BURNING MAN

What is it? At this stage in my association with the Burning Man Festival in The-Middle-Of-The-Desert, Nevada, it is what people talk about, write about, try to explain. It is: a week long art festival, an experiment in self-expression, self-reliance, anarchy, karma-economy. It is a drug fest, sex fest, love fest. It is either for those modern hippies that rub your arm when they talk to you and pry into your soul with their glossy, blissed out eyes, or for absolutely anyone and everyone (and I hear you could find even your grandfather there). It is a reason to brain storm without limitation, think of the craziest, strangest, most irrelevant ideas, surprising yet never shocking because I was expecting you to say something extremely unexpected, like that you're offering wine tastings from your belly-button.
What isn't clear to me is how this self-expressionism can truly exist as a part of a Group of people, a general Genre that we become a part of... Or how it can exist in a place where the pattern of thinking is more commonly shaped by the same illegal drugs(as opposed to the legal ones that shape thinking in the rest of America). Or maybe a lot of different drugs, but still, when we surrender our minds for a moment, we surrender our selves... Don't we?
I also can't quite wrap my head around how necessary materials for self-reliance in the desert include faux fur and glitter, along with a whole slew of unnecessary, burdensome things, a photo booth (apparently actually written, in this case, "photo boof"), 3 brightly colored wigs, 50-plus bottles of 20 year old wines... But I suppose this is an art festival, and what is art if not unnecessary... And at the same time, when I take a moment to examine myself, in many situations, hasn't art been necessary, in fact, for my survival?
One fact that doesn't need to be interpretted in order to be defined is that Burning Man is... The Desert. I can only base my images of the desert on deserts I have already experienced. The re-creation of Dubai, UAE couldn't hide the dust, dryness, wavering heat creating mirages dancing in the distance. Then there was the outdoor concert at the desert university in Beer Sheva, Israel where rain floated rather than fell and each droplet encased a globule of dust. Or camping with the nomads of the Israeli desert where the stars were so bright and numerous they inspired a couple insecure and bratty post-teenagers to recite poetry while waiting to fall asleep in sleeping bags laid out upon the dust.
I suppose for me, what embodies most concretely the only expectation I can form about Burning Man is a comedy sketch performed by a tasteless comedy duo from Great Brittain about a support group for people who want to lose weight. The woman (actually a man) leading the meating lists different foods for participants to determine their fat content. Chips... Lettuce... Dust.
"Dust, anyone? High in fat, low in fat?"
Silence... Very long silence.
"Dust is very low in fat. You can eat as much dust as you like."
So off I go in a few days time, maybe to express myself or someone else, maybe to learn to rely on myself in the elements, maybe to be inspired, to fall in love, to try something new... But definetly to eat lots and lots of dust.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qcVZg2tVswk

Forever locked to the parking meter

I was on my way out last night and went to unlock my bicycle from the parking meter outside my apartment. There was another bicycle locked to the parking meter adjacent to mine and a man fiddling with it's lock. Though his hair was a bit shaggy and his beard was long, it was clear the look was intentional. He wore thick white-framed glasses, fitted dark jeans, a colored shirt and a jacket. As is the custom in San Francisco, I turned and acknowledged him with a smiling "hello". "Hi", he said, "How are you?"
"Fine, thanks."
Then he said, "Can I ask you a question?" which is a rhetorical, relatively pointless question, but effective in getting the attention of someone who isn't expecting a conversation.
"Yes," I said.
"Did you see me in this neighborhood last night?"
"In this neighborhood?," I asked trying to remember if I'd been out in this neighborhood last night, though I was sure I'd never seen him before. "No."
"Thanks," he said, "You see, I've lost my keys, so I'm trying to find people who saw me last night, so i can figure out where I was."
"Sorry," I laughed. "Good luck." I got on my bike and rode away.

Sometimes I wonder if I'm missing out, because I remember everything. San Francisco is like the 60s. If you remember it, you never lived here. I like to think I just have a different way of experiencing it. But maybe I am too uptight. I was accused once in Marseille of having "un balai dans le cul." In fact, a whole song was written about it on a rare night that I hardly remember.

