Bench in Al Centro

Thursday morning bloomed bright despite predictions of clouds and the wind and chill of the previous evening.  I have scheduled to go to La Gruta, the hot spring the following day because of this chilly prediction, so I hope that the weather will hold.  Thursday was my final day in San Miguel to buy souvenirs and see whatever I haven’t seen yet in town, so I headed to the Art and Design Center, La Fabrica.  I think that someone told me that La Fabrica used to hold La Carpa, which I’d been looking for as the big circus tent that held trapeze classes and performances.  It isn’t La Carpa now, and I can’t tell from the pictures I’ve found online if its the same or not, but what I understand in my limited Spanish skills is that La Carpa is no more either way.   La Fabrica was originally a fabric factory, and now sells fabric craft work in addition to the fine art, gallerias, antique shops and artists’ studios you can find inside.  And this little gem was across the street from me the whole time and I didn’t even know it!  Sometimes things just happen the way that they are meant to happen though, and it happens this time that open studios are on Thursday afternoons!  This means that despite the fact that I can’t possibly afford the pricey works of art by these varying degrees of up-and-coming, established and famous-and-not-so-retired artistas del mundo, I get to speak with a few of them and take their pictures for my Why Do You Do What You Do project.  This is perhaps more valuable to me as a soul searching artist anyways.  I talk to Manuel Chacón, James Harvey and Mario Oliva about their art, and photograph James and Mario.  I did not have time to photograph Manuel, but I did buy a piece of his jewelry, a beautiful metal work bracelet with the famous Mexican heart on it.

James Harvey, Why Do You Do What You Do?

La Fabrica

It was interesting to see all of their work, but truth be told, it is Mario who shocked, surprised  and gave me the greatest gift and the most unusual experience of my trip.  He was the last artist that I met, after looking at paintings, photographs, and artisan work all day (I even saw one of Diego Rivera’s paintings, a tiny little thing selling for only a few thousand dollars!).  Nearing my limit of stimulation for the day, I stumbled into a small studio housing four artists’ work.  There was a young man painting in the center of the room, but I wish not to disturb him, or really to be disturbed.  For in this room, I found my favorite artist to date, Mario Oliva of course.  His work is passionate and psychological, using muscular figures that tell tantalizing stories through paint and script; monochromatic, vivid, striking and all seeming to be about some distant story that I inately and deeply understand.  They are a bit dark, but beautiful.  How does one paint the beauty and the light inside of the dark and forlorn, you ask?  I don’t know, but he does it.  I was staring at a work with five panels that I later learned is the story of a man carrying stones on his back, and of his discovery of a flower, his decision and difficulty in carrying the bag of stones and the flower and his pondering of whether if he keeps the flower, it will become a stone, or if the stones will become flowers.  It is a metaphysical, pensive piece, no?  What do you think?  Anyways, after staring at this piece for five minutes or so, the painter in the room ventured to speak to me at last.

Of course, it was Mario.  Duh, you totally didn’t see that one coming, right?  He gave me a little spiel and I asked him if he’d participate in my photography project.  He agreed and left the room to find something to write his answer on.  And it was then I saw it, the painting that I will remember forever.  It is called La Piel Nueva.  It is a large canvas in yellow tones of two figures embracing.  In his style, they are muscular, and intense.  There is something about the way in which they embrace, that you feel that they are holding on for their lives.  From their chest down their skin is falling off, but looks stitched on, like they are desperately repairing and holding onto it (I mean, wouldn’t you?).  But from their chest up, the skin seems to have already shed and is growing healthy and vibrant.  Psychologically, I can understand this growing of new skin.  The painting itself is beautiful to me.  But, it was before I could register any of it, it was like the moment my eyes fell upon it, I found that I was crying.

This may not seem like such a big deal.  I mean, I cry at movies, moving moments in plays, when I’m really happy.  But, there was something different here, because when Mario re-entered the room, I couldn’t explain at all what I was crying about.  I actually didn’t know.  And despite whatever I can relate to in the painting, whatever logic there is and beauty there is, I still really don’t have any idea.  I wish desperately that I could buy this painting.  But I have no idea how much it costs, just that it is more than likely more than I can afford.  I have dreams that someday, I’ll make millions and find Mario again, and have that painting, but hopes and dreams will have to do for now.  Mario, however gave me another great gift, friendship.  He was the first person to ask me, seriously, and with challenge in his voice, why it is that I do what I do.  To turn the intimate and thought provoking question back.  And I had to admit that I don’t know right now.  Normally, I feel self assured on my path and when I describe who I am to strangers.  But he probed deeper, maybe because of a language barriers or maybe because I really hadn’t made my answers or descriptions clear.  Or maybe he just had a tendency to ask about the things that I was most vulnerable and confused about.  This too, like the chance to see his painting, was a gift to my soul searching heart.  He invited me out for later that night when he would be finished working and after spending a few hours writing, I headed out to meet his friends in an old cantina.

Mario Oliva, Why Do You Do What You Do?

In Mexico, there are cantinas and there are bars.  You cannot enter a cantina as a woman.  It is a place for men, not that they wouldn’t love to be distracted by a beautiful woman, but maybe it is a place in which they can escape and not have to be distracted.  It is a place to relax, to fight, to joke without concern for what a woman would think or say, a place where they are not trying to impress them, console them, nor need they even try to ignore them.  That is how I imagine it anyways, as despite my plans to dress up as a boy and figure it out, even a girl as careless as I deem this adventure too dangerous after two different men tell me that they think it would be dangerous for them to enter a cantina!  After all, I make a pretty scrawny and effeminate looking boy and strong as I am, if a man decides to challenge me to a brawl, I’m probably not going to last long.  So, the converted cantina that is now a bar that Mario directed me to(where women and men can hang out together!) is the closest I’ll get.  It is actually not so different than any bar anywhere in the world.  There were glamourously cute bartenders, friends laughing and drinking, some getting a little too sauced, an older man drunk past his limit was loudly hitting on every woman to catch his eye, and an escape from the days discoveries and trials was acheived for everyone.  I was supposed to go to another bar, Casa Payo which turned out to be an Argentinian restaurant that another young man invited me to.  After I ran into him multiple times in the street though, I started to feel like I was being followed, and decided not go.  Frequently, I saw him with other young Americans, but strangely this did not reassure me.  He may have just been eager to meet young people from around the world, but traveling the world alone as a woman, I trust my feelings about people and I felt like there was either some scam to get my money, or to get in my pants and that wasn’t exactly the experience that I was looking for.  Oh, how I wish men could know what its like to be a woman for just one week.  Especially a blond woman traveling alone in Mexico.

