
by jim holt
Day 3. Day of the Burn.
The man looked particularly dashing this year, poised atop a wooden salad of spiky crown points.
He is, of course, resolute in his posture – cool and casual and unafraid – standing on a stage inspired this year, it seemed, by the Belgian Waffle experience.
He is also, of course, by his design, the symbol of change and transformation; that grand change scheduled to happen on Day 3 of my art unfolding.
He was a big wooden guy – the Man; me, just a guy, smaller and shuffling around on nothing that resembles cloud or crown.
It would be so cool if I could return from the playa post-Burn, at the end of the night, turn the corner and see my art – the floating illuminated amoeba-like loop – my contribution to the year’s theme of Evolution, my beacon in the burbs of Burning Man.
That would be cool.
The construction of my art was done – thanks to my neighbor across Jurassic Street, Mike the Mech Man. My annual walking tour of the art installations on the playa done. Now it was time to kick back.
On Day 3, I woke up looking for coffee and found beer.
As I shuffled around getting my coffee pot together – my coffee, my water.
“Wanna beer?”
Why, it was Mike the Mech Man.
I looked at my watch. I don’t wear a watch. I did it to be funny. I couldn’t look at any clock on a wall either, since there were no walls.
“Sure.” I said.
Another beer, then a walk down Jurassic.
I passed the wee box house I recalled seeing the previous year – same exact location. The couple that live there, last year gave me a fruit I had never seen before. A little farther down the road, someone calls out.
“The turtle drum guy.” It was Larry.
He told me how his son was building drums from discarded propane tanks and that he was inspired after seeing; playing and hearing about my turtle drums I built out of barbeque lids…. Thanks, another beer.
Two doors down from Larry’s camp, a man handing out “cherry bombs” as a woman showered behind him – cherries soaked in rum, some in vodka … I was given a cup of bourbon –soaked cherries.
More walking, more beer, more margaritas, more beer, a cherry … by dinnertime I had come full circle along Jurassic, ending up about a stone’s throw from my camp and my art that hung dull and in the daylight.
I stopped by a soup line winding from a camp that boasted, by its banner “THE BEST PESTO IN THE UNIVERSE.”
Could it be?
Could evolution really have developed so far? So fast? As to deliver the best pesto in the universe?
I had some. It had. It was indeed the best pesto in the universe.
I began waxing philosophical, in my cherry-munching timeframe, arriving at the amoeba just in time to intercept my Russian friend, under the sweeping arc of 2-inch transparent tubing.
He was excited because he was able to get a signal on his cell phone. This was disturbing and sobering news to me. At first, I was excited as well thinking I could call my daughter. But, primarily, I was saddened.
I gave him some Maker’s Mark bourbon and heaped praise on the amoeba – it was right there after all.
Then it was party time – of course, after a full day of beer and margarita, bourbon and bourbon-soaked cherries – it was party time.
I went down to the playa with some Marines-turned-burners – they had some art car connections that we exploited fully on my first night there.
On the playa, where bigger and bigger crowds gather each year for the Big Burn, showing up earlier and earlier as people do for the Rose bowl Parade, I waited through hours of fire-twirlers for the Big Burn.
Holy cripes, blow shit up already … (that’s what I kept thinking).
They better torch that wooden waffle of two-by-fours. (That’s what I also kept thinking).
Finally, it was dark. The fire twirlers had stopped (thank goodness) and then the hush in the crowd of thousands … the man’s leg was on fire. Screams and howls.
They better blow that shit up …. ( I still thought about the Man’s wooden sea of raging lumber underneath him). They better blow that shit up.
Columns of jet fuel suddenly gushed geyser-like out of the ground and consumed the Man’s stage.
Wow. Now that’s more like it.
The Man burned for a long time. When his last unlit limbs crumbled under him, that’s when I left the playa.
Many people leave before the Burn. They had seen it before, I suppose. Just like me.
On Jurassic, my neighbors, the Couch Potato crew left earlier. So did their neighbors.
When I left my camp for the playa that night I turned on the amoeba. Mike the Mech Man had filled the generator with fuel.
The amoeba glowed benevolently.
The Couch Potato people must have seen it in their rear view mirror as they pulled out, the motorized couch on a flatbed they towed out of Black Rock City.
Before I left for the playa, before finding the Marines and still more margaritas, I took out my Swiss-style army knife ( It isn’t a Swiss army knife) it is a complex configuration of unfolding scissors and corkscrews that, over many years, I have pinched out – each implement – used for something – over the last 4 decades. I used that knife to crank open can lids of Spam and canned potatoes at Mississippi Lake with my best friend, during the best times of my life, making the tastiest meals of my life…. And here, at Burning Man, number 12, using the same knife to cut the transparent sleeves from a rigid red arm of my amoeba …. I didn’t like the way the arm shot up straight from the ground … to me, it looked un-amoeba like.
Snapping my not-so-Swiss army knife closed, I pulled the freed arm of my amoeba up to an adjacent post so that it hung limp under the hanging curve of white light….. It was suddenly brilliant and very much amoeba like.
At the very end of the night, after the Man had finally fallen, I walked across the playa, to center camp and down 6:00 …. Everywhere there were pockets of patchwork desert …. Empty lot spaces left by those leaving early….. the full moon blinked in and out of night clouds thick as gray tube socks … in those moments it was bleak and black out there.
There were far fewer landmarks lit up this year …. Some called it the Recessionary Burning Man … fewer people, fewer landmarks…..
As I walked in the dark, tilting my head up at the darkened street sign to let my headlamp light up the words: Humanoid – I thought (I won’t have to tilt my head to read the sign on Jurassic Street because I’ll just have to look to my right and I will see the amoeba – jellyfish bright and lighthouse strong, floating pretty and shining the way for wayward burners who have all week distanced themselves from the default world and were trying to find their way home, shining up Jurassic Street like a jewel they all deserve.
And, there it was.
As pretty as a campfire and simple as smoke in its design.
Many said it looked like lips. I can live with that. That’s nice. In fact, far nicer in evolutionary terms than a single cell ….
The Jurassic amoeba was as constant as a star and steadier than a moon in and out of cloud.
It was offset by acres of empty flat desert and buffeted by the gray sky rolled up in socks.
Everyone on the outer perimeter could have set their watch by the amoeba… if they had watches. They could have steered their ships (and there are ships in Black Rock City) to their homes.
Once at my own camp, I collapsed in my comfy foldy blue chair with the lazy-boy foot support and the cup holder arms. I had one of my last beers and admired the amoeba.
My face was lit up softly with white and red light.
This was the vision I had carried with me for months – suddenly a fixture on the landscape, a lighthouse in the desert ….
Before I crawled into my tent to sleep that night I turned off the generator. I thought “I should leave it on for Mike when he stumbles home from the playa.”
The generator made a lot of noise.
I went to sleep.
In the morning, Mike the Mech Man called out from across the street: “Wanna beer.”
I crossed the street.
“I should have left it on – the amoeba – I should have left it on for you. It was amazing.”
“I know,” he said. “I turned that sucker on, when I came home, I had another beer and just sat there watching it. It is beautiful.”
He was right.
The thing we created burned for a time, lit up the night, stood for something and then went out – a transformation.
We all turned away when the light went out, when the heat went cold, when it transformed, when we evolved …