Subtle changes…

I made it through Burning Man… It was sort of a let down in the sense that I felt as if I had been there before… Seen it, been exposed to the kind of people who gather at that sort of event, share similar philosophies and outlooks on life in general… But what it did do, was test my ability to adapt to the environment… To really have to adjust to the weather and the elements. This, was what I had really wanted to take away from the whole thing. It was an enticing incentive to be able to hang out and party any time I wanted… But that was not so much the focus for me. It was to see if I could really pass the test of self- reliance and asking for help when I needed it, from total strangers if need be. And that was probably the hardest part of all.

I have been so separated from regular or real life for so long that at times I forget I have ever been a part of things. Community has just been a word for me. One without real meaning… Before the disability, I was self-absorbed and shallow. My superficiality was far greater than my depth of character. I just was. I was young, so I skated by… But that just doesn’t equate to the same thing… You know? And then I had my world turned inside out and upside-down. Nothing I was before seemed to remain. And if it was there, it was buried so deep that I could not find it.

So I started over. And really grew to know just who and what I am, what I am made of, what I am capable of. But it left me in a state of removal from the rest of the world. I had loved ones in my life, but I have had to live in a selfish manner, though selfish in a different way than before. I must be selfish to get out of bed each day. To be able to do things for myself and just do the things that most people just don’t think about. And in that way, I have done all sorts of things that I was told that I would not be able to do. I have pushed past boundaries and expanded my limitations. I have taken back my life, and I have made it my own. Whatever it is, it is just that, mine.

So to let others inside my life, inside my bubble that has become my world, was huge. Gigantic. It was momentous in that quiet and often times overlooked sort of way. I admitted my weaknesses in public. I actually did not try to mask things when the headaches hit so bad that all I could do was curl up in a chair and occasionally crack open an eye to watch the world pass by… I did not make excuses for the times that I did not jump up to help, but when I could, I did. And it felt good to do it. And that made it worth the pain.

I even stood up for myself when I was not enjoying things. In the past, I would have put up with the situation and just been silently miserable. But not on the Playa. I expressed my emotions to the Boyfriend, and we politely explained that there was someplace else we needed to be, and then we left… We found other places and people and had a really good time. And I felt better for having said something, for being honest about things, for standing up for myself and taking charge of my own good time. In the past, I have just disappeared into the sunset to find another hobby, or party, of interest, or group to associate with. And while it is good to be diversified, to move on, or let go when things become boring, it is not good, if it is to avoid conflict or possible conflict. And I have been taught from a very young age that it is not for me to rock the boat, to make waves, to cause trouble or to be difficult. But not anymore. I do not, will not, seek those things out. But I will not sacrifice myself or avoid those times either. Nor will I make any apologies. (I apologized only a couple of times while I was at the event, and I really meant those words with all my heart when I said them. And THAT is what an apology should be for. For those times when the heart hurts and is willing to try to make amends. Not for making excuses or for smoothing things over. At least not for me. Not anymore.)

I came face to face with a few fantastic representations of stereotypes that I have dealt with I my past. It was as if I was being given the opportunity to show that I really have learned how to not allow others to effect me, how to live with inner-beauty, grace and kindness. I was positive, and genuine, and I retained my dignity. And I did it all with a real smile. The kind that starts on the inside and bubbles its way up to the surface. The kind that is infectious and lasting. The kind that feels good all the way down to the tips of your dancing toes.

I took all of that home with me. The confidence, the resiliency, the honesty, the acceptance of who I am. And I hung onto it. And when it happened a short while after that I found myself in the most difficult of situations, I still kept all of that with me. And I laid it all on the line. Right down to the painful point of goodbyes. And, in the end, there was no goodbye. Only more honesty and love. And that felt good. And I am one more step to being stronger.

I repeated my experience again, when I ventured back into places I had thought I could never return to, and I asked for help. And I got it. Simply and without reservation. There was no feeling guilty or bad, there was nothing like that on either side. It just was. And that was truly freeing. And so I am yet another piece closer to truly being free.

