playa, particularly the night stories, and I'm strongly reminded of large chunks of Samuel R. Delany's "Dhalgren" (written back in the pre-BM dark ages of the mid 70s.) If you've read it, you get that.
If not, don't, because it's a horrible, difficult book, and no kidding.
But I re-read it a lot, until it makes me angry or bored or frustrated enough to put it away for a year or more; and I do know I hear whispering echoes of it from the playa.
Interesting connection.
" But I still hear them walking in the trees: not speaking.
Waiting here, away from the terrifying weaponry, out of
the halls of vapor and light, beyond holland into the
hills, I have come to
.....
to wound the autumnal city.
So howled out for the world to give him a name.
The in-dark answered with wind."
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