The weather held the next day, and I journeyed to the address that Whitney had given me as her temporary home.  I met Jaime and Adam and their wonder dog and we drove out to La Gruta to spend the day at the hot springs!  Today is the only day that I really relaxed like a tourist and just soaked up the minerals from the hot springs, talked with my new friends, drank a margarita and ate some enchiladas just chillin in the sunshine.  Jaime, Adam, Whitney and I tried to plan a way for me to stay another week, as they were going to be house sitting in a mansion the following weekend, with a pool even (and supposedly we’re in a drought, how extravagant! yes, that’s sarcasm).  It sounded lovely, but here I must admit that at this point in the trip I have become a little annoyed with most of the wealthy (and yes, mostly white) people here.  As Angelica said, there are people that come and become a part of the community and contribute actively in that community, and then more and  more there are people who come, gate themselves in their own ‘new’ community and contribute to only things that improve their own lives sometimes to great detriment to the community that already exists.  These are the people that move to Mexico and live here for ten years and never learn Spanish.  And these are the same people who when they lived in America would have insisted that everyone who moved to America be required to learn English first.  Its not like Mexico is a difficult place to learn Spanish.  It may in fact be the easiest place to learn Spanish.  The culture is welcoming and the people in general openly welcome the opportunity to listen to you stumble through your basic high school or college lingual skills and correct you happily and encouragingly when your tenses are (always!) wrong.  I see signs of the global depression here too, as wealthy people lose their retirement savings in stock crashes or decide that having a second home is no longer a frugal way to live and must sell.  Even here, there are no buyers.  And I must admit that I hope that perhaps the prices will fall back down to an affordable rate for the native Mexicans to reclaim their town a little before it soars back up again.  But, as Mario and I seemed to agree, gentrification, colonialization, the transitioning of cultures in and out of neighborhoods, villages, countries, whatever you wish to call it, has always existed and will probably always exist.  At least this form does not so obviously rely on coming in and killing or enslaving everyone in a village in order to claim it.  Some would argue that the same effect is acheived and some would argue that in fact gentrification does more good for people than bad.  In all honesty, I’m not sure where I stand besides thinking that if you want to move to another culture, you should at least attempt to learn a little bit about that culture and its language.

After La Gruta, we relaxed at Jaime, Adam and Whitney’s home for awhile, sipped tequila and made plans for the evening, as well as continued to brainstorm ways that we could make outrageous amounts of money for me to be able stay in San Miguel another week.

Consuming tequila at home transitions into consuming tequila out and then consuming mezcal out and even consuming chocolate covered crickets out!  Yikes!  Now, I am as adventurous of a gastronome as the rest of New York, wheat handicaps aside, but this is where I draw the line.  The little buggers with too many legs paralyze me in fear along with their cockroach and spider brothers (yes, I know they’re not really related scientifically speaking).  You really think covering them in chocolate will disguise them from me?  There is a reason that I can’t do Fear Factor people.  Climb up really high and jump?  Okay, take a deep breath, forget that you could die, throw up or embarass yourself and go.  Eat, touch, look at a creature with more than four legs?  I’m hyperventilating just thinking about it.  And I refuse to believe that this is some sort of native delicacy.  I know some cultures eat bugs, but these are chocolate covered crickets.  Some creep thought, ‘hey, you know what really freaks people out?  The idea of eating bugs, lets cover it in chocolate and people who aren’t squeamish can laugh at the people who are!’  Great.

It was around this point (remember that I’ve been drinking mezcal, some of it even with the worm, and things are a bit fuzzy now) that I start searching for someone with a cell phone in order to call Mario and tell him where to meet us when he finishes work.  However when I have no luck and am just starting to be frustrated by my lack of connectivity, he magically shows up!  It is at this moment (yes, a rather drunken realization, I must admit) that I realized that I rather liked living without the technology of a cell phone and started to formulate a plan of ditching my cell completely and relying primarily on a landline (gasp)!  I have been sufficiently mocked for this idea since returning to New York, but am still considering whether it would be possible and positive or extremely detrimental to my social and business networks.  My favorite suggestion is that I return to a pager and start a new hipster anti-tech trend!  Ha! 142!  That’s pager code for ‘I love it!’ for those of you born before 1980 and after 1985.  143 was the real pager code, meaning ‘I love you,’ because of the number of letters in each word.  Really, this was the first form of text messaging, a whole host of simple expressions that you could send to someone for the cost of a phone call at a payphone that didn’t require the time and personal touch of an actual phone call!  Brilliant!

Seriously though, I really enjoyed the much more natural pace of not having a phone while I was away.  I wasn’t constantly being distracted by texts, emails, phone calls that I felt guilty for ignoring because I was trying to live in the moment and didn’t want to be talking on the phone or texting right now, thank you very much!  Also it seemed to have an added benefit of making my time more important.  If I really commited to seeing you at three, both you and I had better show up because there can be no last minute text to cancel.  So, if I’m not sure I want to go, then I’m not going to make the plan.  I’ll just maybe show up.  And since, I’m not sure how long things will take in each moment, I don’t overplan my busy life or try to keep more things in it than I can handle.  Now, granted not everyone in the world has this same problem with technology.  Some people can distract themselves from whatever conversation that they’re having or moment that they’re living quite easily to answer the endless barrage of phone calls, text messages, AIMs and facebook updates.  Some people are okay with the fact that when they stop to have an hour dinner or drink or coffee with someone they spend most of that hour checking the time to see if they’re late somewhere else and have to leave before they’ve even really caught up.  And when they are overloaded some people can throw their phone in their bag all day and never feel remorse that it takes them weeks to never to get back to all the unsanswered messages.  And really, maybe having a landline would do little to change that last part.  But maybe it would just naturally slow down life to the people who really want to get in touch and really want to make plans.  I read a really interesting book when I got back to New York called Better Off, where a MIT grad lives on a Menonite-like farm for a year with minimal technology and reflects on many of the same discoveries.  So, I’ll admit it, I’ve discovered that when someone sends me a text saying that they miss me, they’re thinking of me, or we should get together soon, it really doesn’t make me feel more loved like it should.  It makes me feel guilty like its now my fault that we haven’t seen each other, because they’ve reached out (however feebly).  And when I do the same, why should it make the other person feel any differently?  Which reminds me, I have about ten phone calls to return that I’ve ignored today either because I was sleeping or because I was writing this posting…so goodbye invisible audience of readership and hello actual people to talk to.  Goodbye lovely Mexico and hello trying to maintain a calmer pace in hectic New York, at least for a little while yet.

