Exercise 7

So. I went to Burning Man.
I – who am never shy to admit that I hate camping – went out into the desert to eat, drink, breath, sleep in and absorb-thru-every-pore-and-follicle, that supersoft Playa dust.

It's probably impossible to describe the experience. You really do have to just go there yourself. And no doubt, your experience will be subtly or grossly different from mine.
So instead I will tell you what Burning Man isn't.

A couple of weeks after the event I attended a Renaissance Faire - yet another USian curiosity. At one of the lively stage shows the washer women were flinging wet laundry. Like you do, if you're a medieval washerwoman trying to rouse your audience.
Trouble was, one guy just wouldn't enter into the spirit. It was a hot day; a little sprinkle of water should have been welcomed. But no, he leapt from one seat to another, terrified of getting wet. He was also eating a chocolate ice cream.

After the show, while the happy audience were chuckling off to the next event, I saw him poking at a couple of little chocolate ice cream spillages on the front of his t-shirt as he grumbled to his girlfriend:
"I should make them pay for a new shirt."

Which sums up everything that's wrong with America today, and why Burning Man needs to exist.

No one talks or thinks like that in Black Rock City.
For starters it's too hot for ice cream, so you'd never have this exact problem.
But if you did you'd just laugh about it because, well, shit happens. Get over it. It's no-one's fault.
And then someone would ride past on a customised bike and hand you a new t-shirt, hug you and ride away.
In BRC everyone takes responsibility for themselves, and thus they take responsibility for everyone else too.
There's enough of everything to go around.
There's more than enough of everything in fact.
And there's no 'us', or 'them'.
We're all just us.