Final Post

Prior to Leaving for Burning Man I had spent some time with my friend Matt, during our visit together there was a temper flare, which ended up in my nipple piercing being tugged…ouch. That evening I didn’t sleep too well, I thought was because of all the excitement in my mind of leaving for Burning Man the next day. I woke up and headed out to Salt Lake City to visit Cle. I arrived in SLC around 9 at night and visited with Cle and a few of his friends, after a little while we went to a school behind his apartment and lit our wicks. After we spun I was feeling a bit sore, the right side of my chest had been aching on and off throughout the drive there and now I felt it was time to sleep since I didn’t rest well the night before. Again tossing and turning, in the morning my piercing drained and when it drained it felt much better. The trip out to the desert was slow and steady, I arrived at the gate with my paperwork in hand stating I was camped with the HBGB’s and arriving early to help with set-up. I was told to get out of the car, and the greeter gave me a big hug and said, “Welcome home.” I found 7:30 and then headed up toward ego. As I pulled into the HB campsite I was greeted and was shown where I should park. As I checked out the landscape there were some tent’s already up for kitchen and dining, Dorm tent’s 1, 2, & 3. Michael’s truck was parked under a shade structure and the top of his pickup opens up for a place to sleep. I was informed of the situation regarding strike so I could pick a location to pitch a tent. I decided to go with Dorm 2 and found a nice spot in the corner, which gave it an imaginary cave feel to it. After getting everything out of my car and putting a cover on my car I helped with putting up the classroom tent and then the start of the healing space tent. After these tents were up we took a break for dinner. After dinner I chilled with Shmid-e and had a good talk about how I seemed to appear from out of nowhere and make an impact on the fire scene. To share what was said that night, it all began last November, mainly when I was informed to seek out my own Thanksgiving dinner arrangements, Lena left. In that time I dealt with the loss by spinning a stuffed animal with a string around it’s neck as a way of ensuring it wouldn’t fly off anytime soon. Shortly after the first of the year I moved up north living in Arcata, basically I ran away and joined the circus, hanging out with our friends. Shortly after I moved in I made a fire toy with the basic spinning principle as the stuffed animal, but since the area is swarmed with people who see a lot of poi it didn’t exactly appreciate it, in fact it was compared to poi but just half the effort. So at this point I had an idea to make a new fire toy having 3 wicks. Since the stuffed animal was fairly large I just thought if the fire toy were larger it wouldn’t make that much difference since I never hit myself with the large stuffed animal. After I created this it seemed to make a change. I wasn’t spinning poi, I was pouring my hurt, my negativity into something nobody has ever seen, which I’ve come to understand made my peers ‘want to keep a distance’. After I couldn’t find a job I decided it best to move back home with my parents and since living at home have still poured my emotion into the art until the creation of my 8 wick, fire toy. When I practice while lit the reaction from the crowd is incredible, which is nice and all, however anyone who goes up after me and wants to carry the energy of from the crowd they will have to be, a) Beautiful, b) Sexually suggestive, c) Nude, d) all of the above. After my story of how I came onto the scene I called it a night and went to my tent to sleep.

The Breakfast bell certainly makes for a good alarm clock. The best breakfast buffet on the playa hands down: with sausage, bacon, pancakes, eggs benedict, French toast, and much more nearly every morning. After breakfast we went finished setting up the rest of the healing space tents. Getting the carpet laid down was a pain but after the classroom was set up with carpet and sound system it was lunchtime. After lunch we finished putting carpet down and put together a canopy for the tents then put up the meditation tent, some dust storms slowed our progress for a little while, just before sunset we started to decorate the healing space putting all the tables up and putting everything together to get ready for Monday morning. The dinner bell rang and everyone took a break from what they were doing, some even called it a day. We were still just a little behind in getting everything all ready, the bike racks still needed to be put together among a few other details. After dinner I went back to the healing space putting tables up as well as preparing for the Reiki classes I was assisting Juilette with on Tues and Thrus. In the early evening I went around to fellow HB’s and did shoulder massages for them. I decided to take a walk around the playa, visiting with the man. Then wandering off to the other side of the playa, I ran into a fire dancer and talked to her a little bit and taught someone a few tricks before heading off back to camp to sleep. I was about to go to sleep when I heard some psytrance, which drew me to it. I was able to jam and have a few drinks in the bar then I went on a little adventure around the playa. There was an art car shaped like a sailboat and I climbed up to the second floor where I met Patrick, a guy who swore I looked like someone else, and Pez, a gentleman who was gifting Pez from a Yoda dispenser, this made for an interesting experience because he thought he was out of Pez and when he flicked open the dispenser it looked as though there was a Pez left. Naturally at this point he tried to get it out because it appeared to be stuck inside of the dispenser. After a minute of yelling at Yoda to give up the goods, and an insisting from a friend of his as this Pez being mine, I grabbed the dispenser and checked the slot again for the candy when I was able to look closer it turned out there wasn’t any Pez left. At this point Pez, the guy, was feeling bummed and then searched his pockets, there was a whole pack of Pez candy in his pocket which he immediately jammed into Yoda’s throat and gave me a Pez. After dancing for a bit and visiting a bit longer I headed back to camp to crash.

