#ive been told I need to improve inner communication but i am not going to lie I beef with two of these bitches every time they're present

[bongwatershots]

[pickupthepen]

The Burn

When I got sober in 2015, I had no idea of the spiritual journey that I was about to embark on. Now, don’t get me wrong, I still haven’t reached even the beginnings of spiritual enlightenment, and I’m aware, but when I decided to give up drugs and alcohol, I had little to no spiritual curiosity, I didn’t believe in any sort of higher power of the universe, and I drank myself in and out of depression and oblivion every day. When I had been sober for a year, my whole work had already changed. I was meditating daily, I was attending Dharma talks and wearing mala beads that I twisted between my fingers when work days were stressful, and I felt freer than I ever had before. So naturally, when my friend, Stacy, told me about Burning Man a few months later, and told me I had to come, my judgement and reluctance faded into a childlike curiosity. 

I read an article on a burner website before we left and I desperately didn’t want my burn to be “that" burn. She hated it. She was over it. She realized out in the playa that her glory days at Burning Man were over, and she never wanted to go back. I didn’t want my experience to be like hers. I wanted to love it. I wanted to learn a lot about myself. I was afraid of what I might find. I was hopeful about certain things, and I was reluctant about others. I had expectations.

This chapter was supposed to be about all the fantastic experiences, about the humanity, about finding the God that I doubted, and maybe about standing out in the Playa alone, under the temple, looking up into the sky and feeling connected- a part of something.

I didn’t get that.

A tension hung in the air before I even left. I wanted to get out there as soon as I could- fuck the planning. My emotions had already been completely exhausted by the drama of trying to wrangle fifteen alcoholics into scheduling a life or death trip without killing each other first. There were tears before we even left San Francisco. Some of our cohort screamed accusations in Tahoe when we missed an exit (even though we didn’t miss the exit). One friend didn’t realize she had forgotten her early arrival pass until we were a few miles from Black Rock City and we had to drive back into town to print it before the local post office closed. And as soon as we arrived, in the warm night, the fighting, turned to passive aggression, turned to blatant coldness among our group began immediately.

Then, the heat. My girlfriend and I spent the majority of the trip making sure we didn’t stroke or faint from the 110 degree weather. We stopped every few streets for water breaks and spent mornings in the blistering sun to get ice for our food so it wouldn’t spoil. We slept in a tent that baked in itself during the day in a city that blasted music all through the night. There were some moments that were what I would consider quintessential “Burning Man”. I made an amulet with a hammer under a tent. I sported pink booty shorts that said “sexy” across the back. I had some impromptu frozen yogurt with a couple that was just passing by another camp I was at, looking for eggs and bacon. A man named the Ambassador fixed my bike when the chain broke. Caleb replaced the inner tube when it popped the very next day. I played an improv game with a woman whose real name is Danica Patrick. I sat at dinner with my camp as everyone shared stories of their accomplishments and embarrassments. I followed an art car that was made to look like a giant sheep at 8am as it blasted Barbra Streisand. I danced in a replica of Fern Gully. I watched a group of burners worship the sun during a sunrise yoga session at the man. Caroline and I fought each other on a podium with giant cue tips at the Gladiator camp (I lost), and they gave me a pink sticker that read “FUCK ART MAKE WAR”. I liked that.

But I never had one moment in Black Rock City that took my breath away. I had small moments of love, and some moments of emotional upheaval. I felt “it” in fractions of a second. I never felt “there”, though. It was almost like I was trying to find something, not knowing what that something was, and I was stuck in a perpetual purgatory of being too far from it to even know where to begin. I never stood out in the playa with the wind in my hair- it was too hot to stay out there long. Maybe I did feel small moments of belonging and freedom, and I certainly did feel the love, compassion and understanding that my campmates selflessly bestowed upon me, but there was no flash of light, there was no message in the sky, and no deep, flooding understanding of the universe or of myself. I didn’t think so, at least.

Then, the pain started in my throat. It felt like the night after a long concert in a smokey hall, and I know all the lyrics to every song. I thought it was the alkali in the dust and Stacy gave me some cough drops to sooth the fire. I read that the acid in vinegar would help, so I made the acquisition of pickles and olives my new daily mission. But, the sore throat turned into sneezing. The sneezing turned into coughing. The coughing buddied up with a fever and after four days, I was laying in our communal tent for hours at a time, waiting for the Tylenol to kick in and push out the body aches and chills. I wanted to leave but I didn’t want to tell anyone. This was my destiny, my adventure, my trip. Burning Man failed my expectations of spiritual enlightenment, so at the very least, I wanted to prove to myself that I could get through it, to the night the man burned, without giving up. On Thursday, though, after hours of desperately wishing for sleep in the middle of the heat, I walked to the bathroom on my own. .On the wall of the hot shit box that we sometimes call a porta-potty in the real world, I noticed someone had written “You are temporary. Do what you want. Do what you need. Do what you love. Because this, too, will pass.” It hit me- I had to go home.

I stumbled back to the camp to let Caroline know I was too sick to stay, and she happily agreed. I took two IV bags of saline to re-hydrate before our departure and we packed up the next morning. In the line on the road leading out of Black Rock City, I felt an immense wave of relief. It might have been one of the best days of my life. I desperately wanted to go home, and we were going. 

I really did want to be a “burner” before that trip. I really wanted to come home and tell all the amazing stories of the fun I had. I really tried. I wanted my Burning Man journal entry to be about the sun and the moon aligning and finding myself in the middle, but I didn’t get what I wanted, and I’m so glad that I didn’t. My heart came alive when I came home. I had forgotten how much I loved my bedroom, my dog, and laying on the couch with a good movie and my sweet girlfriend. It slipped from me that the peace from meditation could be found on my own floor. I failed to remember who I was, and didn’t realize how silly it really was to try and find myself in a hot desert in Nevada, rather than in my own heart.

Months passed, friendships faded, and I began to forget about why I felt so strongly about all of this in the first place. I became complicit in my own monotony, and I stopped praying, I stopped meditating, and I stopped asking for help. I was so angry You know what makes me feel alive? Being fucking honest. Saying something honest when I’m afraid of what that might mean. Telling you I’m scared even though I want you to think I’m strong and fearless. Asking for help in a moment of need even though I’m afraid no one will answer. I feel “spiritual” when I sit alone in a dark room with a candle lit, and I accept that in this moment, I can’t erase any discomfort or emotional pain that I feel, and I pray for something, anything out there, to just sit with me while I feel it. I’m so over pretending that the summation of “spiritual” tokens to convince others I live a spiritual life is sufficient to the kind of life I want to live, and that’s why I am not here to tell you I had an amazing beautiful glorious spiritual trip out at Burning Man. I didn’t. I couldn’t muster enough anything to fabricate something that just wasn’t there. Because as it turns out, I can’t flex hard enough or think smart enough to have a spiritual experience. 

Casey