I worry less and less over the things I cannot change. I do not make excuses for them any longer. And I appreciate the place I am in while I am moving constantly forward into the next place. And I am living now, more than I ever was before.

So, if you asked the question, “How was Burning Man?” of me, I have now given you my answer. And like all of my “real” answers, it has been long and wordy and drawn out. But that is how I am… If you wanted the short answer, then “fun” or “good” will suffice.

It was not like coming home to me. And I don’t think it will be like that the next time I go. But it was incredible. In ways that took being away from the Playa to surface and take hold of my conscious brain. The change in me is there. It happened on the Playa, but it could have occurred anywhere. And who knows what future adventures hold for me… But that IS life, isn’t it? And I am okay with that.

Fall Fashion Frenzy...

I am sitting here with all the best reading material a gal could ask for… It is September after all… And that means the best of the best come out to super size my usual travel perusing favorites… The Fall Fashion Issues!!!!

I have; Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, In Style, Lucky, Elle, and Marie Claire strewn about the floor at my feet… The pages are now dog-eared and well- worn… The Covers are crinkled and the pages tabbed and wrinkled with my scrawling handwriting across the margins and over the ads…

I love this time of year…

Usually I travel with just Lucky or occasionally one of the others… But twice a year, spring and fall, I go out and live large… 590-840 pages large… (What I lovingly refer to as my bible turns into the phonebook for the greater LA area judging by the size and heft of the glossy mags that I do so adore…) You should see me on a plane trying to juggle them all… This past spring I went from foolish juggling clown to the adept master of the sliding of overly slick, overly thick readers… (I also passed many of the magazines along to very happy ladies who also share my guilty pleasure…) This fall, I drove for the latest stints of my traversing the Western US… So the books slid from one side of the passenger floor to the other…

Either method of travel, it is still the same effect… I reach my destination and whip out the book from the middle and scan the pages… I oooh and ahhh and exclaim to the poor boyfriend, (Who has become incredible at looking interested at what is holding my interest, even if it happens to be a pair of boots and matching handbag…) or whom ever else just so happens to be unlucky enough to be sitting next to me…

It takes me until November to make it through all of the “look books” to my satisfaction… It takes another week for me to create tear sheets with my “can’t live without” and other items of my newfound “inspiration”… And then the dilapidated books hit the recycling bin, one giant thud sounding after another…

And then I have six more months until the spring frenzy starts my heart pounding and blood racing all over again for the thrill of the undiscovered tour of fashion…

Sometimes… I am such a girl…

Done with running...

And here I was… Just Blogging about how difficult it has been to get back to Blogging… And I was doing some Web research about an event someplace that I wanted to go to and there in the set of photos was a face that I used to know… One that by degrees of separation haunts me… Makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up and the pulse quicken beneath my skin… A face from the past that can link me to things best forgotten, people I wish I did not know, and a life I have been running from for the past four years.

This person can spread the word of me to those I keep from… And it would be so easy… And my first instinct would be to run… But I stopped running… Or I? Really? When the flutter of the heart finds its way into the throat, isn’t that really the same thing? That I am still in the same place? That I have not changed as much as I thought, or wished, that I had?

Am I going to spend the rest of my life looking over my shoulder, jumping at shadows, paranoid of the worst? But isn’t that what the worst really is? Never being able to walk away from a mistake? Or a bad choice? Or a life better left lost in the past for good?

But that is not how things really work… Not for the victims… For the criminals, they pay their debt and get to go free… They have much to overcome if they really mean to change, but they can go forward unafraid… It is not the same for those who seeking the worthless paper protection in the first place… The looking over the shoulder, the worries of loved ones, it just never ends… There is always fear and doubt.

