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.