Ryan and Evie waiting for me at home

Of course, I’m pretty sure that what I wrote in the title line of this post doesn’t make sense in Spanish at all, but most of you reading this probably don’t speak Spanish anyways.  The more pressing concern is that I’m not even sure that it makes sense in English.  So, if someone actually does read this (I know you read the last one, but seeing as how this is the second post in a series, your continued interest in my abnormally long monologues containing abnormally long run on sentences is highly unlikely), you can comment with your own expert interpretation of what I was trying to convey if it so floats your bubble, or you can just keep reading if your boring.  And that’s fine too, because if you don’t post, we won’t know that you read this and that you’re boring.

My soul is singing!  I wrote for two and a half hours last night and finished an entire rough draft of a chapter!  I didn’t even know what it was going to be about really, until I started writing and it actually all came together!  Hallejuyah!  This was a major reminder to me that a) a chapter takes this long to write, b) that it takes me a half hour to ninety minutes of warming myself up and clearing my day to start writing and that c) the internet is death to my creativity.  As soon as I log on, there it sits.  The blog to be posted, the email to check, the facebook to check, the couchsurfing to check, the questions to look up, the website to update.  All great, except when you go to look up a word mid writing spree and realize that you’ve spent fifteen minutes just checking to see if anyone’s written you back in the last hour about tomorrow, yesterday, etc…  I know, I know, I have a problem.

So, its been three days since I last posted…aren’t you curious what new adventures I’ve had?  Well, no thievery or knifings this round.  But, let’s start where we left off, on Monday.  I slept in til about 11 again.  Hey!  I’m on vacation, didn’t you get the memo in the last post?!  Besides that’s downright early for someone who normally works until 4 am, sleeps at 5 or 6 and wakes up at 2pm.  My first victory on Monday was figuring out how to get the hot water to work, though I’ll admit, it took me another day to figure out how to get the hot and cold to work together to neither freeze nor scald me.  This victory accomplished, I cooked eggs and bacon with hot sauce, mmmm…then, okay…its confession time…what I’m about to tell you is deeply disturbing.  Morally incomprehensible.  Evil incarnate even.  Okay, here goes…on my way to the jardin…I stopped at Starbucks.  And yes, I even bought a mocha.  I can’t even believe that there is a Starbucks here.  I justify my actions to myself by reminding myslef that I needed something quick & to-go and that I have a morbid curiosity and wanted to know what a Starbucks in the middle of Mexico would look like?  Really, I don’t blame you if you stop reading this right here and now, I mean I’m supporting the ruin of the culture of this little town! Ai!  Not that I’m not also doing so by buying replicas of art works as souvenirs and more than supporting the vacation business of San Miguel which is becoming the gentrification of San Miguel…but lets just feel guilty for Starbucks purchases.  That’s way more eviler, no? And is what gringos do, no?  Besides I didn’t build the Starbucks…or start the fire…

Starbucks in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico

Anyways, after this embarrassing encounter, I went to the jardin to meet Whitney, una chica simpatico that I connected with on Couchsurfing.  I got to the jardin an hour early to brainstorm some writing (and make sure I had time to enjoy and safely toss the evidence of the above stain), but strangely all of the writing projects before me, I was really more interested in this potential investment project that I’m thinking about and saving for in a few years…yeah right, I’m telling you what it is!  You’ll steal my idea, nosey!

Whitney told me that we would be the only young blond women in the jardin and that we would have no trouble finding each other.  She was right.  I sat at my little bench writing, and she found me no problem.  Not that there are not a lot of gringos near the jardin, its where the tourist center is.  But, most of the people moving here and living here are retirees.  I also had time to notice that most of the women both gringas and natives were wearing a considerable amount of clothing out on this 80 degree day. But I was sweating!  So, I hope that my jeans and wife beater tank top won’t lose me any social invitations  in town.  We did meet two jovenes that Whitney knows from her travels here, a fire spinner and an accordionist (Okay, I admit it, I just typed accordionist to see if it was a word or if spell check would catch it).  The accordionist was quite good actually.  But in this social scenario, my Spanish?  Not so much so.

After listening for awhile and everyone catching up, while I tried to catch up with their Spanish, Whitney took me to the best chicken sandwich stand…in the Jardin?  San Miguel? Mexico? no…the world!  I’d have to agree of course, even though I pulled it off the bread.  I’m pretty used to pulling apart sandwiches though.  Delicious!  And cheap! Its always a little nerve racking meeting strangers, you never know if you’ll have anything in common, or if they’re really just judging your every move, clothing item, and the way that you breath (Guess what? They are.  We’re human, duh, and you’re judging every word of this blog that I don’t think anyone’s reading anyways…except okay…my aunt, my boyfriend, my best friend, a couple of old friends…okay, now I’m starting to feel pressured! Yikes!).  At any rate, Whitney turned out to be a great person to talk to.  We talked about the economy, being a woman traveling alone, politics, our culture of ‘need to buy,’ and why we think Latin America is going to be the new global head honcho…along with or maybe instead of China.  Whitney is a vagabond musician currently house-sitting her way around Latin America with great stories that you’ll have to ask her about yourself if you ever meet her.

…Okay fine!  One involves her being homeless in Mexico and sleeping on the beach with nothing.  That’s right, what silly things are you afraid of losing or doing?  Hint: she lived happily ever after.

After lunch, we both parted ways.  She was late to a band session and I was early for a trapeze class!  As a side note, I notice that how I plan things here in Mexico seems really to work for me.  I get a lot done, but there’s never really too much of a rush to get from one thing to another because I haven’t jam packed my schedule, and I don’t feel guilty if I stay home at night to write after a busy day.  In New York, I’m always late, always stressed about being late, never feeling like I’ve done anything, and even if I’ve been running all day (or night), I feel guilty that I take any down time or sleep time in my life.  Alright, fine, you caught me, I was 15 minutes late to trapeze.  But, I wasn’t stressed about it.  It was my first time finding the place and at least I got there, is how I looked at it.

Circus School!!

Gravity Works is located in the ‘warehouse’ district uphill of the city of San Miguel.  It is located in what looks like living cuartos and mexican style warehouses.  You have to follow signs up stairs to walk through people’s balconies, up more stairs to a roof, across the roof, and up a few stairs to another roof, and then up more stairs to another roof.

San Miguel de Allende from the Gravity Works' Roof

It’s great!  My first class here is with a young girl and a teenage girl who are already warming up with Cecilia and then with a guy named Jon who comes in a little later than me.  Classes are conducted with a mix of levels which is a lot of fun.  It was great to see kids learning new skills, to take an aerial class in Spanish and to see Cecilia’s beautiful style and how it differed slightly in set up from the styles that I’ve learned in New York.  I even got on the hoop a little bit, which I hate because it makes me sooo dizzy!  But I did some partnering with Jon and got to see what it looked like in the ballet style mirrors, which was a nice tool as far as checking out what my form looks like, though admittedly sometimes distracting.  I now understand why my coaches are always telling me to breathe.  My face turns beat red when I go upside down!

