Burning Man, part 16

I want to make sure we get out to the Man before the crazi­ness starts, so we decide to leave. JJ and B and Karen come with us. I’m hoping for an art car but they’re all full.

We tromp the dis­tance to the Man and see the arms raise as we get closer. He’s been rebuilt in two days flat by the con­struc­tion team, identical to the first ver­sion. In some ways that sad­dens me: it high­lights exactly what it seems the ”arson­ist” was protest­ing, this cookie-cutter Man, this repro­duc­tion out-of-a-box. 

It’s the usual chaos, find­ing a spot behind all the art cars, the chants of ”sit down’ to all the people stand­ing in front. We’ve got reas­on­ably good line of sight. I can’t see Dave twirl­ing some­where in the Con­clave but he’s there somewhere. 

In front of us, the twirlers are trans­form­ing into a par­tic­u­lar group: there’s a story being told. They line up one in front of the other, fire fans over­lapped and then lights flame from front to back, a winged Shiva form­ing. There are three women and a man, with him at the very rear. Two of the women form a guard of sorts while the third dances with the man. It is intensely sexy, male and female ener­gies swirl­ing, she sway­ing and sedu­cing, he undu­lat­ing and fiery. Sud­denly, other men appear armed with fire spears and shields and there is a fight, duck­ing and swerving. The women defend also. The play goes back and forth and of course our lovers triumph.

Fire­works begin. The twirlers dis­ap­pear. The Man starts to burn, for the second time. And then there is an enorm­ous fire­ball and he is engulfed in flame. He burns brightly and then even­tu­ally falls. We move in towards him. I want to circle the pyre as I did last year, but as we get closer, someone pushes a large spher­ical art­work into the flames and another fire­ball goes off and every­one is shout­ing ”move back’ and I think, no, per­haps not now, per­haps not this year.

We walk away, towards Crude Awaken­ing, which is due to burn in another hour or so. We have instruc­tions to find a bus done up as a Silver Sphinx and to meet Kati, Priya, Yassi and 

sig­ni­fier

there.