To be real..

PUNA

Before the butterfly took flight, she shed both her misfortune and achievement from the cocoon. Freedom now exists underneath her wings as her metamorphosis was both defiant and beautiful.

Life is served up in petite squares on a ceramic platter. Everything I want is readily available. The best way I know how to acquire things is to show my teeth for them. I flash my innocent and gaping smile following a sincere stare into hoodwinked eyes. It’s all too easy. My future husband and I buy a pink brick house with a porcelain garden tub, call our first daughter Bella after the Twilight Saga, signup for PTA, on call jury duty, and wait in line at malls, at grocery stores, at Big Lots for our kids’ (and our friends’ kids) toys during Christmas time. After kids grew up, my vivacity dulls and younger women luster around him, as divorce papers ensue a bitter life of regret that would take over me when I feel less sexy at the end of the bottle of scotch. Ironically, in my old age when I feel the sparks have dimmed, Glenfiddich will be my companion until the glass is no longer full.
From now until then, I could go to the neighborhood metro gym and use the elliptical day in and day out to make my butt look tight. Keep on running one foot forward while the belt dredges backward and I’m actually not moving anywhere. I’ll have a playlist on the IPod strapped to my bicep with a fan on full blast, a TV right in front of my face, and a Vogue opened up to Megan Fox on top of the machine. I hold a perfect body image in my mind as I’m fixated on the calorie counter. I’m huffing and puffing neurotically imagining cellulite is just falling off with every tick. This will make me a more beautiful woman. Well, I’ll be a prize, fit for a commendable man. Prince Charming will find me at the local bar as we get to know each other over cocktails and appetizers, still existing in the realm of the predictable. I can only hope that my butt is firm enough to thwart inevitable statistics of later-in-life fidelity, annulment, and despair. I see my future as the mate, the child bearer, the domesticated, and the refined.
And there is the story of my life recapped in two short paragraphs, even considering my literary and sardonic undertones. Truth is I yearn for a sweat I can’t just shower off from. I want it to seep into the deepest folds of my tissues and reconstruct what has already been predisposed for me. I want to redefine everything. I don’t mean that I want to shave my hair into a Mohawk, rebel against the paradigm by picketing the capitol building, run naked through the streets to make a statement (although that ends up happening quite often…) I see the next few years of my life like boot camp, not a storybook that I already know the happy ending to.
Puna didn’t tread lightly on my ideals. The village seemed to hook up with her mistress goddess Pele to test the women who treaded their territory. When I arrived, I traded my hair brush for a machete. Layers were peeled from my charisma like an onion blossom unveiled, and then ripped open by a kitchen knife and served as a stew. These ladies were not messing around. It was time to survive, and rip open what you were made of amidst the earth opening up itself to you. I transformed the delicate to the purposeful. I let my hair down so it would keep my shoulders warm at night. I uprooted the things that I thought were pretty. I dug up the earth with my fingertips so that the seeds would feel what life feels like as they are planted. Shiny new things were no longer useful. I left my earrings and my dresses at home because I anticipated tragedy in realms of intemperance. I came here to know what it was truly like to be a real woman.

Define it: a real woman. (n.)
A real woman lives. She experiences each moment without doubt or uncertainty of her capabilities. Survival is instinct. She need not fret over her strength to align with her existence. She moves with the ebb and flow of the tides. A real woman understands. She believes her Earth mother through the soles of the feet and the beat of her heart. The moon pulls her to and from the sky, yielding strength and endurance even though days are molded by the phases of the sun. A real woman adapts. Holding her child close to her with a sincere touch as well as swinging the hammer against the wall. By her own hand, destruction redefines her rebirth. Nothing of this world can contain her. She understands the changes her body are an indication of her evolution. She symbolizes the start of new days as well as the abomination of old ways. A real woman grows with every breath. She is patient and diligent as well as soft and caring. She knows that each word spoken is a testament to what her heart may wish to speak, so she holds quiet and steady until she can unleash the powers of the feminine inside.

Patience to throw the Grenade

So, I'm slowly embracing the Puna vibes, but I'm also slightly holding back. I seem to find apprehension as an apparent quality of my universe, where I'm often telling myself that I'm just not prepared enough. I'm a noob. I'm on the fence. "I've never done this before!" therefore, I'm only allowed to observe and don't have the guts yet to liberate. Constantly, I proclaim my ineptitude due to sheltered experiences. But, the verb here is opening me wide, and I'm on the verge of a complete eruption. I can feel it brewing deep inside me. I just hope I'm not one of the many statistically visionaries that gets stuck on chasing a better ecstacy, never satisfied with just one kind of work. The ones that lose their minds from too many mind expansion parties, to truly decipher which one resonated to their purposeful soul. I want to be the one that finds the deep connection to the one that pulls the most on my heart strings. The one that sings to me. So here I am. I'm on the cliff and haven't taken the plunge.
I suppose, I'm reaching out until something grabs a hold. But alas, don't wait too long. I'm reminded once again, that as soon as I jump off the shore and reach for the rope my hand slips and instead of swinging across the lagoon, I fall hard... into the murky waters, scathed and blasted by protruding rocks hammered by erosion and oxygen. And, I stop and I listen. The earth tells me she is fragile and naive, as I am just the same. That it is important to take the plunge, but also be patient for the experience to be natural rather than forced. There is a difference between punctuality and hastiness as well as laziness and ineptitude. To stop and take a breath amidst the many paths to cross, it is easier to see how they all will end up at the same end. That I will ultimately end up in the water and that maybe taken the low road will be better than assuming that splashing in with a rope swing, maybe a feat to tackle when I'm certain that my focus is intentional to accomplishing that goal, and nothing else.

