rant whine 'splain espouse: Surreal, unreal, hyper-real

Friday, September 03, 2004

Surreal, unreal, hyper-real

Friday 4:45pm // veggin' in the Men's Temple

I've taken most of the afternoon off today and rested, sorted most of my pictures, and am ready to present a few to you, out there, in the "real" world. I'm not sure what this world is, out here in Black Rock City, but it's at the same time incredibly surreal, incredibly unreal, and incredibly high-definition real.

That latter may have a lot to do with the incredibly harsh conditions one must endure to be out here. I'm still pretty amazed at how well I'm handling the conditions. Really I have no complaints at all. Minor inconveniences, a few small annoyances, but nothing compared to how completely out of it I thought I'd be in the hottest heat of each day's afternoon. But it's been really fine out here.

I've tried to figure out a way to sum up the experience of BRC in a sentence or two, and this is the best I've come up with so far: It's part Mad Max, part paganistic Rainbow Gathering, part techno-geeks, and all dusty.

So, because that simplistic description can't possibly do justice to the incredible sensory overload one experiences here (even when I'm just veggin' in camp!), let me try to show you a little bit of what it's like, with this random assortment of Photos of the Past Few Days...

Velms, The Man, and the moon

Lasers on the Esplanade

Puffy thing on the Playa

Center Camp hula dancers

Velma communicates with ?

Burlesque show at Infinite Oasis

Velms and Mark chillin'

Hookahdome

Jack

Mother Bear and Sarah

Thunderdome

Fire barrel

The Cube

The Flaming Catholic Schoolgirls performing in Thunderdome

Village map
This is our village, Infinite Oasis, just one of many theme camps. The highlighted part is Women's Temple camp (that's us).

Update: You have no idea how slow it is trying to get these photos up. Think of the slowest modem in the world, and then trip over it's power cable twenty times, unplugging it in the middle of an upload. The sandstorms interfere with the signal going back to Gerlach, where there's supposedly a T1 back to the rest of the world. But it's a line-of-sight satellite from BRC to Gerlach (nearest little town), and when the dust is kicked up by the wind (which is pretty much always), the connection is crap.

Update: Yes, this post was interrupted about 38 times before, so I had to try again later. I'm typing in the dark now,