Ana Cecilia and Candy at Gravity Works

After this, I was simply exhausted.  I took a new route home and found the Centro Cultural Ignacio Ramirez de Nigromante (which I also think is called Belles Artes).

Belles Artes

There are a bunch of sculptures…I mean there is a show of the feminist work of an artist whose name begins with a V that I swore I’d remember, but now cannot.  They were abstract persons in multiple media with only their sexual body parts emphasized and displaced in the attempt to portray our over preocupation with those parts in determining a genders worth.  After this detour, I was literally dead on my feet.  I came home, made tostadas (I’m getting sick of beans and tortillas already) and wrote one crummy page for my young adult novel and slept.

The next morning, George and Susan (who were staying in Casa Crayola next to me) and I got up at 8am, had breakfast and got picked up by our guide, Angelica and her driver, Mario to tour the neighboring town Guanajuato.

George and Susan

Oh my goodness!  What a day!  Let me just put it out there right now, if you’re looking for a tour guide in San Miguel de Allende, Guanajuato, Mexico City or the surrounding areas, this woman knows her stuff!  You can email her at angelicatours1@yahoo.com.mx for more info, I can’t seem to get her website to work and link here.  Angelica took us from San Miguel to Guanajuato, to Dolores Hidalgo and back to San Miguel telling us the tales of her life, the lives of the indigenous peoples, the stories of the Independence and the Revolution, of the artists in the area and how the local stories, cultures and legends developed.

Where Hidalgo's Head Hung for Leading the Revolution

She is honest, hilarious, kind and really knows her stuff.  She is also passionate about getting the facts right, if something is only a story or only her version of a story, she will let you know.  Also George and Susan are great! They are this lively couple from Oregon with a daughter about my age who is a musician.  Seriously, everyone around me seems to be a musician!  George and Susan also have great stories about their life and initiated great conversations about economics, gentrification, classism, and politics.

I don’t even know where to begin with the stories and things that we experienced in Guanajuato really (oh please, it was almost a ten hour day, and you want to know everything?  Go there yourself! Read your own Mexican history), so I’ll give you the highlights.  We got to learn about the indigenous pyramids that were recently found and are being restored, but are not open yet (boo).  We had a very interesting discussion about gentrification in Mexico (particularly in San Miguel) and it was great to hear Angelica’s general take on it, “its good and its bad, but it is what it is and we can’t change it,” along with her more detailed stories of what it means to the Mexican people.  It turns out that there is a Starbucks in al centro because the Mexicans (okay, yeah, the wealthy Mexicans) wanted it there, so I’m not feeling guilty anymore.  Ha!

We stopped at a candy shop called La Catrina, which is named after one of Jose Guadalupe Posada’s calveras that became very popular in Mexico as an icon after many artists, including Diego Rivera, depicted the image in multiple forms.  The image is of an elegant skeleton woman, dressed in ornate attire from the late nineteenth century.  The image is a social commentary that no matter how much wealth you have, we are all equalized in death.

La Catrina says Smoking is Bad

I bought myself a La Catrina in a beautiful purple dress to remember this important message as my life transitions once again and the world and the economy around us transitions as well.

Next stop was lunch at a Mexican restaurant that the international students frequent (and so yes, that same photo of Che Guevara is hanging right next to a paper Metropolitan Museum bag from new york…and yes, i totally loved this) and then a coffee at a stand that was roasting its own beans right outside.  It smelled magnificent.  I bought  a small bag of coffee for my casita and home.  Actually, I’m going to go and smell it right now (jealous?).

Coffee Beans Roasting

Now, if I get some Mexican chocolate, I can have the best mocha in the world in the comfort of my own home.

So, the only lesson that I’ll teach you from Mexican history (because I think its pretty cool) is that the Mexican Independence started in San Miguel de Allende.  And in Guanajuato, I got to see the bell that was rung in what is called the ‘cry of freedom,’ and the building where the four founding members of the movements heads hung from each corner as a warning for ten years until their followers succeeded and could remove them.

Cry of Freedom Bell

After this, we ventured to the mummy museum.  That’s right there are mummies in Guanajuato.  But not the kind of mummies that come from Eqypt.  No, these are bodies that were dug up from the cemetery by the government because the family couldn’t pay the rent on the grave and were found to be mummified because of the minerals in the water they drink, the dryness in the air, who knows?  So there are mummies from the late nineteenth century all the way to now.  Its eerie because many even have hair in their unmentionable places…some of them even have their unmentionable places, actually.  Like our guides said, you should go once, but once you’ve seen it, you’ve seen it.  But its interesting that it supposedly draws the most tourists from outside and from within Mexico.

Mummy and Baby with Mummy Reflection

We also went to a market where supposedly Perfidio Diaz brought the ceiling from a train station in France to Mexico to use to make the marketplace.

The Train Station Market

And there is a rumor (that Angelica firmly believes to be just rumor) that the little tower on top was made by Eiffel.

The Market in Guanajuata

This was a long day, finished with tequila ice cream and the return to my casita last night to write a full chapter after allowing myself to zone out for exactly one hour with television accompanied by either gun shots or repetitive car backfiring coming from outside in the street (I said no thievery or knifings, not no gunfire).

Today, I slept in again and then ventured out for breakfast at one of the vegetarian friendly places I’ve found here.  Recommended by both Marti, my host at Casa Crayola, and George and Susan, I walked there with my shopping bag to buy your souvenirs and hopefully some fresh vegetales, which I’m starting to feel are lacking in my beans, bacon, egg and tortilla diet.  I did have an excellent (and giant) breakfast of juevos rancheros (my favorite) and a mixed green salad, and I did buy a few souvenirs and some nice tequila for cheap, but I couldn’t find the market and carrying around a bottle of tequila and souvenirs is exhausting, so I rested at Starbucks again and re-focused my energy (this time guilt free-ish).  Then I took the ten minute walk back to my casita and got ready for another trapeze class.

Ana Cecilia Corona, Why Do You Do What You Do?

It is likely that this was my last class at Gravity Works and it saddens me a little.  Seriously, even if you’ve never tried it, you should visit this place if you’re here.  Its very affordable, great fun and a great workout! This class for me was more challenging and I was tired, so harder for me, which was great.  I did jam my toe a little unfortunately, but it didn’t stop me and afterwards I got to talk a lot to Cecilia, mixing in and out of Spanish.  She is a person with a wonderful energy and is very patient, kind and talented.  I hope that our paths will cross again, even if I can’t make it to a class tomorrow, which is likely.  I have so much to do still while I’m here and tomorrow’s sort of it because I’m headed to the hot springs for a day of relaxation with Whitney and her friends on Friday and leave Saturday.  Aw, dios mio!  Muy triste, no?

