I think this is my favorite image from Burning Man this year. My camera died on Thursday so that was all I got, which in a way was for the best, although the two most memorable experiences I had happened after then.

People always ask the question of what was the coolest/most memorable/etc. thing you saw/experienced at Burning Man, and it’s kind of a useless question I always thought.

This year though I really chilled as for me it was more about just relaxing deeply and getting away from everything more than anything else. I did camp with some friends at a theme camp right on the Esplanade, but I wasn’t as deeply ingrained in camp as maybe last year.

Regardless, the singular most memorable experience for me was just one of those simple connections that you make with someone else. The connection was one that you could feel before it even started happening. Maybe it was b/c I had observed this person for a while while chatting and socializing with some other friends, but my wandering eye could not look away.

Eventually I just walked away from my friend with a terse, “hold on a sec…” and went over to her. She was situated in a booth she brought out behind a typewriter with her sun hat pulled down low so that all you could see was her mouth. From afar I was not sure if she was a male or female, but her Flash Fiction sign and 60 second novel piqued my interest.

As there was one other in the line experiencing her Flash Fiction, I waited patiently. The guy ahead of me read out his prose and it was beautiful. I could tell this woman had a way of transferring the beautiful essence of someone and doing it so quickly was amazing. Because we’re doing this project for our exhibition that’s sort of similar, I could identify with how difficult it can be to ‘assess’ someone and feel them out…

So as she asked me about myself, I felt odd, since I hate talking about myself in that kind of context. She asked me a total of three questions, and as I replied, she typed away, would spend some time thinking, and then resume her typing. A couple dust storms interrupted the flow, but when she zipped the carriage over and pulled the page and handed it over, I was blown away.

Of course the flattering prose makes it easy to swallow, but it wasn’t so much that. We hung out for a while, and I took over the stand while she went to the porta potties, and afterwards talked a lot more.

It was a simple thing, and I didn’t even ask much more about her. It seems like everything else is just adjectives or periphery to the experience of the now, so I just let it slide although here I am a few days later looking up on e-playa to see if she may have posted. Damn attachment!

Oh well, the point is that for me, that WAS my most memorable experience at Burning Man, and this may have been the first time since my first trip out there where there was a ‘most memorable’ – the first time being a mushroom influenced epiphany (which I had this year as well – well, two in fact)…

….