In the morning there were people already waiting out in the sun to get their number for a place in the massage waiting list. Spending the morning practicing my Reiki symbols and visiting with campmates occupied the majority of my morning, then after the yogi students left the healing space I prepared my table for my first client. I was having an awesome day, one person gave me a Rockstar energy drink before I worked on him and during the session on of my friends from Truspa dropped in to let me know where to find her. There was a guy who caused me some panic when I saw him doing some massage techniques I would reserve for lovers. I mentioned it to the Healer Herder on duty and he went over and checked in on the situation, fortunately the woman who was being massaged was comfortable with it so it was just an awkward moment to have in a healing space. Gotta love the playa…I guess. After the days end I was feeling awesome and energized, just before dinner I did two attunements for people who wanted to attend the class but couldn’t because of other obligations. Then after dinner we all gathered for an opening ceremony for the HBGB camp. The opening ceremony was good, although there were a few moments that set the energy off a bit…Michael Moss, the grand-poo-bah announced his retirement of this position, shortly after this announcement a beautiful crystal singing bowl was accidentally kicked by Michael when he was walking backwards causing the bowl to shatter. After the meeting I decided to walk around the city and check out what was going on, watching the city being built in the darkness. In the evening I dressed up in my old dragon suit, the fire-spinning outfit, and went on a journey around the playa. The outfit felt rather odd, as though I wasn’t comfortable in it but it was all I had brought with me. I met up with Amy, my friend/ex co-worker, and walked with her entourage for a little while then I wasn’t feeling like where they were headed was someplace I didn’t want to be. I split from their group and walked singing the boulevard of broken dreams along my walk. I came across a guy who called me “devil-man” and a woman who called me Rob, played with some sparklers, and when I got home I talked with fellow campmates and had a great conversation with Megan. We talked and did energy exchanges into the early morning until we drifted off to sleep.

Breakfast, da-bomb, as usual everyday. After a brief meditation and review of drawing the symbols in my book Juilette and I met up in the classroom and started to set up and discuss the process in which we would pass attunements. Thankfully for the first class it was all HBGB’s only, so it made it a very comfortable class. Overview, questions, placements, then attunements. I loved to pass the Reiki attunement to everyone but a few people had amazing energy fields that made the experience truly precious. Megan was one of these students who naturally made the gift of passing attunements very special. She had already had her Reiki I attunement prior to coming to burning man and was interested in taking the class but the sign-up sheet was full, I informed her that I was teaching the class so I didn’t care what the list said and that I would allow her to attend even though the sheet was full. After the attunements were passed we took a break for lunch then met back in the classroom for a minute before Monkey Chant took over. Cha-cha-cha cha-cha-cha cha! We wandered over to the healing tent and occupied some of the tables to practice hands on. After an hour or so a man who was injured came in and I had some assistance with some of the students to do some Reiki work on this guy, Bill. At the end of the class we presented the students with certificates and, we received some beautiful gifts from the students. Now, time to run to the fire conclave and sign in. When I returned I was informed of a few guests who were going to do a performance, an interactive tarot reading. The really cool thing about this is how synchronistic the evening had been. One of my Reiki students was working the juice bar but closed it two hours later than they were supposed to, just when she decided to close the juice bar down the performers showed up and hung out for an hour or so then offered to do a performance for the camp. Anyway, I had my dinner and during this time I was thinking of a question to ask. Just as they introduced what they were about and asked if someone had a question, I realized the question I wanted to ask. My hand shot up and I was brought to the center of the dinning hall and poured my energy into the cards, shuffling them. I was asked to reveal my question and it was, how do I expand my love and joy? Then I was told to draw three cards, the first card represents the activator, the card that I drew, the star. The second card represents the transition, my card…death. The third card represents outcome, and for this I drew the hermit. After the cards were drawn the two living oracles began their performance at first the woman dancing around the room expressing love here, *scamper scamper* and here. The joyful message of being able to share and give lovingly spreading love and light. The man came out after this performance with a black hood on to play death. He got right in my face and told me the only way to let the light shine is to rip the scales off one by one. Lastly the woman came back out dressed to look like an old crone. Wisdom is what was revealed through this performance. After my performance they did a question for the camp. The cards drawn for the camp were, death, the chariot, and the emperor. Again a beautiful display of theater mixed with a little magic. After the performances I met up with Cosmo for a shamanic journey, during this journey I was able to release a lot of anger and hatred I had bottled up for quite some time. A part of it has been anger I didn’t show Lena, another part is being very little and not knowing what to do with anger other than hide. From this journey I was able to say I had certainly ripped off a lot of armor. From this experience became the death of Energy Dragon and the birth of Beloved Dragon. Now stepping into my new self, more of my full self I felt the need to rest, major energy shifts have a tendency to make one very sleepy because you almost literally wake up in a whole new world.