My last adventure today was having dinner at the little restaurant across the street from my casita.  I was starving after trapeze and they grill their meat outside on a big grill.  Well, the smell was too much for me, and I couldn’t handle tostadas with beans and cheese after that, so I got five little mini pork (pastor?) tacos and conversed a little with Martin, who is 18 and hoping to grow up and marry a gringa.  I told him that we were all stubborn, too independent and used to getting our own way and that he might not like it so much after all.  I think that he told me women in the whole world were like that, but my selective ‘I don’t understand Spanish’ just happened to kick in right then…conveniently…

My first exchange with Mexico since I was in Sonora in 1998 occurs almost immediately upon landing in Mexico City.  I have a moment or two to think that it seems like my Spanish is sufficient for stumbling my way through customs, only to be ambushed by a police officer asking to search my bag immediately after I’m pretty sure they told me that I was clear to go on…crap.  I have to comply after all, I want in the country!  Then to make it worse, a moment through the search of my bag, another officer approaches me from the side and begins questioning me.  I am still a little uncomfortable speaking in Spanish and he is questioning me in English, so I answer mostly in the same manner.  He asks me a bunch of really mundane questions…my occupation, my purpose in Mexico, etc. I tell him that I am there to pick up 30 kilos of cocaine of course, but he doesn’t blink an eye.  Okay, not really.  I tell him that I am a dancer, because I don’t want to say bartender and alert anyone to possible cash being on my personage (don’t you love the word personage?).  Anyways, dancer is the closest thing I can think of to call what I’ve been doing artistically in my life lately.  I can’t think to say “teatro fisico,” so I say “bailar” and he asks if I’m a ballerina.  I just nod, its easier.  Then he asks twice if I’m a “turista.”  I say si, both times.  Then he says, “ballerina, like a stripper?” En serio? Es un grande tonto no? But then he lets me pass.  Approximately one minute and 28 seconds later, I realize that I’ve been totally played.  Hola!  Why would he ask so many stupid questions?  Why would they search me if I was clear?  Why would he make me turn to talk to him so I couldn’t see my bag being searched?  I check my wallet.  Yep, that $100 to pay for my cab and the rest of the bill on my casita?  Totally gone. Cabrones!  What do I do?  I consider letting it be, and you know not getting into an altercation with the Mexican police…I mean, it was my fault that I hadn’t put the money in my bra in the first place.  Seriously, the safest place possible.  As soon as someone goes for your tatas, its a whole ‘nother playing field, I figure, police or no police.  The problem is I’m sort of a hippie and I don’t always wear one…okay, okay I know TMI…

At any rate, I’ve already gone through security.  How do I get back in?  Enter annoying-union-worker-looking-for-a-tip-by-showing-me-around-when-I-could-figure-it-out-myself.  Aw well, at least he can get me back through security…there’s something to be said for timing sometimes.  As I come back through security and then back through customs, I go the same way that I came out and suddenly I am speaking clearly in (let’s say, better than average) Spanish and telling every person along the way what’s happened, landing eventually right in front of my new little friends.  Politely, clearly and firmly, I explain to El Hablador (that’s what I’m gonna call ‘the talker’) that my money had not been out of my sight all day until my bag was searched and he distracted me.  That no one else could have taken it and that without it, I am stranded in Mexico City (okay, not really, but come on…100 dollars, not pesos people!).  El Hablador weakly denies anything and points me towards el pequeno ladron himself. When he denies it, I repeat my story.  When he opens his wallet, I repeat my story.  When he asks my to search his pockets, I shake my head (please, you want me to feel you up for free too?) and repeat my story.  All of this is in Spanish.  Wow, I think.  I’m not too shabby at this Spanish thing.  Would you look at that three years of studying and ten years of restaurant work that’s been hiding somewhere in this hard head of mine!  But, I am getting anxious, I mean, what can I really do?  Well, I do have the advantage of already clearing customs, already obtaining my boarding pass (thanks to annoyingly eager union beggar) and still having two hours before my flight’s gate will even be announced, much less start boarding.  I say one more time, “maybe you didn’t take it, but no one else could have…I’m stuck here,” and get a little pouty-eyed and scared looking for good measure.  He caves.  He walks me out of customs, takes me to an atm, continues to deny having taken it, but gives me $70 worth of pesos from his bank account.  I accept this truce.  I mean, he could arrest me on some made-up charge probably if I get too lippy.  Maybe.  I thank him for being such a good little official de policia and reward myself with a margarita while I’m waiting for my flight.

Ironically, at this point, I already have a little upset stomach from the airport food in New York.  I’m not entirely sure that the ice in the margarita, which the bartender swore was purified actually was.  But, Montezuma seems to be taking it easy on me if not, so that’s good.  I’m now taking pepto swigs every four hours or so as a preventative measure.

So after finally arriving at my casita at one am, (I didn’t realize it was an hour and a half car ride from the airport–good thing I had Abelar as my driver to practice Spanish the whole time), and not being able to sleep til four, I got up today around eleven and went to the big cathedral in San Miguel de Allende (p.s. that’s where I am, in case you didn’t know).  I took a few pictures, but I couldn’t get the sound to turn off on my camera and I didn’t want to use my flash as well and disturb the real church goers, who were there to actually pray and all that, entonces picture taking was a very covert and highly unsuccessful operation.  The church is very beautiful and powerful though.  There are painted murals that remind me of the pastel illustrations in my children’s bible.  One of them in particular was quite interesting.  It seemed to show the painter standing in fire and brimstone painting the Virgin Mary while on the other side officials of the church and what looked like all gringos stood happy in the sunlight praising the finished painting.  Unfortunately, it was high in the eaves and at the front of the church, so I didn’t exactly want to try to get a better shot and it came out looking like someone’s acid trip.