Really though, I am not the victim… I mean, how can I be when I made the choice to allow such a person into my life? And then allow such a person to stay, day after day, year after year… Am I not to blame as well? For not valuing myself? For not knowing what it would mean to my life as I knew it? My future? My family? I am not the villain, the criminal, but I am not the guiltless either… It is not my fault that it happened, but I have some claim to the responsibility that I allowed it to continue.

Long after I stood up and said that I was not going to permit such things any longer, I am still paying for my innocence and naiveté… And sometimes, I am terrified that I will be paying for it forever.

The single unanswerable question I have above all others, is how do I put an end to it. The kind of end where no one gets hurt, or at least, no one else gets hurt… Where there is no more fear, no more jumping and hiding and paranoid precautions… How do I move past it far enough that it can’t ever come back to touch me again?

But I really do know the answer. I just don’t like it. The answer is, I don’t.

I move on, get stronger, smarter, keep my wits about me and never take a risk that could place me in that path of harm again. I never let my guard down, not even for a second, because that is a weakness that can be the one thing that re-opens the door I have devoted my life to barring shut. And I hope for respite in my dreams…

Terrible. I know. And fatalistic. But also, realistic. We have a good system, but there are so many holes and flaws it isn’t any other way for it to be right now. Things need to change… But the question is how? And by whom? And where? And to what end? (Okay, so that is more than one question, but they all are rolling around in my mind…) There is so much to do… To change… And not enough time to make such a big difference… So I guess the question is then, which part do I want to try to change most? How can I best make a difference? What can I do that matters in such a way that I can rest on the inside and sleep peacefully at night knowing that I have not wasted my life in hiding and fear? And is this the platform I want to take, the banner I want to wave about as if my life depended upon it? Is this the cause I want to sacrifice my life to, sacrifice so much for, suffer more for than I already have? (I know, again, more than one question…)

I need more thought. More time. More space. More information. More.

The adrenalin is gone from the initial jolt that started this Blog… It’s time for a cat nap to think it all over and re-charge… 15-20 minutes, tops. And then… And then, I don’t know… More research I suppose.

What I do know, is that I really am done with running…

Day 39: My New Home:

I can feel the edges of fall creeping in this morning as I sit in front of “my” window typing… It makes me want to slow things down just a little… Getting up this early is a good thing, I can get so much done by lunch, but sometimes I just want to curl up in bed and let the fireplace dance away the chill in the air…

It’s funny, I think it rained in the middle of the night… The road and sidewalks are all wet… But that would mean that when I did finally fall asleep, it was so soundly, I did not stir… I have not slept like that in a long time… I guess physical labor will do that to a person… All I have to do is scrub and clean until I am exhausted… I’ll look great and sleep better too… (Why do I have a gym membership again? When am I going to drive the hour to the nearest one and actually USE the thing? Oh yeah… Someday… Until then, there is always deep cleaning that is seemingly endless…)

I’ll post up the past couple of Blogs that I had to write by hand (gasp) since the laptop went on hiatus for a few days… It may fill in the gaps here and there… And I am apologizing now for the barrage of photos that went up in the middle of the night… With the help of the Boyfriend, I discovered that I can indeed turn on the laptop AND get internet… All from my new favorite location in my home… “My” window… I also discovered that I not only have a TV that turns on, I have somehow have cable too… Go figure… I had forgotten what that was like… I got sucked into 20 minutes of the Discovery channel’s show about the Roman underground excavations… And then about two hours later I got sucked in for another 20 minutes on the largest underground city… The one that the Christians used to escape the Muslims and others… Since I started partway through and then realized that I was having my brain sucked out through my eyeballs… I turned off the TV without seeing the entirety of wither show… But it is nice to see TV now and again and hear the human voice… As for the radio… I still only have the choice between two stations… Static and a mix of oldies and today… Not my sort of thing, but somehow I seem to know most of the words to most of the songs… Thanks Mom… (I can hear her singing in the car now…)

Well…

I better get on with my day… I have a ton of things to get to, which I won’t since I am driving down to visit family… But to all those who have been commenting on my photos… I love you for that! It brightens my day… Thanks!!!! And to those that I owe real e-mails to... I will get those out by the end of the week… (As long as the internet holds… Promise…) Tons of hugs to everyone! I miss you all!!!