In the morning I was visited by one of my friends from Apogaea, Lee was wearing a badass outfit she had made by herself. A backpack was covered with bones to look make it look like skeleton wings. As the healing space started to get full I saw Ben and he mentioned he waited in line for a number but we had apparently given out all the numbers for the day. He had an injury and I let him know that because of his injury he didn’t have to worry about the number system since those who are injured are on priority. I did some Reiki on him and a little massage work, afterward he went on his way. In the late afternoon there I was working on Ra-Ra, from the kitchen staff when one of the guest healers discretely violated two women. While he was massaging the second woman one of the healers saw what was happening and one of the healer hearders addressed the situation. This predator was covering the client with a sheet and doing his dirty deeds under the cover so as to not bring attention to what he was doing. This was a hard hit energetically for everyone in the space including a lot of people who weren’t there. After the predator was confronted he jetted and the woman he was working on shortly after asked if it was possible to press charges against this man. It wasn’t long before the police were all over the camp asking questions and gathering statements. Sadly the energy from the police were throwing everything way off just with their presence and firearms. In the healing space there was a woman who was crying from pure frustration since she had ‘wasted’ a whole day to see a therapist, her boyfriend was in a session and she was told to ‘come back tomorrow’. I approached her and acknowledged her anger but just sat there, after the tears subsided she said all she really wanted to experience was the Reiki, so I introduced myself as a Reiki master and that the energies had asked me to talk to her, I took her back to a table and did some Reiki on her but the energy in the space was chaotic. After our Reiki session she thanked me for calming her down and doing some energy work, I simply said it’s all a part of the Reiki energy, I was in a state where I could have easily turned away due to the circumstances of what had just happened but I was guided to help. Before dinner Cosmo and I had another little session to deal with the violation of our space. Dinner was hectic, the picture of the ‘guest healer’ on the Hall of Fame board with a big ‘WANTED!’ directly over his mug. After dinner there was a meeting for those of us who were there as well as those who were impacted negatively by this. The meeting went on for a little while, after the meeting ended on of the people who interacted with him, remembered where he was camped and ran to the ranger station. Not too long after that the rangers informed us he was on the ground on the Esplanade in handcuffs. Megan was one of the few who were very disturbed so I spent the evening with her offering my presence and healing energies for the rest of the evening.

After breakfast the second Reiki class was held in the classroom, this was a class that was open to the public by sign up sheet so it was a little more stressful due to the fact we were working with students we hadn’t had the opportunity to spend a little time with to gauge their personalities and learning style. Again the class flowed well with inspiring comments from the students and from these classes I have been inspired to work on putting together my own Reiki classes. The Reiki class went into the afternoon just before super. After dinner there was a fire conclave meeting, it was good to see all my fire spinning friends who I haven’t seen all week, but I wasn’t too interactive, my chest was sore and I didn’t feel like spinning anymore. When I was asked to come and play I told them I wouldn’t because of my little boo-boo. One of the people who attended the meeting was a RN she also brought a friend of hers who was married to a piercer so when she looked at it they said, “You need to take that piercing out now!” Before my piercing was removed a picture was taken for the, ‘Oh my God! That is one severely abscessed piercing.’ award. I was then escorted to the Medic tent at center camp where the ‘doctor’ looked at it, then laughed and said the closest town that would treat me for this was Reno. I was given a medical pass to leave BM and re-enter without having to pay a fee. I walked back to camp with David and Sarah all pissed off, which was interesting because they were laughing at my jokes so I guess me pissed off isn’t a bad thing. As soon as we got to camp I was told to go to bed since we had to get up early in the morning and drive to Reno. Fuck.

