The tornado is not a metaphor.

Moritz Aust | Watching The Storm - Day Seventeen

A little note known fact is the alternate title this photographer considered: "Let's go put on matching suspender outfits and watch the tornado tear up our corn. #nohomo"

People have been asking whether I had trouble adjusting to humdrum life after Burning Man. And it's vaguely embarrassing to realize that I do not have the right to notice much of a change, but this is because (1) I am funemployed and (2) I live in a co-op, (3) in Oakland.

I come home through ganja fog to smiley strangers handing me fried okra and pancakes on the regular, so yeah, it's a little dry out there in Nevada.

The not-working part of my life is certainly going splendidly, though it has only been almost two weeks. This means that it is still socially acceptable for me to tell everyone, "All I did today was climb, go to yoga, and pick tomatoes while half-nekkid in our garden."

Soon I'm going to say it less cheerfully and people will wonder if I have a trust fund. Or met a hippie sugar daddy, let's be real.

Life really is very much on the side of awesome, even if I occasionally feel like I'm off-track, whatever race we're running. I just know that currently I'm being paid on the side to write a screenplay about the Holocaust, I'm camping away, and I really want to complete the whole wave-soaked meander up the Lost Coast trail soon.

This past time was a scouting trip basically, and while it's a little tangled and mangled in some parts, the Tolkien views more than make up for it.

Our campsite on the last night of the backpacking trip

There were just a lot of surreal moments where you think, "So this is nature, eh?" The five of us slipped and sliced our way through immoderate amounts of wilderness, made camp in little glens fit for Bambi and his dead mom.

Places where some nice hobbit boy might run off with ya.

Just this month, I literally won four sets of free tickets to plays that I would have otherwise paid to see anyway. This year has been an excellent haul for my uncanny ability to win chance contests and drawings, an iPad and a trip to Canada for three being the highlights. And I swear that most of the time, it's because I'm the only that cares about winning.

And I was vindicated recently when I won tickets to a film festival by filming my stuffed Thai cat Dinga as he gyrated to the Scissors Sisters for fourteen hot seconds. I can now add "award-winning film-maker" to my list of titles, but again, I found out at the screening that I had been the only person to enter the contest.

Woo, go me, go.

So I'm applying for a few jobs on the daily, figuring that I'll land something ridiculous again.

Eventually.

The past two years since law school have been amazing experiences, so I'm trying to continue this upward trend toward whatever I'm supposed to end up doing with my life. I've embraced the fact that I'm somewhat off track for most lawyering, but if I can get people to continue paying me to do interesting things around the world, I'm pretty okay with that.

Next steps will mean a solid chance I'll be leaving the Bay Area, which will be interesting since it's been home for twenty-three years, if not twenty-seven for all that I remember of Hong Kong.



Not that I haven't considered it before, but it's much more real when I'm looking at postings in Bangladesh, South Sudan, and Afghanistan. I'm in adventure mode, and I want to get out and tilt at windmills.

And it's simply been easier to think about it once close friends moved on to other places: Danny to Japan, Erik to Madison, Tristan to his own jetsetting adventures, etc.

While I still have a good circle of amigos here, it's hard not to think about leaving too when you have to hug a friend really hard, realizing that tonight is the last night you'll be clinking beers for a while.

But we're still on the hunt to recruit for Musketeers. I just might take the search abroad.

Dark Horse creating his "Chris Kosienski" identity while I stand amazed.

Soup dumplings, then goats at the zoo, and then Dolores Park make for an excellent Saturday.

Feeling rosy today, Mysterio?!

We have a habit of fitting both of us into small places. Or big chairs.

Okay, I have to go back to tending my cardamom kombucha. And in other news, we have fleas in our house.

I have spent two months with permanent night-time itchy leg, and more than one morning has me waking up and watching small black dots bounce on my blankets.

Again, remember that part about how normal life presents no culture clash?

Motorists, this is the last stop for gas and outrageous lies before Black Rock City.

Cloud construction

I suppose every gas station near Gerlach can be the last one from its own frame of reference. 

Dusty feet up on the window, and the four of us are driving in an exit caravan formation at 5 mph through a pure white dust storm. And as we're pulling away from the playa, I'm watching various camps folding up to go. I'm still feeling like I'm made out of buttery sunshine and warm honey, and I don't even care that that's probably an Herbal Essences scent of shampoo. Can't stop grinning like a maniac Cheshire, and the raggedy little book I've been scribbling in all week is just covered in kid-like serial killer font.

And I'm jotting down images and memories from the week, knowing that it's all running by me like the tide and waves, and that I'm writing some down in the same way that you'd run your hand over sea foam. 

I played My Heart Will Go On in this organ in the desert. 

I remember dancing like a gerbil on crack next to a two-story pink sheep that pulsed with the beat of the DJ riding its flank. And being upside down in yoga when a massive sandstorm hits, and everything is blinding but completely illuminated. 

Buying into a roda in center camp when I saw the berimbaus headed into the tent. Planning my days about snowcone camps, foam dome DJ parties, and the occasional hemp bracelet weaving class. Being chased into a side alley by the Running of the Bullshitters.

I don't think Burning Man is about changing your life, but just a way to remind yourself that there's a lot of happiness and humor in just about every situation and with almost anyone.

Burning Man is like discussing at midnight (on a school night, gasppp) how churros would make awful sex toys, musing about whether they would be easy to fry up, and then churning out a few batches of lemon verbena churros in cinnamon-sugar beds to surprise the house. That giddy kiddy joy both churro maker and churro-ee glow with  is basically how Burning Man feels, but for eight consecutive days in the middle of a dusty desert.

And we did make churros like that last night.

But back to BRC:

Yes, joy and thrills, but also tiring. and there are days where you're convinced that the past two days were just dreams you're having from Monday. And I know that in the future, there will be days when it's great to be able to tap into this deep storehouse of memory and good times, of how it feels to watch sunrise while biking through dust devils.

Timing of things was excellent since (1) my nonprofit had just told me they were out of money and would need to drop me like a hot potato and (2) there is a sweet boy who I could actually see myself dating.  No job responsibilities, potential beginnings, and I'm already sufficiently steeped in the Bay Area granola. Which is to say the Burning Man culture felt like a jazzed up Big Daddy version of what living in an Oakland co-op is like. Tasty food popping up with no warning, new people circulating your house all the time, occasionally being dirty but A-OK with it all. By Tuesday, Chris and I had gone native and Dark Horse & Wombat were prepared to live out their brave new lives in Black Rock Desert.

I recall that I spent one full day with a boy named Sasha that I will never see again, and that it involved an Orgy Dome, breakfast waffles, and a giant narwhal.

I'm not going to try documenting it all in detail, both because I don't think I've fully wrapped my mind around it all, but also I don't know that I want to. There's just a pleasant haze over it all, of dust storms and mayan pyramids, cold apple pie and getting lost, being found.

There was a lot of , "wow, everything that I ever wanted to do all in one place." And then someone hands you a cornbread waffle with ice cream.

I thought it was amusing that my handwritten journal during the week devolves in legibility like a parody of Algernon. I start in neat and tight cursive rows, and by mid-week, it peaks in there being pages of one giant scrawled letter per sheet. 

I'll definitely be back, and next time with reinforcements and the cavalry!