I can see it now...

It harder getting back into Blogging than I thought it would… Funny… For as difficult as it was to not Blog, it seems that my brain is still on a break… (And for as much as I wanted to jump onto the computer to pour it all out, now it seems that my thoughts don’t just flow through my fingertips and onto the keyboard as they once did…)

Even still… I miss it… So I am sorry if the Blogs may end up a bit flat for a bit… And after Burning Man, I now understand that whole thing about it being like “riding a bicycle”…

Watching me wobble around the camp and on the open Playa on one of those green “yellow” bikes must have been entertaining… Makes me wonder how many people thought that I just started the party early and had one (or five) too many…

Yeah… I know… Strange that small children can ride a bike better than I can… But… Well… Yeah… I do think that next year I will be accomplished enough to invest in a bike of my own to dress up all fancy and pretty and take out to the dusty desert… (Though I do admit, every time the Boyfriend asks if I want to ride his bike I turn him down, and that I am thinking that perhaps training wheels might be a good thing to add to my cycling decorations…)

As I write this, I can feel the second-year-itis set in…

I can see it now…

My “big” project is going to be a pair of Playa bikes… (This year it was a pair of Playa coats…) And ohhh how those projects end up taking on a life of their own… (At least we both LOVE our coats… That makes it all worth the work… I hope the bike will be the same way…)

I can see it now…

I will end up making this incredible sparkly bike all fancy and pretty and then ride it all around town instead of the sparkly and pretty regular bike that my Dad bought me last summer… I will be one of THOSE burners…

(But I’ll finally be riding a bike, so does it really matter if I look silly to the whole world?)

Doin' the Decom...

Hey there friends! It's been a week or so since we've all been back from the great Double Burn... (And hopefully everyone made it back better than when they left…)

And what has been on my mind? (Well, okay, a lot of things… Halloween being mid-week this year, my birthday rapidly approaching, my right eye healing way too slowly, all the unpacking that I have waiting for me when I get back home, eating way too much Asian Bakery so far this week, and all the Decoms to look forward to… I know it’s a ton of stuff… But what I really am focusing on, at least for the moment, is the Decom thought…)

So many Decoms... So little time...

This is how things are looking for me at the moment:

October 7- SF (Perhaps...???)
October 13- LA (Possibly... Who knows, a last minute appearance may be in order…)
October 19-21- So.Cal. (There with bells on baby!!!)

Also... I am thinking of celebrating my birthday at the So.Cal. Decom... (It is right after the event anyway, and what a great place to party for days…) Nothing big, nothing fancy… Just a few friends, a ton of soon to be friends, perhaps a hundred or so homemade cupcakes or frosted birthday cookies, and a weekend of relaxing fun… (Maybe I’ll even get my brother to come out for the thing…) So... If this provides any of you with an extra incentive to make the trek out, please know that the gift of your company would be so totally awesome!! (Said with true So.Cal. accent, hair flip and blinky-eyed smile...) And I'll even be sure to make some killer cupcakes or birthday cookies for the occasion... You do know that I went to Culinary School, right??? Mmmm... Sugar Coma... Goooood...

But…

The rest of the Decom thought was this:

What do I expect? (At least in reference to the three Decoms that I might end up at this year…) I know that the animals are all very different… But I am kind of at a loss… Especially with the So.Cal. Decom being (new/different/changed) unlike it has been in the past… At least from what I can tell from the different postings I’ve perused so far…

So…

If anyone has any thoughts, comments, advice on the whole Decom thing, I would LOVE, LOVE, LOVE it!

Many thanks… Muah!!!!!

Paging Mr. Rix Brosen to the curtesy phone...

