The Cat In The
Hat was outside the store in Gerlatch, just a few miles from the Playa
where Burning Man had started four and a half days before. It wasn't
long after that we were there. The next thing that happened was
somebody gave me a dinosaur puzzle, a lot like the one shown here.
Meanwhile, this woman was getting tattooed by the
TransDimensionalMystic. I spent the next hour or so organizing my
campsite, and then headed out to look around and experience the event.
There was a lot to see.
All those burlap
bags were full of Aluminum cans. The guy sitting in the shade explained
to me that all of the proceeds from recycling them were going to the
Gerlatch high school.
My next stop was
Center Camp, where there was always plenty of stuff going on.
The woman on the
microphone cut through the buzz of conversation like it was a knife.
She wanted everybody to know that "The only things allowed in the blue
rooms (AKA "porta potties") were piss, shit, and vomit. The company
that had the cleaning contract had just told burningman.org that if
they broke another sump pump on crap like batteries that wasn't
supposed to be there they were ducking out on the contract, and the
playa was going to really smell until the health department closed it
down."
This guy was going around being a poetry juke box. He had won $5 for a
poem about crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in a contest, and that had
inspired the mission. All I had to do was pick a number, and he would
share the corresponding poem with me. I said "5", and he told me a poem
about pondering a haiku about a moth sitting on a thousand pound bell
for a full day. It was worth listening to.
The artist was
standing near this sculpture with his girlfriend. I remember a French
accent. He felt that this placard had a lot of truth. I told him about
the grandmother that had told me "what we need is a separation of oil
and state." It didn't seem like he had thought much about the high
degree of automation in the energy industry.