I've been thinking about a tatoo. I've been admiring tatoos for years. I've been brain storming and sketching what mine would look like for just as long. Here, tatoos are practically a requirement. At times, because I don't have a tatoo, I feel a bit like I've forgotten to put my pants on and realized after I've already left the house. I keep wondering if I would get more work with at least one visible tatoo. However, this societal expectation also makes me proud not to have one yet and gives me strenght to stubornly stick to the viewpoint that I will stay this way.
I'll admit, as I was practicing yoga today, I was thinking about things that were not yoga... Thinking quite a lot about tatoos. I suddenly had this odd feeling that we don't realize the magnitude of the impermanence of our lives. We (I use "we" here because tatoo or no tatoo, I am a victim of the same condition) have beautiful artwork etched in our bodies that we imagine will last forever, not really understanding what Forever means. We also imagine this artwork represents ourselves as we are and always will be, or at least represents a part of ourselves we won't be embarassed to remember when it has changed. There's something in this continual dichotomy between permanence and impermanence that makes me feel the profound smallness of my existance. With this thought in mind, I am still committed to a tatoo-free state.
I do have one scar from an eye-brow piercing in college that will do for now, that I like and embrace because it was accidental... The scar, not the piercing.
I hope I have not discouraged anyone from getting a tatoo. I would love you all to get a tatoo and I will admire yours. You worry about the permanence of your own state if you want and forget all I've said... Or don't worry about it because life will keep happening anyway, making it's mark on our bodies and in our expressions whether we want it to or not.

whew!

All of a sudden I realized, I really was alright again. Almost everything that I had resolved to do in my weakest moment, I had done. And it had worked as I hypothesized it would. I left Europe to face the USA and my family, secretly my biggest fears, and I am no longer afraid of where I'm from. I swear it's true what they say, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger... For a time I feared that was just to make those of us suffering feel better momentarily, like a morphine pill or a cortisone injection. But really, I came to San Francisco, a new city to me, and I think it has been easier for me than many new arrivals to be at home here. After Manila, Madrid, Marseille and the many stops in between, some simpler than others, being back on my home soil, anywhere, is refreshingly simple... And though in some ways, I guess you could say I've become an awful snob, I get it... Even the things I don't agree with. They are in my blood (even if I don't want them to be) because I was born in this country.

the voyage in reverse/le voyage à l'envers

English version at the bottom:

Alors, j'essaie maintenant de vous écrire en français car j'ai parlé français pour six mois et des fois, mes pensés m'ont semblé être des peintures et de belles images...
C'est le matin à San Francisco, Californie et pour la première fois depuis que je suis arrivée, le soleil a brillé par ma fenêtre quand je me suis reveillée. Je me sens bien et je crois que je vais me prommener sur la plage, seulement à deux blocs de mon appartement.
C'est rare pour moi je crois, ce sentiment de tranquilité. C'est pas bon pour quelqu'une qui cherche inconsciemment l'aventure, tout ces changements plus nombreux et rapides que l'éclair et de vouloir autant retrouver le contrôle sur sa vie. On peut avoir l'un ou l'autre l'aventure ou le contrôle, mais jamais les deux. Je me sens presque toujours en conflit. Mais pas maintenant, pas ce matin.
Cela fait aujourd'hui un mois que j'étais en France, à Marseille ou j'ai imaginé que je pouvais rester... En fin, je me suis dit que ce n'était pas de ma faute, que je devais bouger encore.
Assis sur le bord du quai du vieux port, on a regardé les poissons qui ont formé des cerlcles dans l'eau à trois heure du matin, en attendant le moment oú je devais prendre le bus pour l'aeroport au plus noir de la nuit. À l'aeroport, ils ont pesé ma valise qui faisait 10 kilos de trop. J'ai commencé a enlever des trucs sans reflechir a ce que j'allais jeter. Car si l'on y pense, on devient attaché. J'ai laissé des vêtements, des chaussures, des livres, sur un siège de l'aeroport, et j'ai essayé de les oublier. Je voulais me sentir legère et libre. Je voulais vivre uniquement dans le présent et lâcher prise, comme je le dis aux élèves de yoga encore et encore parce que c'est la leçon que je dois appliquer aussi. Alors, j'ai abandonné ces choses materielles, mais pas les idées. Quand je voyage et quand j'essaie de m'instaler ailleur, je le fais toujours en rêvant à Marseille. Je ne suis presque jamais là ou je suis.
Je suis arrivée à Londres vers sept heures du matin et j'avais des nuages dans la tête ☁✈. J'avais besoin de sommeil et au dela du sommeil je ne me souviens plus trop de Londres. Une bière dans un pub, une prommenade le long de la Tamise avec un vieil ami. Il a un peu neigé, un peu plut aussi. Et je me souviens des scéances de yoga comme toujours.
De Londres, j'ai pris un avion pour New York. Le New York d'une autre vie quand j'avais des rêves différents... Mais c'est une ville qui est toujours aussi vivante et je l'avait oublié. J'ai plusieurs amis là-bas mais c'est une communité qui a encore évolué même pendant mon absence. Ils avaient leurs propres blagues que je n'ai pas compris et leurs propres amours que je n'ai pas rencontré. Je parlais moins leur langue que celles d'oú je revenais. Les rues semblaient tellement grandes et les couleurs grises... C'est d'une beauté différente dont je n'ai plus les yeux.
Je ne suis restée qu'une semaine. De New York je me suis envolée encore. Cette fois j'ai atteri au Colorado, l'état ou je suis née. C'était bizarre de retourner dans mon pays, tellement différent et comme inconnu. Le ciel était mille fois plus grand que dans mes souvenirs, dessous lequel je me sentais tel un caillou. Le reste du monde qui vivait dans cet état semblait ne pas remarquer qu'ils étaient sur le point d'être avaler par leur propre ciel☠. Ils étaient tous souriants, tous concentrés sur l'exercise et la nouriture sainne pensant vivre pour toujours. Le ciel délavé et les pelouses marrons et mortes dans ce climat sec.
Heureusement, après quelques jours dessous le soleil du Colorado, et quelques temps passés au prés de ma famille, j'ai vu les choses plus clairement. J'ai redécouvert les endroits qui ont évolué et maintenant ils sont plus vivant avec des restaurants et des bars branchés où avant il n'y avait rien. J'ai pensé de rester... Mais mon addiction au voyage m'a encore entrainé vers de nouvelles sensations. Un jour je dois essayer l'hypnotisme ou l'acupuncture pour arrêter ma manie de bouger.
Maintenant je suis à San Francisco, dans un appartement à deux blocs de l'Océan Pacifique et très loin de toutes les autres choses. Je m'habitue au bus ou je passe des heures en montant et décendant les collines. Cette ville est tellement belle, avec l'herbe verte élecrtique et les arbres plein des fleurs, la ville dans la nature et la nature dans la ville. Il pleut souvent et une seconde plus tard il y a du soleil☀.
Toujours je rêve de Marseille et toujours j'attends le moment où je me sentirai à l'aise quelque part.
***************************************

It’s morning in San Francisco and for the first time since I arrived, the sun was shining in the window when I woke. I feel good and I think I’ll take a walk along the beach only two blocks from my apartment.
It’s rare for me I think, this feeling of calm. It’s not good for someone who unconsciously seeks adventure, more numerous and fast changes than the natural speed of change, to want so seriously to re-establish the semblance of control in her life. We can have one or the other, adventure or control, but never both. I almost always feel in conflict. But not at this moment. Not this morning.
Only a month ago I was in France, in Marseille, where I imagine I could have stayed... In the end, I told myself that it wasn’t my fault I had to move again.
Sitting on the old port, we watched the fish circling in the water at three o’clock in the morning, waiting for the moment I had to catch my bus to the airport in the dark of night. At the airport they weighed my suitcase. 10 kilos over-weight. I began to remove things without thinking. The moment one thinks, one becomes attached. I left clothes, shoes, books, on a seat in the airport, and I tried to let go. I wanted to feel light and free. I wanted to live only in the present and let everything else go, like I tell my yoga students over and over again because it’s the lesson I have to learn over all. So, I let go of the material things, but not my ideas and as I travel trying to settle elsewhere, I do it always dreaming of Marseille. I am almost never where I am.
I arrived in London around 7 o’clock in the morning and I had clouds in my head. I needed sleep and outside of sleep I don’t remember too much of London. A beer in a pub and a walk along the Thames with an old friend. A bit of snow, a bit of rain. And yoga class as always.
From London, I took a plane to New York. The New York from another life that was mine when I had different dreams... But it’s a city that continues to exist in the present and I forget that from time to time. I have several friends there but it’s a community that was evolving the same when I was absent. They had their own jokes that I didn’t understand and their own loves whom I had never met. I spoke less their language than the languages of the countries that I traveled to. The streets seemed so wide and the colors grey... It’s a beauty of a different standard for which I no longer have eyes.
I only stayed a week. From New York again I flew. This time I landed in Colorado, the state where I was born. It was stranger to return than it was to land in countries completely different and unknown. The sky was a million times larger than I remembered, and beneath it I felt like a pebble. The rest of the people living in this state seemed as though they hadn’t notice that they were about to be swallowed by the sky. They were smiling and concentrated on exercise and healthy food in order to live forever. Not the sense of mortality that I had beneath a sky so big. The sky and the lawns, brown and dead in the dry climat.
Happily, after a few days beneath the Colorado sun, and some time with my family, I saw things more clearly. I discovered the neighborhoods that had evolved while I was away and now were alive with trendy restaurants and bars where before there was nothing. I thought about staying... But my addiction is to move. I tried to stop several times, but I always start up again. One day I have to try hypnotism or acupunture.
Now I’m in San Francisco, in this apartment two blocks from the Pacific Ocean and very far from everything else. I’m getting used to the bus on which I spend hours climbing and descending the hills. But this city is beautiful, with electric green grass and trees full of flowers. It rains often and then it’s sunny in a half a second.
Still I dream of Marseille and still I await the day when I will feel well installed somewhere, when I’ll stop writing so much about me and start writing other people’s stories because mine would bore you.