Last night, I met a fabulous guy... Totally funny and laid back... Yet still full of tons of get up and go...
The Boyfriend liked him too... I think... He laughed a lot... That's always a good sign...

And then Mr. Brosen just sort of faded away...

But...

He was back bright and early this morning... And he brought with with him more giggles and laughter and silliness...
It was a good way to start out the week...

So...

Rix...

Anytime you'd like to visit... It's a good time for me...





After Note:

If this doesn't make much sense to some of you... I apologize... Just get a chuckle at these famous words of mine...

"Boyfriend Beware... You WILL be Blogged!"...

You may not get the joke... But if you've been reading my Blogs for a while, you might just get the idea...

After-Burn Report 2007...

So here it is… A few days back from my first burn and I am still a tad… Well… A tad out of it… I had said that I really sort of felt that it was not that big of a new experience for me… And it wasn’t. In so many ways, it seems as if all the different things I have done over the past several years, the lifestyle I have embraced, have just finally added up to one big place… But I keep that big place with me all the time… So the Playa doesn’t seem any more like “home” than any other place…

But…

It was an experience! A giant grand adventure… Filled with wonderful people and spectacular sights… It was like a grown up version of where’s Waldo… There was so much to see… Too much to take in all at once… Like some sort of weird circus orgy for the optic nerves… Combine that with the elements and then it starts to look a little like the past two weeks…

I had said that I wanted to test my princess metal against the elements… And I did. Several dust storms, two white-outs, a little rain, a little cold, a lot of really way too hot for far too long… It was all there… And I kept smiling through it all… (Yea me! I just knew I could do it… I can do anything…)

What caught me off guard was how fabulous everyone was. Strangers, acquaintances, friends, loved ones… Everyone was spectacular… Well… Mostly everyone… But there always seems to be one rotten apple in the bunch, no matter how big and great the barrel is… At least it was just one… And after a day or two it became rather comical to see how her antics would just blow away like the dust on the ground… It was sad to see how ugly she was on the inside and how it just poured out of her and onto those about her that had done nothing but present kindness… It was also good to see that I (Still? Finally?) managed to rise above all of the childish antagonisms, selfish and spoiled antics and self- destructive behaviors… Better still that I was not the only one who noticed… But enough about that… After all… It is only one apple and there were 50,000 other apples in which to try, explore and perhaps even turn into the best deep dish pie ever tasted this side of the residual gerlach embers and ashes…

As for me…

I returned stronger and surer of myself than ever before… I am more content in my own overly dry skin and happy that I really can survive anything. And not just survive; make a party out of the trip… A sometimes understated and muted party, but a party none-the-less… (And it seems that the older I get, the more I prefer the momentary large boisterous bashes and the lengthy down-home hang out with your best buddies sorts of extravaganzas…)

As for my adventures…

It was just my style to discover that I was lost as far as possible away from “home”, get rescued by an art car, treated to their incredible hospitality while they filled their camp’s ice chests, taken on an incredible tour of the playa and all its wonders, only to be delivered right at my camp’s front door at the end of the best ride ever… (And if anyone knows a fabulous man who wore screaming orange from the top of his hat to the bottom of his crocks, going by the name of Spider, who built a neon bright art car from a (Cadillac?) car that drove from a seat raised up about six feet in a bright metal cage, camped with a group that had two neon colored geodesic domes, and a friend called Dan who gave me the best icy cold coke I have ever had in my life, camped somewhere around 2:15 and B, C, or D (I did say that I was lost…) whose theme camp may or may not be called something like Camp Over-drive… Or Camp Over-ride… Or something else entirely… Please tell him that he totally made my whole first burn… (More than the double rainbows, or the double white-outs, or the double man burns… That ride was the best! And I would love to meet him and his wonderful camp mates again sometime…)

And being the newbie that I was… (Even with all of the research and planning, it was still a new thing for me… Go figure…) I thought mid-week that it would be a grand thing to put texture wax in my hair… (More on that one later… But Carlos- Thanks again!) But even that seemed to be alright thanks to the wonders of Astral Head Wash…

