That real life woman's head was probably about the same distance around as one of the giant's fingers.

  



The temple is a place to contemplate the past, the future, and those who have died. Many people come to burning man with memories of loved ones they decorate this structure with. The burning is supposed to give their stories some amount of closure.

  



This guy was born while I was in college, and now he is dead.
Hurricane Katrina had just happened when Burning Man started. All we knew was that it was bad. However, every day more people would show up, bringing word of rising gas prices.

     

Burning the past. That is such a great metaphor for the whole idea of the temple.

There is only a brief period right after the sun comes up that my shadow is taller than The Man.

     

That smoke ring was really huge. Another one would appear every few minutes, from a location I kept getting more curious about. I finally got curious enough to go over and check it out. Each one used something like a gallon of pinkish fluid. I watched the guy pour it into this setup, start the flame and then get his assistant to pull the trigger. A huge ball of fire would erupt out of the thing, which would quickly devolve into another smoke ring. I've got this gream .mpg of one starting, but I'm not sure how to share it with you yet.

     



  

I stopped at center camp and got a cup of coffee at this point. Instead of working the crowd, I spent a lot of time talking to the woman in black. It was more interesting than most of the conversations I had over the weekend. She spends some of her time in Berkeley and some in Long Beach, working in artist collectives.
When I got back to camp others were just getting to coffee.