Jesus

There are also over twenty statues of saints and religious figures stationed around the church.  I’m not gonna lie, a few of them look a little like plastic mannequins and are a little creepy (like the dead jesus lying down in a glass box), but I did manage to get an okay shot of what I think is supposed to be the three Mary’s…I’m not sure though because there wasn’t a plaque anywhere near them.  The most stunning and powerful part though, was the architecture.  I don’t know enough about architecture to tell you what era, style, etc it is, but there is gold inlay inside and tall steeples with bells and windows in the ceiling that cast beautiful rays of sunshine in.  So, I knelt and I prayed.  I guess, I just really said hi to this form that God took once, but I did the father-son-holy-ghost cross over myself that I learned when I briefly attended and actually worked at a catholic church out of respect  for the institution that I was currently in and the people who’s faith it represented and comforted.  And I reflected that Christianity has created a lot of beauty and knowledge and done a lot of good for people, and not just created mass hysteria and war.  Sometimes us antireligiosos forget that part in our eagerness to be right.  So, I apologized to the Christian version of God for being so harsh and judgemental, but thanked him for understanding that I don’t totally agree with his way of telling the story or running a religion.  I feel like we both kind of came to a understanding about that…hard to explain, but I got a little emotional about it all, so I guess that’s all that matters for me.  Go get your own peace!  :P

Next, I filled my pockets with a two days ration of pesos (no, I’m not telling you how much that is, its rude to talk about money! ::rolls eyes::) and looked through the tourist shops in the jardin (center of town, where the church is), but decided to wait until I’d explored more to do any souvenir shopping after I’d figured out what I really wanted, and how much I really wanted to spend.  Then I went to the mercado.  Rice, beans, tortillas, eggs, cheese, bacon and hot sauce. And vino.  I figure I can make some basic food with that and save money.  I liked how they had the eggs in plastic bags out on the shelf, just cause it was different.  Until I got home and set the bag down too hard and broke four of the eggs.  Four egg tostadas for me tonight!  But, my food was 400 pesos and my lunch this afternoon was 350 pesos, so I figure this is a much better deal, even if its just two meals a day that I eat at home.  Also, right now I haven’t made any travel friends (I know its my first day and I dedicated it to writing and meditating…not that I’ve gotten very far in those pursuits…), but it sucks eating at a restaurant alone in a foreign country.  But, I’m going to either do some yoga or some trapeze tomorrow (yes, I found a circus school in Mexico! Yay!), so hopefully I’ll meet a few cool people.  I also put some feelers out to fellow travelers around my age that Couchsurfing says are here right now and met a very nice couple tonight in the cafe who may provide some company on some of my upcoming adventures.  So, super!  There is also an art festival going on right now here, called the Iguana Festival, so if I have the time, I’ll go and check that out.

With that, I’ll leave you and go chant with the barking dogs and squawking birds outside my window.  Seriously loud!  But quiet at night and a sort of natural alarm clock, which is nice.  And silenced completely with ear plugs which is also nice if I don’t want to get up at 8am and be productive, thank you very much.  Jeez, I’m on vacation!

P.S. I’ll have to add pics later as I’ve forgotten the cord that goes with my camera. My sincere apologies for the temporary lack of visual stimulation.  Yeah right, like anyone is reading this anyways!

Outside of my Casita

Fountain at my Casita

My Room at the Casita

On December 6th of 2008, some of our friends held a surprise arts inspired birthday party for our friend Ricky. As one of the activities, I did my first experiment in the Why Do You Do What You Do project. Seven people were gracious enough to participate and share some of the intimacy and truth in their lives and decisions with the group and now with you. I kept things relatively simple for this first round, we’ll see how the photos develop as I continue. I plan on asking participants around the world as I travel. Next stop is Mexico February 7-14th!! Again, thank you to the participants in this project.
Love and Peace, Erinina

Evie and I

Happy Holidays to you and yours!  I’m attempting to actually write a holiday letter this year, so here goes.  Hopefully it will turn out better than the attempted holiday photo session with my cat, Evie (Evening), who as you can see from my postcards, pretty much squirmed the whole time before taking a flying leap off my shoulders.

For me, the first half of the year was full of Mir events as we closed our second full season of work.  We produced three full plays in 2008, Fetish, How to be a Doll, and The Mary Trilogy.  Fetish was a new version of the story of Othello written by Joyce Wu, and directed by Julianne Just.  I got to be a part of the ensemble cast of How to be a Doll, a movement piece about female identity directed by Genevieve Gearhart.  And Julianne also directed The Mary Trilogy which was written by a college friend of ours Adrienne Dawes, an award winning playwright from Texas.  Also, thanks to many endless hours of work by Joyce, we brought the Israel Prize winning playwright, Yosef bar-Yosef to the U.S. to tour Yale, Princeton, Hofstra and Columbia with readings of his work and also co-produced an informal reading of work that Joyce’s colleagues created in a playwrights’ workshop in her apartment! Mir will be on break for much of the next year as I work on furthering my own artistic and personal growth, but I look forward to seeing how it will re-emerge.

How to be a Doll

In March, I gave myself a birthday gift that I’d been wanting for three years, and started training in aerial acrobatics.  I’ve been working on aerial silks and static/single trapeze since then, and am now training about three-four days a week!  I still have a lot to learn, but it has brought immense amounts of joy into my life!  It also marked the beginning of a lot of transitions in my life in which I’ve started to actualize many of goals that I’ve been saving up for years!

Early Aerial Training at New York Circus Arts

In June, I moved out of the apartment I’ve been living in for three and a half years in Astoria, Queens in order to consolidate my belongings and save money for travel.  My roommate Diana and I had lived together that entire time, and it was definitely the end of an era for both of us!  I sublet for the summer in my friend Liz’ living room, where I spent some time soul searching and figuring out how to accomplish my travel goals.  She has been an incredibly important spiritual companion in this time of transition in my life.

In August I headed out on a solo journey to the Burning Man Festival.  This was another goal that I had had for five years and when all of my travel companions started falling through, I decided to go anyway by myself.  I camped with Camp Nomadia and was blessed to meet a few wonderful people who made my experience a truly wonderful one!  There is a very long blog entry about my experiences there that you can access here, so I’ll let you go and read about that, if you’d like.

In October, due to a number of changing circumstances, I moved into my own place in Bushwick, Brooklyn.  This is the first time I’ve lived totally alone, and I’m really enjoying the freedom and experience that I’m gaining from it.  I am still getting some things straightened out and set up, but I absolutely love the space!  It is a large duplex loft space with a studio downstairs for my work, a large bedroom, a large living room and my own washer/dryer (in New York City!)!!  Evie loves all the room to run around and play as well.

For Thanksgiving, I got to spend the day in Connecticut with my uncle and aunt, Paul and Carole, as they’ve been nice enough to include me in their traditions since I moved to the East Coast in ‘03.  It’s always nice to be with family and share stories with the cast of characters in attendance!

