August 29th, 2007
Taken from my travel diary, 29.08.07, having just left our mysterious San Francisco hotel for the desert and Burning Man.
We escape the Hotel California with ease, tailgating our escaping stories out into the desert. Should it be so easy? The twisting corridors that echo with jazz and swearing children, the locked doors, the strange surreal once-seen-never-believed lodgers - will they stay forever, once we are gone? Our stories compel us onward and outward, springing the trap behind as we walk on, unknowning. How easy it is for other people to stop, to live: how simple for their aspirations to stretch out, to gobble out a year, five, twenty, flowing forward like water through a breach in the dam.
In the desert, there is no water. Time sits in the sun, writhing until it boils over, saturating each second with paths, possibilities, exploding moments and laughter, laughter, always the smile of a friend along for the ride. Did we die in some forgotten second, lonely and seeking, only to search each other out to live again? Our spirits dance with the contact, our reality misses a step and falls, flailing into the space where our bodies should be. When did we mislay them, these anchors of need and desire? When did we pass so near to each other that space became a dream, that time became the past we left behind? This is where we wander, four creatures of the now and then and yet to be, released into the world together to spread vital discontent like a balm over the trapped, static lives we pass.
The desert grabs hold and refuses to let go, playing God with our expectations, playing with our souls like a juggler plays with fire: we are the flying ones, we are the hypnotic, dangerous, oxygen-consuming flaming brands that linger behind your closed eyes. What will you do with us? We are the vision sent blazing from God, the fiery vision of change. Touch us, and you may burn; ignore us, and you may die of cold. Tonight we are your fire, tonight we are the air, tonight we are the coals you walk upon. What will you take of us?
Tonight we are the desert.
We escape the Hotel California with ease, tailgating our escaping stories out into the desert. Should it be so easy? The twisting corridors that echo with jazz and swearing children, the locked doors, the strange surreal once-seen-never-believed lodgers - will they stay forever, once we are gone? Our stories compel us onward and outward, springing the trap behind as we walk on, unknowning. How easy it is for other people to stop, to live: how simple for their aspirations to stretch out, to gobble out a year, five, twenty, flowing forward like water through a breach in the dam.
In the desert, there is no water. Time sits in the sun, writhing until it boils over, saturating each second with paths, possibilities, exploding moments and laughter, laughter, always the smile of a friend along for the ride. Did we die in some forgotten second, lonely and seeking, only to search each other out to live again? Our spirits dance with the contact, our reality misses a step and falls, flailing into the space where our bodies should be. When did we mislay them, these anchors of need and desire? When did we pass so near to each other that space became a dream, that time became the past we left behind? This is where we wander, four creatures of the now and then and yet to be, released into the world together to spread vital discontent like a balm over the trapped, static lives we pass.
The desert grabs hold and refuses to let go, playing God with our expectations, playing with our souls like a juggler plays with fire: we are the flying ones, we are the hypnotic, dangerous, oxygen-consuming flaming brands that linger behind your closed eyes. What will you do with us? We are the vision sent blazing from God, the fiery vision of change. Touch us, and you may burn; ignore us, and you may die of cold. Tonight we are your fire, tonight we are the air, tonight we are the coals you walk upon. What will you take of us?
Tonight we are the desert.
posted by backgroundbob at 7:42 pm
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