Pledges and the Playa

What you sign up for is not what you get from Burning Man.

The man with the plan, Seth Statmiller, on the playa with his vehicle of choice in 2013. Photo credit: Elizabeth Richardson.

I returned a red jumpsuit yesterday.

It was too big, too coarse, too heavy with pledges I know I won’t fulfill.

A panel of my peers drew me to the jumpsuit. Every August, two established friends trek to Nevada’s Black Rock Desert to gift wheeled mobility to the bikers of Burning Man. Every year, they assemble a crew of employees, comrades, and recommended comrades to pedal the machinery of Hammer and Cyclery.

Hammer and Cyclery camp, 2013. Photo credit: Travus Cartwright.

And every September, they return to the Default World with dust in the creases of their jumpsuits and stars in their eyes and incomprehensible tales in their mouths.

For, unfortunately, no one can be told what Burning Man is. You have to see it for yourself.

Cajoling and curiosity got the upper hand one September. I pledged to don the red jumpsuit the following August, to see how deep the Playa goes.

I fulfill my pledges.

I attended orientation and received my jumpsuit. I bought tickets for entrance, for airfare, for the Burner Express Bus. I took off. I landed. I got on the bus, I got off the bus.

I fell flat on my face.

No, really — the rituals for first time Burners call for immediate facedowntime with the dried out lake bed, the playa, the playground. You won’t escape that salty-slick dust for the next eight days. Get acquainted.

Get acquainted — with the dust, the camp, the comrades, the old friends showing new facets, the rhythm of sunned days and lit nights.

Just another light show in 2016. Photo credit: Alex Düsterfeld.

I was pledged revelry, revelation, reframes, and Burning Man fulfilled these pledges; of course, not as I willed it but as the playa provided.

Take the reiki session for which I waited two hours, before which I traded heartbeats with unmet friends, and after which I could barely pronounce my name.

Take the trip down memory lane, squeezed between a live performance of a nine-piece band and a midnight Skrillex set, lead by a guardian disguised as a established acquaintance.

Take the shoulder-squeezing climb up ladders bound together by wishful welding and good faith; at the top I faceplanted into the figurative and literal open arms of a comrade acquired in a heartbeat; looking for that one last nail to pound into that second freshest coffin.

The Temple, 2016. Photo credit: Mark Kasiewicz.

This wasn’t what had beckoned me. I’d counted on familiar time with established friends, not snatched time with acquired comrades. I thought I’d grow new powers, not accept existing ones. I was promised new brain space, with which I would look forward, not back.

You get what you get and you don’t pitch a fit.

No, I got what the playa had for me. Dusty revelry. Tear-soaked revelation. Prismatic reframes.

Photo credit: Alex Düsterfeld. Sunglasses credit: Camp Gravity. Clown nose credit: Some dude.

I got on the bus, got off the bus. I took off. I landed.

I had stars in my eyes.

I pored over my experience and others’, no longer incomprehensible, now tantalizingly explainable. But the experience jostles and rubs, flashes and glares, rings and sighs. Months of memories unsettled, like a snow globe shaken and flash-frozen.

So I rubbed my head, sighed, picked up the red jumpsuit. “You’re going home again,” I told it. “Have a good burn.”