My neice Isabella and I

Currently, I am home for Christmas and planning my next adventures.  A few of my friends and I were planning a trip in January to Machu Picchu, but realized at our first planning session that we’d be in the heart of the rainy season in January and promptly rescheduled for May!  Now, I’m pondering where and when to go on the next journey.  As usual, if you’re thinking of going somewhere and want a companion, let me know! I’m thinking about spending a week in Mexico during January, visiting friends or doing a creativity or yoga retreat, as I think being somewhere warm for a little bit would be a nice break to the super cold winter that’s predicted for us all!

I hope that you are all warm and cozy and happy!

There is a certain amount of pressure on this piece of writing, I feel.  It is my first blog post, my first travel essay on what I have decided to be a year or so of adventures, and is somehow supposed to encapsulate my ‘virgin’ Burning Man experience.  I’m not sure any one piece of writing can do that, so how can I share my experience when even the journal that I brought to record my experiences lies relatively empty.  I am hoping that this is a sign that I was living life to the fullest instead of trying to record each moment, but I’m not entirely certain that I just didn’t know how to capture the moments I was experiencing.  But, I shall try now to do so anyways to document my own memories and to share with those who may care to read about them.  As some wise fool said somewhere, “it’s best to start these things at the beginning.”

For me the beginning was a promise that I made to myself last May.  After five years of wanting to attend the event and never being able to afford it, or take time off from jobs that I was specifically holding in order to be able to take time off (alas, college debt takes that flexibility away pretty quickly!), this past spring I found out about scholarship tickets!  Things were still pretty tight financially, and the tickets would still cost $95, plus all the costs to get to the event and ensure my own survival, but I decided to apply and if I were selected for one of these golden tickets, then I would just figure it out and make it work.  As with many things in life, once a decision is made to make it work, the means towards doing so or the creative thinking needed to see the solution tends to become clearer.

I remember that there was something like fourteen questions on the application.  Somehow my answers all seemed to be something like, “I really, really want to go to Burning Man!!!!!”  I mean I must have imparted some sort of actual information about my income (or lack thereof), my debt load, my artistic inclinations, etc.  But I can’t seem to recall much else of eloquence or import than my overwhelming desire to just be there.  I still remember the day that I got the acceptance email from a man named Frog.  That place in my heart where excitement comes from, that place that hadn’t been able to be really excited about anything for a few years now, erupted with joy!  It was a feeling like when I was accepted to Sarah Lawrence College, or the year that my parents gave me my first paint set for Christmas and I couldn’t wait to open it up and start mixing the colors, or when I got into the Oxford School of Drama summer programme’, or when I had started my own theater company, Mir Productions,  two years before.  I was going.  I had no idea how, but a promise was a promise.  It’s probably best looking back that at that time, the real costs of how much food, camping gear, and travel would be, alluded me and that my naïve estimate was relatively low.

My Burning Man Costume

So, we cut to me relatively clothed at Burning Man.  I mean, we are in a desert, I wasn’t going to wear a parka (except at night), but that phenomena of walking about completely naked wasn’t for me.  I mean, for one thing, I was worried about getting sand in what my sister would call my va-jay-jay and suffering a yeast infection in a remote desert for a week.  Not so fun, no?  So, right, we’ve cut to me at Burning Man.  What about the trip there, you say?  Well, perhaps, it’s not that interesting or perhaps we’ll get back to it.  Imagine weeks of packing, ordering supplies online and hoping that they’ll arrive on time, contemplating hitch hiking there, deciding to fly to Sacramento and rent a car instead, buying a bike from a guy on craigslist and trying to find his house on my way to the desert, and tons and tons of jumping up and down like a little kid before their fifth birthday party.  But, skipping that, I’m there at the desert, awaiting and open (I think) to all that could happen.  After all, everyone remotely close to me who’s supposed to have come along, has bailed.  So, I’m very much a lone traveler in the desert.  I’m going to need to be open to something or I’ll spend the entire experience in my tent alone drinking the ten gallons of water I’ve purchased in Sacramento and heating up disgusting dried camping food in my makeshift stove.

Appropriately, I decided to camp with other lone travelers in Camp Nomadia.  This is actually what I’ve craved.  To prove that I’m self-reliant, and that I don’t need others, in order to really get in touch with myself.  I actually thought things like this.  Thank God for all my fellow campers at Camp Nomadia!  A temporary home, multicultural impromptu dinners, and a temporary family was formed.  Much like my real family in Minnesota, I spend a lot of time wandering away from them and exploring on my own, but they are always there to return to and help me out and just sit and share experiences with.  This is a godsend, because my first unexpected realization is that I’m lonely.

I arrive late on Tuesday night, so after a brief tour of the playa, during which I think I am completely in shock only halfway observing the roller rink and the death dome, that I humbly and nervously step into the tent that I’ve set up only an hour before in the dark, and proceed to sleep more soundly than I have in years. For exactly six hours I am catatonic, until the sun changes my tent from an icebox to a sauna forcing me out and about at 8am sharp.  I spend my first day at camp having those wonderful conversations that you can only have with people who you’ve just met–both of you seeing yourselves fresh in each other’s eyes and viewpoints for the first time.  I am gifted food, drink, a massage and wonderful advice on my future travel plans.  There are moments wherein I am startled by how clearly it seems the Universe is speaking to me.  Directly from a stranger’s mouth come answers that I’ve been meditating on for months.  As I make my signature margaritas for the evening meal and sit with my campmates, I think that I am surprisingly well rested for only having six hours of sleep in a tent, but decide to sleep a few hours before venturing out on the playa any way.

I’ve decided that tonight I want to abandon my nomadic home and venture on my own to find that fabled rave-like electro dance party and some adventurous youngsters with which to wander around and enjoy my experience with.  Since, I’m not sure where to start, I decide that tonight’s a good night to try to find my trapeze instructors, who are performing on the other side of the playa.  I figure this will also let me see more of the burn than what is happening on my side of the clock.  For the unaffiliated, the temporary city is set up as the face of a clock with the open playa at center and villages, events and artworks spiraling outward from each half hour marking.  I dress for the cold (the night before had been freezing and unfortunately I do not actually have a parka) and head directly across the playa.  It doesn’t take me long to realize that this night is much, much warmer and my trek becomes a sort of burlesque dance of slowly stripping off layers of clothing, rearranging tights and spandex and sweaters until by the time I reach the other side I am down to a short, little spandex summer dress.  How was it cold enough for a parka the night before, and warm enough for a bikini tonight?!