free fall

"All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous unpremeditated act without benefit of experience."
Henry Miller

Twenty minutes running along the port and up the hill and I slowed to a walk. That same pain in my knee, subtle, persistent, consistent, taking over. I just wanted to run and all I needed was my own two legs, but sometimes, I don’t have control over even them. It was still dark outside, but morning rush-hour was already beginning, head-lights shining in the darkness. I stopped and waited for a stream of cars to pass before crossing the street. In the early morning grey, it’s especially difficult to trust one’s own eyes and I thought of the hypothetical speeding car I would not see and certainly if I did not see it, it would not see me. And there was the hypothetical collision and hypothetical end…
But as luck would have it, I’m still conscious, alive, aware of the fact that anything could happen at any moment- Making plans, even short-term, provides us merely with a comfortable illusion. In spite of this, I have been trying to come up with my own plan in order to find comfort in the illusion that life is not free-fall. But each time I try to act, I’m suddenly seized by a sensation, “NO! I am not ready! I don’t know enough. I’m not strong enough, not grown-up enough.” Little by little, I’m learning how to respond to myself,
“You will never be ready!” Get over it. Either take a giant leap in the dark, or go home, get married to a nice Jewish boy, have children, convince yourself of a five-year-plan, a ten-year-plan and forget all the rest, forget changing the world and get comfortable… But what I know with more certainty than anything is the alternative to the leap without benefit of experience offers no greater comfort. Unpremeditated knee injuries, accidents, natural disasters, “La Crise”, will have the final say.
I turned around and walked down the hill back to my apartment and the sky had turned from grey to pink, framing the multi-leveled backdrop of Marseille. Blue and white Christmas lights glittered cold and lonely against the sky reminding me of how holiday season felt when I was not alone, though I couldn’t think of what I was being reminded of specifically. When are we truly not alone? Perhaps not so much when we are surrounded by people, but rather, when we have faith in our illusions. Or faith in even less than our illusions… Believing in something we cannot see. Believing in our own ability to persist in the absence of certainty and preparation for what we are about to take on.

