1st Time Burner this year - Lost now... Need advice.

[magdalen23]

dear first time Burner ~

hope you are feeling better. i'm not having those urges to change my job and life after the Burn, cuz i'm already an artist/writer/etc., but this year i'm experiencing the real need to just feel freer in everyday life, to *bother* to reach out to people, get giddy with silly things like dressing up (which i didn't actually get a chance to do on the PLaya much) and saying hi to strangers. fuck 'em if they can't appreciate my general friendly largesse. at least i'm doing my part.

also: i posted a random message to the Portland burner email list, where everyone's discussing/arguing about where and how to have an official Decompression party. i said hey, i'm gonna have a picnic in Laurelhurst Park on Saturday the 13th at 2 pm. come join me if you feel like it. i might even bust out with my Burning Tarot deck and do some free readings, just like i was doing on the playa. maybe it'll be me and one other person eating a sandwich. that's OK. but it feels better to reach out and take initiative than to sit around in my house, fretting about what i'll do with the epiphanies the Playa gave me this year.

[magdalen23]

and: dork that i am, i invited the folks i camped with to come over. since i hadn't unpacked anyway, i created a nice installation of dusty objects leading up to and through my house. from a recent art/theatre installation i'd done, i had a bunch of crappy old CD players and boom boxes, so i set 'em up around the house and played my best approximation of the competing loud music camps that were around us (Bad Music Camp, Goth Music Camp, and Gogol Bordello fans up the street, plus token techno; and in the bathroom you'd be assaulted by Kraftwerk, Tater Tots, or Einsturzende Neubauten). i placed a silver platter of canned food and Emergen C on the table. oh and a tweaky blinky light (i don't even use those out on the Playa, but they sure invoke Burning Man fast) hung on a water bottle.

it was nice to reconnect with my peeps, and the dorky burner setup took about 15 minutes. anyway. it made me feel better somehow.

[chinacatsunflower]

That is so cool! I wished I lived in Portland so maybe I could have made it to your party (the thing with the boomboxes struck me as particularly clever)...my dusty bags are still at the foot of my bed, so every time I wake up I am reminded of, well, you know...

Funny, my dad is from Portland, and yet somehow I ended up on the east coast...

Oh well, see you at the playa next year!