If you fire the pottery too long, it will shatter...



We were standing there watching another die. Maybe we had killed it. Maybe it fell out of a tree. But there was a moment in our species evolution when we were standing there watching the other one die and the synapses bridged, the apple's sweet flooded our mouths and innocence and ignorance both were lost forever, while we were standing over another dying and first thought, "I'm going to die, too".

It is in the moment of realizing our own mortality, that we realized we were separate and this entity called Ego came to exist. Defining our race as human; not the extra opposable digit, not the advent of language, but the knowledge that we will die, is what a raccoon a raven a rinocerous will never be able to do. How we deal with this knowledge, too massive for any brian, is like interplanetary baseball: Earthing's favorite pass time. It drives us to make art, write books, pave roads, network systems, be popular, have sex, have families - all of these things unconscious attempts at permanency by a brain so overwhelmed by it's own mortality, it would otherwise go crazy.

So there I am, dressed in super hero combat boots, as if I skipped school the day "subtle" was introduced into other kids vocabulary. Realizing that for once in my life, my transient status was not a social impediment, leaving me looking in through the window's at Tiny Tim's Chrismas dinner instead of ever bellying up to the table. No, in this week-long intentional artist community, my official gypsy status acutally worked to my benefit, recognizing familiar faces - Kokopaulie from Chicago, Kristin from Vancouver, Courtney from Los Angeles, Vatra from San Francisco, and my favorite fire spinner of all time (without him even knowing): Chris from the Windy City as well. Yes, here I was on equal footing. Super hero combat style. I had as much right to be here as anyone and it felt fucking great. I believe the back of the Black Rock City box reads "Insta-Community: Just Add Water".

So here I am with my transient fire family, 200 people strong - a truly elite group when you consider the rest of the 40,000 Black Rock City residents gathered around to see The Man become a flaming effigy structure fire, standing at the outer circle - only 200 fire spinners allowed entrance therein. And as I soak my poi in whateverchemicalburns next to 12 other people yielding fire poi, staff, double dutch ropes (you heard me), juggling pins and fire swords (real life light-sabers), and as I spin off and share flame from another's lit poi (never dims the original light), I feel the crowd making the silent prayers of inebriated religion and realize that no matter what Burning Man 2005 means to every individual here, that Man, set to burn in 20 minutes, is the object of that importance. And as a member of the honorable Fire Conclave, I am in between the two. A powerful role, to raise and direct energy of this magnitude.

With one match, my flames go up, his flames go up. The air becomes warmer around me. Everywhere I look there is spreading fire - spinning, jabbing, throwing, outofcontrolling. I burn me. He burns me. I stop keeping track I am swimming in flames. I am drowning in the music of twenty booming percussionists. I am choking on the hysteria of an infinite crowd of people and machines, shouting, screaming, staring, evoking, dancing my frenzied dance of uninhibited excstacy as burningchemicals ignite and the five story effigy goes up in a fireworks pyrotechnic volcano erruption of flames. Getting larger and larger urgent red orange and yellow, until the frame, the foundations gives in and the The Man comes crashing down, the crowd explodes and thousands of worshipers rush the pyre to pay homage, feed the fire, or roast marshmallows - whatever a Burner chooses to do...

It is not the prohibition of advertising, the absence of currency or the absence of toilets. It is not the presence of nudity, costumes or art cars. It's that we, like any human, will build and create, but have chosen to, if even for this one nite at Burning Man 2005, find the bravery to burn our illusions down, celebrate the impermanece of the unknown and make and make a mockery of our very own mortality. Laugh in the face of Death. Let go of our most precious and choose to live anyway.

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