During my walk, I see a large metal work sculpture of books burning (yes, with real fire), and walk a tight rope that a camp has set up.  But, only one kind girl talks to me at the tight rope camp and I think its out of pity.  I’m having flashbacks of my first day of high school and find the clique-like atmosphere in striking contrast to only twenty-four hours earlier, when a pair of Nordic hyped-up twins had accosted me while I was still in my car arriving, declaring that they wanted to ‘adopt’ me for the week.  Adoption not being on my list of experiences to have at Burning Man, I’d declined under the pretense of finding my camp.  Now though, on the open playa, everyone seems to have already adopted their group of playa friends or brought them with them, and while pseudo-friendly girl continues on across the tight rope ahead of me, I realize that crossing this tether, no matter how well I’m doing it, feels rather meaningless without someone to share it with and just not quite as much fun.

I am now at 8:00, my camp was at 4:00.  This is my first experience of finding that 10:00 (where my coaches are) is much farther than 4:00 than you think and that trying to cross the playa is a strange experience wherein no matter how hard you try to walk in a straight line across to a particular landmark, it keeps moving and changing on you.  First its left, then right and always so much farther than it seemed a minute ago!  When I finally reach the dome at 10:00, it has erupted into the giant, rave-styled, glow stick complete, electro party I was seeking.  There are jungle gym like structures packed with people climbing on them and a rotation of DJs that keeps calling me back the three or four times that I decide that I’m tired and should start to head home.  The music holds me and I dance for four hours (yes, sober!), interrupted only and unfortunately by a rotation of guys who grab me from behind and proceed to try to woo me with their patented dance move, ‘grindagainstyourass.’ It is these people and their transparent attempts to convince me (abusing the music and my experiences) that we are having a magical moment that is (I’m sure) supposed to end in their sleeping bag, that keeps turning me towards home.

Jungle Gym Dancing

Fortunately, I do not go home just yet, and at two am, having made it to one of the jungle gyms near the center and climbed up top to use some of my aerial skills and my climbing skills by playing and swinging like a little kid in interesting combinations, I am interrupted and rewarded by the site of the New York Circus Arts apparatus being lowered from the top of the dome and my instructors climbing aboard their silks, hoops and trapeze and flying up into the air.  I had been convinced that I had missed their show entirely and it was like magic having them appear before me and getting to see them shine!  People around me are screaming and yelling in delight as they watch them do their tricks and spins.  I want to tell them, share with them somehow over the noise of the music how at home this sight makes me feel.  But they are all lost in their enjoyment.  Afterwards, I get to sneak behind the dome and congratulate my friends and coaches and am momentarily not a lost seed in a big arid landscape, and am showered in their hugs and smiles until they have notes to give and equipment to care for, food to eat, sleep to get and their own experiences to have, so I go back to my dancing.

It is when I return to my improvised jungle gym dancing (something that will later spark my imagination as a way to integrate forms of aerial dance into a cohesive piece), that I have unexpected realization number two.  I am completely disgusted by the idea of romance, sex and couples looking for a playa hook-up.  For anyone who knows me at all, this will probably come as a shock.  I go on more dates than anyone I know.  I enjoy dating.  I enjoy flirting.  Friends and family usually can’t keep track of who’s who in conversations about my love life.  I would find a potential boyfriend on a deserted island, somehow, I’m sure of it.  But, the whole idea of it all suddenly just seems empty, trite and fake.  Its not what I’m looking for and the boys with their dancing and flirting finally drives me to the exit and home one last time, or so I think.

I am dancing towards the exit, where I have left my things, when J stumbles into the dome.  Not that he actually stumbled, he actually I think danced his way in, matching my own dance moves and adding his own variations.  I say stumbled, because it felt like he might have crashed into my consciousness, my loneliness and disgust at these men and boys’ attempts to snag me.  This boy could dance.  And he didn’t once try to grind on me.  Or kiss me, at least not then.  He is my playmate and I grab his hand and drag him immediately and excitedly towards the jungle gym to show him how much fun it is.

It is on day three that tragedy strikes.  Okay, not really, but my greatest fear has been that I will get sick in the middle of the desert and maybe the lesson here is that one should be more careful with greatest fears, as they have a weird tendency to manifest themselves.  Whether this is because the Universe is being created by our own powerful thoughts or because in her loving way God wants to prove to us that we can conquer these fears, or if its just total coincidence seeming relevant, I’m not sure.  What I am sure of is, that the sore throat of the night before turned into a full blown cold on Thursday followed shortly after by that glorious time of the month all of us girls love because it connects us to our creative, life-giving force (yeah, right!).  None of this is fun to experience in the desert, trust me. Was this the worst thing that could happen?  Of course not.  But full of the exhaustion that quickly turned to frustration as my body’s need to sleep and heal (I literally couldn’t keep my  eyes open with pots of caffeine), I began to feel that I was missing my entire Burning Man experience.

Aura Tattoo Number 1

Of course, I dragged myself around a little during the day, visiting the Inconvenience Store where I traded a mission of finding a lost gravy packet in a porta potty for a sparkling ring; hung out at Center Camp one lovely evening with J where I promptly fell asleep while drinking my coffee; observed some of the art near my camp and had a wonderful talk and massage exchange with one of my campmates.  But, at night there was no question of being able to wander around especially when the temperature dropped again and I could feel the other side of camp calling me with all its unexplored fun.  My few failed attempts to sleep in the early evening and then go out involved briefly seeing the ‘man burn,’ visiting the pyrotechnic camp, and falling asleep in another random hookah style looking tent before having to get back to a sleeping bag and crash.  It took me a few days to realize that it was because I was more mellow maybe, or maybe just that acceptance of my condition and my inability to change it that truly shaped my burn experience.

Aura Tattoo 2

After all, without being so tired, J and I would not have shared that midsummer dream in Center Camp that bonded us (as people apparently were wandering by and taking pictures of us and one lady even offered to bring me a blanket from her camp…there truly was something magical about that nap).  And probably no friend could have taken better care of my very sick and whiney self, feeding me and sharing games of I think it was croquet with his campmates and rescuing me from my stubborn loneliness with his friendship and love.  And perhaps it was the bleeding and the runny nose that accompanied me through the dust storm to the temple where I sat getting more dust blown into my nose, and into pretty much everything else that I carried or was wearing that really helped me (after sitting and reading others’ memorials, chanting and thinking) to let go and write my own letters to everyone in my life that I felt hurt by or was thankful for on the temple beams.  It was then, that I let go of the frustration, and the pain for a little while.  And as I walked away with my bike, slowly putting one foot in front of the other through the whiteout across that sprawlingly large playa, leaving the temple behind me, knowing it was to burn after I left the next morning, that I decided what to do next.  I stopped at my camp, took out the packet of dust masks that I’d ordered a week ago online and wandered around the dusty streets gifting my own small, but hopefully helpful gift to anyone caught in the storm, connecting myself a little more to the community that I cannot wait to return to next summer in Black Rock City.

The Temple During a Break in the Dust Storm