Home Again, Home Again
2003-09-02 � 5:50 p.m.

Well, another trip to The Desert has come and gone. I'm calling this one a success, though that shouldn't surprise anyone — I'd call crawling there and dying with a mouthful of playa dust a success, as long as I caught a glimpse of The Man before I croaked.

Just like last year, this year wasn't as good as the previous year. Of course, I wasn't there two years ago, but everyone who is anyone agrees that the event just keeps getting worse and worse. That's why they keep coming back year after year, I expect. I just like to say it so I appear to be a weathered veteran. Which I am, kind of — according to Rob, of whom you shall no doubt hear more eventually (an eight year veteran, full of both pithy wisdom and other things), you start to count your time in Days Spent at The Man, rather than in how many years you have been in attendance. I'm at fourteen days and some hours. That's respectable.

Vex came along for the ride, poor thing. Subjected to more than a week of my company, she was rather worn by the time I delivered her back to her abode early Monday morning. I'm sure this had little to do with the fourteen or so hours we had been driving. Heh. She was (and is) delightful, of course, and I hope that I didn't dissapoint too much.

As is usual, I began planning for next year before I even arrived home this time. In fact, I was planning — a better way to put it might be "dreaming" — before an hour had passed. The aforementioned Rob was asking us all what we thought about the experience one night, and I truthfully told him that I hadn't wanted to be anywhere else since I left there last year, and it's doubly true now. I haven't felt as relaxed or welcome or unencumbered or free to do whatever the hell that I wanted since I left there.

It's funny too how your perception of everyday kinds of things can get warped and turned about by being so completely removed from them for so long. Simple things like "being inside," or complicated things like "how to act around your boss" are suddenly blossoming with extra and unnoticed pitfalls and potential. I feel like I'm wearing too many clothes and the roommate who didn't accompany us complained bitterly of the heat yesterday, a heat I hadn't even really registered as anything other than "pleasant."

I haven't finished cleaning up all my stuff from this trip, but I think it's time to prepare for next year in earnest. I'm ready for something really big — a quantum leap above and beyond my efforts this year which, though a grand improvement over the first year (basically Skot and I with a tent and our bikes), was still a very insular effort. Our *camp* was grand, but I want to contribute something extra. Across the street from us, "Pinky's" built an entire bar, complete with a crow's nest and wrapped entirely in pink fur. I just brought a dome. I NEED TO DO MORE.

I will do more.

I spent a great deal of time on this trip inside my own head, or off on my own. I hadn't intended this to be the case — I fully expected to dive into the experience head first and get all wild and crazy. But, as I mentioned above, once I arrived and felt the city around me, I found myself so relaxed, so at home, that being frenzied about socializing or seeing a bunch of wacky, crazy stuff just lost its level of importance for me. Being there was all I needed. It soothed me. I did do plenty of crazy (and perhaps stupid) things, but I also just kind of chilled out. I need to do that sometimes. More often, probably.

I'm going to get my pictures developed and then I'll see about scanning the appropriate ones in and posting them somewhere to be viewed. Don't get excited, it'll probably be awhile. I'll see about getting Skot and Vex to do the same, as they both have pictures of stuff that I don't, and their's are probably much better than my own (I am a crummy photographer).

I am still very tired, and I have more driving to do today (I must return the truck and camping gear to the ancestral abode and retrieve my car), and I haven't even left work yet.

Things are just so unreal. I cannot explain it. It's like I was living in a story, and now I have finished the story and put the book down, and the real world is surrounding me in all its pale thickness, but my mind is still in the story, imposing the framework of the story onto everything I see, making me wish I was still reading.

Everyone must read this story. You owe it to yourselves.

-t

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