Pour it Out and Pour it On

It's been a while again, but journaling can't be forced. These experiences are sometimes overwhelming and soggy, just seeping in, and layering on heavy. My body feels a little puffy, it's absorbing new temperatures, foods, minerals, and schedules. My mind feels dense, packing all the files in, socking them away for reminiscence, recollection, remedial moments, and story time.
My senses are in a slight remission today. I had a runny nose and felt like getting stoned upon arise, as if my body told my sensory adaptors to take a break this morning to allow my words to ignite. Wake up with a cup of coffee. Rearrange some of the immediacies of the mind. And call all your hands upon deck to throw my filing cabinet overboard.

I have a fear that some of the thoughts that I should have taken the time to sift through and write down may have been lost forever. It's been three weeks since I have been uploading, and I haven't even had the time to finish downloading yet.
Lately, I've been pouring it out and pouring it on my inhibitions rest off into the shadows and letting my sweet inquisition flood out, thick like molasses. Burning Man comes in, and then goes out as quickly as that. Images just post up behind my eyelids and then disappear as soon as I reoccupy myself with another... Maybe one day those memories will resurface on an acid trip. Oh man, that's going to be one hell of a ride, if that's my fate towards this entry. "...lost those memories to the fumes behind the airplane as I traveled from one groping universe to the island of the free, " then, I jump across the universe to the day I swam with hundreds of dolphins, and then the other evening when I smoked copious amounts of marijuana and restructured a compost toilet in the middle of a sopping wet and dark jungle. ...just to take a poop. How many times a day I remind myself... how grateful I am to be down.

Staggering Targets

Monday night
Kim and I triumphantly polish off a quarter of vodka knowing that we are pussy light weight drinkers, and proceed to the show completely hammered. I get on the bike and am unable to stay on it for more than 15 yards before falling off to the right side, busting my knee in the same time every time. At close to the end of the night, I realize my body is not fit for sunrise shows. But, I’m okay with that. So, I tell Kim I’m gonna go back to camp and she says to me, you’re not gonna make it, Erica. ....She tells me directions and a head lamp and I ride away. I fall off the bike at least 4 times that I can remember. I got so irritated, I started to walk, toting around the bike, realizing that my hopeful intentions can only take me so far when I'm drunk and lost in the dark. I wander and wander some more... just stepping one drunken foot in front of the other as best I can not to fall over and bust the other knee.

Tuesday morning.....
I wake up in another person’s tent and I’m looking over at him, then laying my head back down and closing my eyes hoping I can remember absolutely everything that happened up until this point. I stared at the ceiling of the tent for a little while, rearranging my memories from the night, piecing together how I got here. I don’t know this boy’s name but I know my lips were extremely raw and I was ravenously thirsty. 2 and a half minutes later, his eyes open. "Hello, crazy girl." and deductively I discovered we made out and nothing more, covered the basis of conversation and got to 'know eachother', until giving up on finding my camp and passing out next to each other after a long and unsuccessful search.
His name is Jesse Cochran from the infamous Humbolt County, California. Ironically he is NOT all of the following: a hippie, a pothead, interested in the rave scene, interested in weird homosexual workshops. He DOES, however, enjoy bloody mary's in the morning, drinking whiskey to a stupor, listening to punk rock, and apparently rescuing drunk chicks from walking themselves around into dark oblivion. He has seriously bad tattoos, a labret piercing, and the sexiest smile I've ever seen. If we spend this morning together, I think I will be hanging with him for an significant part of this event.