After a Reiki on the self, filled night I was feeling alright but still sensitive to the touch, I grabbed some bacon and we hopped in the car for Reno. The Hospital sucked ass, first the doctor came in and ‘numbed’ the area which stung but was tolerable, at least I’ll be numb for the incision, yea right. The Doc came back in about 20 minutes and made the cut which wasn’t too bad, I was told it looked like a massive blood loogie coming out, but then the Doc decided to take a fucking Q-tip and jam it into the incision he had made twisting and turning it like he was digging for gold. I screamed, he stopped, he ran, someone else came back and gave me a ton of bandages and tape, giving me useless instructions on how to change it every 2 hours, yea right, not on the playa. After the hospital visit Sarah and I had lunch at Black Rock Pizza while my prescription for Vicodin and antiseptics was filled. After my prescription was filled we headed back home to the Desert. As soon as I got back to camp I went to look for my RN friend since she would want to know how I was doing. I couldn’t find her so on the way back to camp I stopped to play with a big music jam type thing that was made of steel and you had to bang on it with different objects, each making a unique sound blended into one source. I got back to camp and changed bandages for the first time in 6 hours. I thought it was kind of funny I had scheduled myself a funeral earlier in the week and if I continued to neglect my infection it could have been an actual funeral. While I was resting in peace there, I was only witnessed by passing pedestrians. As I lay there a familiar voice spoke to me. Ctuck, was riding by and had mentioned he had heard I was there, I told him I was putting a rest to the Lena side. I’m really not sure if what I meant by that was translated properly but what I have felt and come to understand is a lot of what I do is an influence of Lena, not to say she is a bad influence, it’s just been me trying to be on the same level as her, after our separation I was angry and the only way I knew what I could do with the anger was to spin, so for the past 10 months now I’ve been spinning aggressively with a, ‘you want to see badass, I’ll show you badass’ mentality. Hence the 8 wick fire dart, since it seemed that Lena was more interested in cool spinning moves, fire dancing, glowie shit, and dancing ‘till dawn was more important in life there was the separation of interest, and I wouldn’t go to spin jam or parties because I felt like my responsibilities were more important than partying at the time, so I had this anger and no way to vent. Thus enter Pi, hardcore badass spinner and everything Lena wanted that I wasn’t. So bye-bye to me. Unfortunately because I was spinning with emotional anger it was quite visible to those around me, including strangers, but mostly there was a field of energetic anger and armor, the Energy Dragon pushing the hurt deep inside outward energetically through my movements and through my breath. The funeral represents to me the death of the anger, the ripping off a majority of the armor, which pushes others away, leaving space for the energy to transform and let the Dragon be reborn. After the funeral for myself we went on a funeral procession for Nasu. Nasu was a fire-spinner in CO, his philosophy was simply, “Throw yourself at the universe and let the universe sort it out.” The procession went from center camp to 10:00 and Fetish, then back to the man, then out to the head of the dreamer for the 21-gallon salute in Charlie’s Fire sculptures. That went on until 1:30 in the morning so I went back to camp and crashed from all the walking.

After Breakfast I cleaned up my bandages, and headed out to the temple, on the way back I stopped by one of the camps at 9:00 and Esplanade to witness the butterfly being placed on the playa. Vicco was the person who was in charge of this art project and earlier in the week he had asked about a Reiki II attunement. After the butterfly was up I went back to camp and asked if he and his wife would come back to the HBGB’s for their attunements.