turning in a new direction

The sun hangs low in the sky for most of the late fall days, just about at eye level, forming pedestrians in the narrow street into silhouettes, obscuring everything. Walking forward into brightness, unable to see the sidewalk ahead, I wonder how much the late autumn sun is a symbol for my emotions. A friend recently pointed out to me, that when you settle into your life in one city, to find adventure in that city, you have to seek it out. However, when you’re always moving transiently from place to place, in each city, it’s adventure that seeks you out. The adventure is always welcome… But there comes a point when I long for tranquility and these experiences seem to be on the verge of short-circuiting my ability to feel.
I’ve felt rather aware of my mortality lately, I suppose because I’ve been raging from day to day in cities by the sea that revitalize my conscience but fail to provide me with a proper income or any certain future plans. I’m burning away my savings and to distract me from the reason in my head softly whispering “responsibility”, I’ve been breathing the air of the present so thick my lungs will almost burst. On trains, in motor-cars on busses, zooming back and forth from the French Alps to Barcelona and back home again to Marseille, the kind of jet-set lifestyle one would expect of the wealthy, and in exchange I can’t afford to buy myself a decent sweater, deodorant, a light-bulb to replace the dark corner in my room.
What it all comes down to is I think that I’m happy. Fundamentally so, though rationality or society tells me I ought not to be. I’m working almost for free but I think I love my job… If I don’t think too much, I love it. In the end, what is it all for? Nothing I suppose. In the end, “this too shall pass,” says the ring on my finger in Hebrew I’ve been wearing continuously for the past five years. I wonder about this phrase and this concept and wonder if I’ve only come to embody it so much because I carried it around with me everywhere. When I lose my thoughts or sense, I look down and there it is. “This too shall pass.” If I’m sad, I try to have patience. If I’m happy, I try to soak up the day to day fully and not lose this precious now by planning the future… But I don’t know now… I think it’s time I got a new phrase… Something less existential and more inspiring… Something like, "What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! / Boldness has genius, power and magic in it." (Goethe) I don’t regret a moment of my life and my experiences, but now I think I ought to make a shift from the passively absorbing my surroundings to actively creating them.
And here I am writing anyway. Writers are such slackers… Sitting back, observing, then thinking we’re being active by writing about what we witness.

what is a smile?

My neighbor across the street is at the piano again. His window is closed and the sound of a melody in a minor key only faintly mingles in the air with the leftover rain dripping from drainage pipes. Clean white balloon clouds are moving quickly over a clean deep sky, and I like to stand at my window and watch the clouds mobilize until I think I can feel the motion of the earth. Until I feel like my apartment building, my street and I are moving and the clouds are standing still. The same way I like to stand and watch the luggage belt at the airport until I am dizzy.
One of those empty, beautiful nights in which I feel nothing, but think that I ought to. What is it? Saturday? Sunday? It really makes no difference to me. Either way, I feel like staying in tonight. Maybe with a glass of wine.
Standing outside my friend’s vintage clothing store before returning home earlier this evening, I struck up a conversation with another loiterer. Or he struck one up with me. He was tall and handsome, well dressed with a sort of unfocussed energy that gave him away to be quite young. Twenty or so. Women, he wanted to know about women. How are women in the States? Are there a lot of them and are they sexy? Then his next question was about balloons. “Are there a lot of balloons in New York?” I looked at him, puzzled and so I suppose he thought I didn’t understand the word ballon. So he took out his cell phone, where he had several photos stored and showed me. He scrolled through multiple pictures of balloon arrangements. Balloons for birthdays, weddings, openings… bar mitzvahs?... balloons that look like flowers, like people, like clouds and telephones.
“You see this is what I do.” He said, “And I want to go to New York. Do you think I can?” I told him I didn’t see why not. “New York est dur,” I warned.
“Do you want to study in the States?” I asked.
“No, I don’t need to study for my job. You see, I just make balloons.” Again he showed me his cell phone and scrolled through more photos, balloons in swimming pools, on rooftops, tied to motorbikes. “I see.” I said.
A woman standing near us on the sidewalk, whom I knew from having encountered her many times in the neighborhood interrupted, “Do you have a cigarette?” She held open an empty cigarette packet waiting. “No, I’m sorry.” I said, “I only have rolling papers,” said the balloon youth. The woman’s voice changed to a sort of high-pitched whining, “S’il vou plaît s’il vous plaît s’il vous plaît…” We turned our backs and headed into the vintage shop where we tried on some giant sunglasses and winter hats with fur earflaps. A few minutes later, I drifted out of the store and headed home, pulling my regular French exit without saying goodbye. Saying goodbye can be such a hassle, especially when you have to kiss everyone on the cheek two times. A French exit is much easier than a French goodbye.
On the street, a man asked me for some change, which I didn’t have. Reflected to myself that I do however currently have a roof over my head at night and life could be much harder than mine. Another street bum passing turned to me and said, “Tu dois sourrir. A smile is much nicer.” What is a smile anyway? Is it something we do when we are happy, or the greatest way to cope with pain?