Shop

This trip is a test of how tough I am. I’m cracking my shell, pouring it all out, and revealing exactly what I’m made of. I say, “I’ve ‘been holding back,” in such a trivial way to describe whatever is really going on. And because I always choke in front of crowds, I feel my confidence is mustering somewhere deep inside me and unprecedented. With all presumptions aside, I’m going to lay my head down and relinquish my thoughts for now, or at least until I wake up in Reno.
First Day of Burning Man
From 11pm – 5 am. We pulled into the gates of Burning Man ever so slowly inching our way down the playa, and crept ever so slowly through the darkness. It is recommended to set up camp past midnight when the tumultuous atmosphere ceases to roar. Apparently frequent winds and dust whip around the desert during the sunlight hours, smoldering and fierce, making it difficult to unload camp and set up. The moonlight was strong and the air was calm and cold. After spending all of our possible sleeping hours in the car and finally rolling in at 5am, we set up our shade structure and bolted our tents into the ground only to crawl up into the sleeping bag, catching the sunrise and a few morning hours of shut eye.
We woke up at around 11am and took a walk around our portion of the city, carefully taking note of our surroundings seeing as it will be a hard camp to find where we live again once the city erupts. Kim and I are camping with her Wwoofing comrades from Cali. Most camps have between 20 and 50 people where as ours was of budget style, bringing food and tents enough for only 8 members.
It’s Monday evening and the sound camps and art installations are just beginning to take form. Immediately, I start seeing girls topless with pasties or nothing at all, tiny hemp skirts, dread locks, and dust masks swarm the playa. Dudes sport utilikilts or straight up slinky dresses, playing up gender confusion and complete social aversion. I tell Kim how it’s costume time from here until the end and we must look the most sexy and ridiculous as possible. Kim throws on a pair of butterfly wings and a purple tutu and I grab some furry leg warmers and a tight romper suit. The girls from my camp and I jump on our bikes and head for the Man. The Man stands on top of a tower in the center of the camp, about 50 ft tall. As I’m walking up the stairs up to the top like the Statue of Liberty, two men are coming down. I look at the steps to make sure I got one foot in front of the either and look back up as I inhale the sweaty stench of free ballin’ genitals right in my face. “Shirt Cockers” are the gender rebels who organized against wearing pants. Without any warning, my first encounter was with a man coming down the stairs as I’m walking up and his cock lands eye level. Holy Shit!
I quickly learned about most of the erotic anti-social communities throughout the week. There was the Shurly camp that lined their perimeter with bacon, only eating bacon, and proclaiming that they found that bacon was the successful way to keep the hippies away. There was the Zombie camp across the playa from the Zombies Hunters camp, who walk around in corpse paint getting captured by strategically placing PBR Tallboys in traps by the hunters with airsoft guns. There was Camp Beaverton, a ‘haven’ for overt lesbians participating in Beaver eating contests and all night girl-on-girl discos. The Pink Gym, a hellish excerise facility with a well equipped weight room, playing off the vanity contests for metro-hetereosexuals and whoever was curious. The camps were obnoxious, overt, socially awkward, tremendous, and exhilarating showcasing all the possible facets of human expression. This is going to be a wild ride.

The Burn

The playa is rough. We drove the rebar into the ground to set our camp solidly into the earth. Our shade structure erected as we lifted our tapestries high into the sky and a Chinese dragon flag raised into the air. We arrived in the first few hours that the gates opened, making our way into the abyss of the desert to find our home. Burning Man was mapped out like a U shaped city with streets named like the countries of the world and corners distinguished like the hours around a clock. We rooted at 4:00pm and Detroit. Our camp was small and quaint in comparison to some of the city communities that were created around us. It was almost as if we were out in the suburbs, creating a small residential flat outside of the inner city mayhem.

Hammered and Off

August 29. 2010

Last night was my last night in Orlando. I’m looking out this airplane window into a future beyond work and bars and clubs and people, prophesying my new life rolling in with the clouds. The sun kissed shapes transform the sky, as each cloud simulates undulating thoughts in my loaded mind. They are ephemeral and transient, strong and uncertain and I’m not even sure if I can tell where each thought stops and ends. All I can cipher is steep anticipation for all the lies ahead.
My lips are numb and I’m incredibly thirsty. It’s probably because I drank myself silly on my last night of work… which was probably not the best idea considering I’m not entirely sure the next time I’m going to enjoy a full night’s sleep. I’m hammered drunk, still in my work clothes, and reflecting on what tidbits I can piece together from my memory of the night before. Fully equipped with the heaviest pack in the world, I stacked all the most random ass things that a backpacker would never consider to be of importance on their journey. This is because I’m not traveling to any normal backpacking destination. As a matter of fact I am traveling to the single most radical event in the United States in the drop dead middle of the desert.
***
To be quite honest, my departure from Orlando wasn’t exactly how I pictured it, but then again I don’t even have any recollection of what had happened anyway so maybe it’s possible I left exactly how I wanted to.
All I can remember about my last night working on Wall St:
10pm Four adorable beer pong boys bought me 3 rounds of shots
10:45pm Patron shot
10:46pm Patron shot
10:47pm Patron shot
3:15am Cleaned the bar and swept the street
3:30am BLACKOUT
** between 3:40am and 3:50am
3:58am Drove to Denny’s with Holly
4:15am BLACKOUT
5am Arrived at the airport at 5am and had to change my clothes in the car
6:30am BLACKOUT
10am Woke up on the airplane as it landed in Salt Lake City
** Somewhere around this time frame, I apparently, had also rubbed my bare naked ass all over an Orange County cop car, paying my farewell respects to the city indirectly.