I went back to camp and had lunch, then went into the healing space to do some energy work as well as receive some energy work. In between giving and receiving energy work I was standing by the desk when I heard one of the Healer Hearders call my name, so I turned around and when I did, there was Lena writing a little note. I didn’t make the time to visit with her, it seemed awkward since she was just dropping by to say hi, and when she had told me where she was camped I asked if she wanted me to look for her there, and as I thought the answer was no, since Pi was there and he has issues, which I can understand. So I said goodbye and walked into the healing tent to get some energy work done, when she was finished she told me I wasn’t immortal…Damn, oh well. Shortly after my session I looked into the tent and saw Vicco and Melissa looking lost, so I approached them and we walked a little ways to do the Reiki attunements. It was an awesome experience and Melissa gifted me a bracelet, which is still around my wrist. We chatted a bit about energy and healing stuff. After they left I wrote down my contact info, after visiting with some campmates, and headed back up to their camp, just outside their camp I spotted Amara, Micah, and Jag. I ran up behind them and surprised them. We visited for a minute then we went on our ways. After I exchanged contact information with Vicco and Melissa, I wandered back to camp checking in on my bandage, then to check on my laminate. When I checked in with Michael it appeared my laminate was distributed already or picked up by someone who didn’t sign it. So I was told to get in my fire gear, wait at the circle and cross my fingers. So I changed into my gear after dinner and went to the circle. I plopped down on the edge and waited. The first flare went off and shortly after the sun started to set and Michael came over with a laminate to get me inside the circle. Once I was inside the circle Cookie took his laminate back and we rocked the fucking house with 5 performance pieces. The Nasu tribute was first and that performance was great, but the spirit of Nasu was fucking with everyone, some in a positive way, some in a negative way. The second piece to come up was the Western slope entitled Rising phoenix which was everyone doing the same poi move and Eli in the center with some fire wings, can we say ego. Then the accordion piece, we had to make some minor changes and move people around but we totally nailed this piece. Then back to Western slope with a pretty sweet performance, followed by the backdrop only because conclave members had some fights and a lot of trouble to learn how to do it. Then Chaos and I felt kind of different while doing this piece, a few spectators suggest that Nasu decided to jump into my limbs and have some fun with the 8 wick Dragon tail, and it was loved by all who witnessed it. Then we were told to go to the edge and wait, the man exploded in a barrage of fireworks, setting the structure ablaze. When the man fell I was the first in our group to haul ass toward the man. After I ran the circle I met up with my group and gathered my belongings. After the burn I met up with John and Megan, we chatted for a little while and then went to the healing space and I did some massage work for them both. After the body work everyone scattered so I wandered out to see what was going on, everywhere I went there wasn’t a lot of people and the people I did meet we just didn’t connect on any kind of level. Even in the Hookadome it was as though the group I was sitting with didn’t acknowledge my existence. So I left and continued my walk, it seemed like there was nobody around, so I hit up center camp and there were not a lot of people there. I checked in with some camps I knew some people at, and of course nobody was there. I ended up going back to camp and crashing out in the chill space.

In the morning I grabbed my fire gear and headed to the temple. When I got there I had noticed some changes since I had been there before. I tied my fire gear to one of the temple’s structure beams and after I did I had noticed it was placed directly over someone’s writing of, Dave Friend & Confident. Although with the fire poi over this it made the ‘n’ in friend disappear so it read, Dave Fried & Confident, which truly says it all about how my spinning has been for the past 10 months.

I walked back to center camp and looked around, everyone was starting to pack up and there wasn’t a lot going on, when I returned to camp people were already starting to pack up and strike the healing space so I helped out where I could. After dinner I was fortunate to get a ride from some people in a school bus to the temple burn. I managed to get some get photos and a small video of when the temple fell. I hitched a ride back to center camp with the people in the bus who brought me and I ended up walking from center camp back to the HB camp, but first stopping for a drink right around the corner from camp. I visited with some camp mates that evening and shared thanks with several people. At this point my feet were killing me, I could barely walk because my legs were so sore from the week.

I woke up with a type of urgency to pack my tent and supplies, so I loaded up my car with everything in my tent then striked my tent. After I was finished with loading my car breakfast was served and then the truck was going to head out early to avoid being caught for hours in exodus. We unloaded the truck and headed to the dump, it was already 1 pm. When we got to the dump to unload the camps trash we were hauling the gates were closed because of Labor Day. We went back to the storage unit and unloaded the trash back into one of the garages. I headed into the bay area and arrived at my Uncle’s house around 10:30 pm.

The next day I slept all day, then I was out and about in the bay area for the next few days, visiting some recent burner friends and old co-workers. It was a good experience all in all, although I really needed to take more time for me and not be concerned about my debt.

Why this is my last post? Because Energy Dragon isn’t me anymore, because I need to let go of why I still have this and move into a new direction. I view this period in time as a layer of dirt and my experience with my past has been the seed. By going through this experience I consider this as the time of growth and now I have broken through to the surface, and now it is time to move onward and upward, to let this plant blossom.

Thank you, everyone!
Beloved Dragon