You know you’re a burner if…

• You start planning for Burning Man during Exodus
• The day tickets go on sale, you’re on the website repeatedly clicking “refresh” until sales opens
• You have a little vial of playa dust hung around your neck (as if you didn’t have enough of it stashed in film canisters already)
• Every time someone says “fire” or “dust” your eyes go out of focus and you sigh
• Every time someone tells you what time it is your eyes go out of focus, you sigh and mentally calculate how long it will take you to bike back to your camp from there
• You look on the web for photos taken at Burning Man hoping you’ll see a picture either of yourself or that boy/girl/ram/pixie with whom you missed a playa date
• Blinking fairy lights make you think of Burning Man before you think “Christmas”
• Your non-burner friends begin to slap you when you start telling a Burning Man story
• You’re reading this list
• You spend some time making a list like this

Fire and Ashes

[Written in Calgary, Canada; July 12, 2010]

“Yesterday is ashes. Tomorrow is green wood. Only today does the fire burn brightly.“
~ Esquimo Proverb

You gotta deconstruct, to reconstruct.

One year ago on this date, Theresa and I split up.

Since then, everything in my life seems to have come around to the opposite point in its cycle, if not having come a full cycle…

It’s summer instead of winter. I’m in the opposite hemisphere, about to (re)begin a relationship instead of ending one.

I’m a fresh and mature evolution of myself on many levels compared with this time last year.

Ownership

I sold all my stuff. I could easily riff lyrically about how we don’t really “possess” anything, about how we are just with things and people. Let’s be honest, though: you already know all that shit. It’s old news. Either you buy it (no pun intended…maybe) or you don’t.

Sure it feels good. The car is gone and I don’t have to think about warrants of fitness, ongoing repairs or registration costs. I bought that car for $2,750 two years ago and I’ve spent over $3,000 since then just keeping her on the road, let alone full of gas from week to week.

The kayak is gone, too, and I was actually a bit emotional as Dean off TradeMe drove off down the driveway with the trusty steed on the roofrack. I’ll miss having that particular chunk of plastic.

fff

Lana and the Steed

Oceans and Beaches

I gave myself another session of lying with myself and stilling one morning last week. Once I’d settled sufficiently, I began a visualisation. It’s a visualisation that I’ve made before, and while I had been familiar with how it goes, it’s been many years since I made it, and this time it was different. It diverged from the usual course and took a new path right near the beginning, and I recognised that many things in and about me have evolved and changed since all those years ago. So I allowed it to take this new course, based on who I am now. It flowed instinctively, naturally, along pathways that seemed to have their own direction; and yet I know that they come from within me. This was my subconscious coming up towards the surface again, and showing me things.

This experience generated a number of new and further realisations & awakenings for me.

fff

In my visualisation, as it had been before when I’d made it, I stand before a door. I am a being of glowing energy, the Life Energy that we all possess. The door hums and glows with active energy. Behind the door is My Life, containing my Self in all my facets and character traits, both conscious and subconscious; all my relationships; the images of people that I carry with me; my hopes, my fears, my emotions, my philosophies; and my image of the Universe. It is My World.

Cycles, Part II: Rebirth(day)

I’m going to replace the word “birthday” in my personal language to “rebirthday.”

Everything is cyclic, and no cycle is the same. While each cycle is similar, it is also unique—much like each year in a person’s life.

People often ask us on our (re)birthdays, “how old are you this year?”
I’m replacing that question in my personal language with “how many rebirths have you had now?”

You see, a person doesn’t ever get “old.” Some of the most fascinating, lively people I know are in their eighties. And each celebration of a person’s life as the Earth cycles around the Sun is an opportunity to start afresh, to reflect on past years (cycles) and look forward to the coming year (cycle). Each year is new and young and fresh, and is a chance to make new choices, or to strengthen current resolves and projects. We don’t get old, we get renewed.

LadyM’s 39th rebirth is taking place today, and I imagine that where she is right now it really is feeling like a proper ReBirth. Her future is bright and shining with new promise and choices that glisten like the skin of a butterfly just out of its chrysalis.

Happy Rebirthday, Lady.

Cycles, Part I: Reflections

I was having a conversation with my friend Haley the other day. I noted how everything is cyclic; things repeat and reflect each other and themselves in many ways. It’s never the same cycle twice—time always carries things forwards, like a wheel rolling down a hill—and things often come back around.

We see similarities around us every day. Flowers of the same species all look similar, days look similar, oil paintings are all composed of oil paint. Still, each flower, day and painting is individual and recognisable; reflections of the others.

People reflect each other as well, and I was thinking about that yesterday morning on my way in to work.