To Kelle Re: Don't Go

Well I did ask, didn't? But you knew I probably had already made up my mind. I guess I just wanted to say thanks again for this year's Omaha Peak Experience.

So what should I have expected except those bikini-clad women in the sandstorm screaming at me? Sometimes I like to go with the flow. Sometimes I like to defy the scary skulls planted along the roadside, telling me turn back, traveler, herein your doom. Doom, schmoom. It will get to all of us in the end.

Thought of you vividly at one moment, of great reward, on the last night I was there. After the fabulous Aspenites had trickled mostly away, leaving a rump camp, and the raves had died down, and the both the man and the temple had been burned, I took the opportunity to politely ditch my friends and headed out onto the "deep playa" on the other side of the temple.

The pure dark of the night was cut by the full moon over the barren mountains. I had no problem navigating on my bike across the flat playa, out into the darkness, towards the distant lights of the art exhibits that been erected out there, and the floating headlamps of the other riders in group or solitary.

It was like going from planet to planet, a galactic explorer, into the deep of both space and the mind at once.

I picked my way more deeply onto the playa. At the third exhibit, I think, I came upon a startling piece, my favorite of the show.

It was the Sephirot, standing about twelve feet high, held by wires anchored in the desert floor. It must have been painted in colors, perhaps, but in the starkness of the full moon, it was bleached black, white and gray in the stark shadows that the moon cast. It was otherwordly, as if I could not have distinguished between the reality and a DiChirico painting right in front of my me. All around was the dark flatness of the empty playa.

I lingered for a while, soaking it all up. Two or three other people came and went while I was there, then biked away into the darkness. Otherwise it was just me and the sculpture.

There were more fun things, out deeper in the playa. If I go back, I plan to spend a lot more time out there, right from the first day.

You should go, by the way.

R.I.P. Ken

Rohnert Park, Ca., 10/26/12

I think I finally got it, sitting on the beach at Point Reyes, the way to do zazen probably, on your knees. You have to be strong and straight in your torso, and in your feet. You have to bounce on your toes a bit for balance. At least that's what I discovered in the sand there. Can't believe you're gone.

Ukulele Night, Sebastapol

The Grateful Bagel, S. Main Street. 10/22/12

Benicia

Along 1st Street near the waterfront, 10/20/12

At the Carquinez Strait

Crockett, California. 10/20/12

Point Reyes National Seashore 10/21

A wooden sculpture.

California is a beautiful place. I've had the great fortune to have had my eyes opened to that, by locals here---Californios, to borrow an ancient phrase.

Along Tomales Bay, outside the oyster houses, cars were parked thickly, dozens side-by-side.

In Inverness I stopped for coffee mostly to take a peak inside the grocery. Then I drove up to the trailhead at Estero, figuring to finally sea that interesting body of water, but wound up approaching it instead from the trailhead at Bull Point, which leads right down to Creamery Bay---cow heaven. I crouched on a grassy clump of dry ground, almost at the waterline, and when I stood up a large flocks of birds took off from the water nearby.

In mid afternoon, I found North Beach, where the above picture was taken, as I walked along the shore, for over an hour. The only person I saw was right near the parking lot. Otherwise I was by myself the whole way below the small cliff.

After about a quarter of mile, one sees the first wooden sculpture. There were a few more as well. I fantasized that they might be continuously curated by anyone who passes by, and and who has the courage to alter the sculpture in some way. I thought about what I might add, then decided it was not any true artistic impulse, so I left the sculpture as it was.

The Road to Burning Man MMXII (Part Four)

At the gate, and the dust still raging, I rolled down my window just long enough to the ticket Okki had given me in Boulder. The ticket itself ornate graphic with this year's theme: "Fertility 2.0."

The guy at the gate said you had to drive down another mile or so to the "Welcome Center" where I'd be given additional materials directed onward. I told him about my car, and if it be ok to pull over. He wasn't enthusiastic about it, but told me if I had to, it would ok.

The whole way down to the second gate, my eyes were half-glued on the temperature gauge and half looking all around me in the dust to make sure I wasn't about to hit anything, or that anything wasn't about to hit me. I had to pull over twice, off onto the playa, when I thought it might boil over again.

In the welcome gate, the wind was raging harder than ever. There were two women standing in my lane to greet me. They were wearing skimpy bikini outfits, with their faces covered with scarves and big yellow ski goggles. They looked like Venusian Amazon warriors.

Okki had said that "virgins" like me were supposed to get out at the gate, ring the bell next to it and scream "I AM NO LONGER A VIRGIN!!" I really wasn't looking forward to it, and fortunately in the raging storm, no such demand was presented to me by the women there.

Instead, after a few minutes, I was directed forward by one of the women, who motioned with her hand as she looked away from me. I started the car and moved forward through the gate and into the plaza. Just as I began moving, she turned to me and started screaming at me angrily at the top of her lungs, that I was moving too fast, and didn't I see that car in the plaza in front of me in the dust!?

This is going to be a long week, I thought to myself.