Oh… The Boyfriend did manage to tie one on in the (Best?) worst way mid-week… And we back at the pleasure Garden had much fun coming up with all sorts of tall tales to tell him (Read: tease him) about… (You should know better than to tell me that you partied so hard that you can’t recall most of the night… I’ll help with the hangover, but it comes at the price of (gentle, fun-loving, friendly, razzing) entertainment… Needless to say… A good morning was had by all… And the Boyfriend still loves me lots… (I finally did let him in on the “fun” later in the afternoon when he had slept most of the yucks off…)

The Boyfriend’s over partying lead to a fabulous experience over at the Human Carcass Wash… Yes, Lots of cleaning was taking place on the Playa this trip… Between the Head Wash and the Carcass Wash and the boxes of facial cleansing cloths and wipes, I was entirely mostly clean for about five minutes at least two or three times a day… Total bliss… And then the dust would come again… (One of my camp-mates made dust angels and I could totally see the attraction to that activity by the end of the week…)

As for my clothes and supplies and all the planning…

It was awesome! I was able to scale way back and I wore quite a lot of what I brought… What I didn’t wear was due more to weather… It was so warm that the fireman’s pants and sweaters and coats went untouched… But I have been told if I had left them, I would have needed them for sure… I lived in min mai buns and cut up tights turned into tops… (Thanks to years of Ballet training I had that wonderful trick to fall back on… And a fellow camper admired my fashion so much that after a few days, she was hacking up her tights to emulate my “look”…) We brought just a tad more water than we needed, and the same went for the food. It was perfect that way… (Even if it was rather boring fare… And we were nourished and hydrated, which is what is important… Though next time I may get a little fancier with the meals… Ohhh… How those words may come back to haunt me later…)

All in all… It was a great trip and a wonderful experience… I am so very glad that I went… That I came and saw and even participated… (I must admit to this strange affinity to picking up MOOP… But more on that one later…) I would certainly go again… Though I might do something totally radical… Like go early and NOT stay for the burn… (I know, but I had the most fun in the early week and when all the yahoos showed up on Friday the vibe totally changed… And… Well… For me, it was not about the burn itself… It was about all sorts of other stuff… So… You never know… I just may do it…)

Well…

That about wraps things up for now… (Everyone knows how prolific I can be, so if I don’t end things here they could just amble along for pages and pages…) I’ll post more again soon…

Gosh… It’s good to be back!

These Boots are Made for Walkin'...

So my feet have made another trek... They have taken another journey... Gone into the wild blue and beyond and dragged my body along with it...

And it was fun... In a weird, dusty, dirty sort of way...

Can you guess where I spent the past couple of weeks? If the photo above doesn't help much to identify my past locale... Perhaps the one below will...



Wish you had been there!

Advice I'd tell my younger self...

This thread came across one of my Forums today... And as I wrote my reply, I realized that posting it here also was how I wanted to return to blogging... Sure, I have a ton of stuff to share about Burning Man... And about life and the eternal quest to progress forward... But sometimes, it is the unexpected look back that sparks the motivation to continue ever onward... (As Don Quixote would say; Onward to Adventure... To Mis-Adventure... Onward to Glory I gooo...)




Advice I'd tell my younger self...

I'd tell myself that it is okay to be smart, ask too many questions, spend lots of time thinking about endless things...
That I can be true to myself and still enjoy good friendships...
Trust should be earned, not freely given, love is the reverse...
I would tell myself that reading about a place is not the same as visiting it...
That life is a participation sport...
That failures are only opportunities to learn something new...
And that playing it safe leads to missing out on too much...
I would tell me not to be too critical...
That change happens even when it seems imperceptible...
And embracing the unknowns and undiscovered does not negate the joy I still get from research and planning...
And mostly... I would tell myself that seeking out love from others does not exclude the importance of my greatest need; loving myself...