dusty and exalted.

I can barely stay awake right now but I am bound and determined to keep writing on this blog, so let me provide you with just a few highlights from my week of bacchanal.

First and foremost, methinks, was the moon. We got to see her wax into fullness, then start to wane again -- one night she even wore a halo. It is rare for me to be that intimately connected with the night sky, the night wind, the night earth. I let myself feel what moon light feels like, and it is somehow reminiscent of the feeling that I had at the saltworks in Moray, Peru -- dense, quiet, intimate, snowy. The moon was a silent and unwavering beacon for me, a reminder of the place within, which brought me to centeredness again and again amidst the noise and pageantry.

Next, of course, the community. The homies, the peeps, the familia. The big, sweet love. Not to mention our camp was more tightly-organized and smoothly-run than ever, with a separate kitchen tent, shade cloth over all of our personal tents, and a separate lounge structure. The gravitational pull of home and family, especially in the heat of mid-day, was hard to resist. I remember with fondness and bemusement my first year, basically all by myself out there, when all I had was a tent and a few cans of tuna fish. The co-evolution of person, friendships and city, to be sure.

Cannot fail to mention the airplane ride. A friend of a friend was in the skydiver camp, and she got us tokens to ride up in the plane as "fireflies," or passengers. Three things to say about this, primarily. Thing one is that I had, and still have, a good deal of trouble wrapping my head around the fact that four people, seemingly otherwise sound in mind and body, leapt out of the airplane in order to hurtle towards the ground! I myself did prefer to remain IN the plane. Thing two is that immediately after the divers dove, and the door closed, the pilot turned the plane essentially on its side. Pure, adrenaline-coursing exhilaration at that, as we ourselves made a relative plummet towards the earth again. And thing three is of course just the view of the city from above -- not only the place itself, but the beautiful rift valley in which it sits and the mountains on either side. Truly breathtaking to take such a bird's eye view.

Then, the WORK. I got some good ceremonial work done out there, people! Did some healing, moved some energy, opened some doors, released some long-awaited sobs, created some alignment. As a result: shift. 'Nuff said.

And of course: the flow. Somehow, not having any expectations this year, just intentions, made it really easy to drop into the glee/ sweetness/ gravity/ juice of whatever moment I happened to be experiencing. The more I allowed it, the more it astounded me -- my favorite was on Friday night, when my original buddy and I parted ways early in the night, and I kept flowing from beautiful interaction to beautiful interaction (including a serendipitous pee-squat next to a dark RV with one of the skydivers from our experience that very day!), until finally I found four or so of my favorite people from Women's Herbal Symposium. We brought in the dawn out at the trash fence, with a visit to my friend's beautiful installation of four five-foot wooden feathers, painted black and white, in flight along the orange netting. I asked her what it meant and she, woman of few but evocative words, said, "they're finally free." Ah, yes.

On the walk back to the city, the sun newly-emerged and the full moon sinking into the cradle of the mountains, we saw two black birds in flight. My friend, the artist, found a black and white bird feather on the ground. Mind you, there's no wildlife to speak of out there.

So that was what it was, and so much more . . . I still feel a kind of lingering momentum, an explosiveness, a desire for further and ever more dizzying expansion. So much of the magic of the playa is around What Could Be. The sense of possibility we find from walking amongst evidence of unadulterated human creativity, from being free to express ourselves freely together, from touching extremes of experience and witnessing our own awe in the face of all that exposure -- that sense is unique to the playa, and the inevitable passage of this yearly ritual brings a bittersweet taste. But -- but -- it just began! We were just anticipating it, a week ago! Amazing, how it all unfurls and then retracts upon itself, with nothing but an empty, dry expanse in its wake.

But really, words can't do it justice. If you want to know more, you'll just have to experience it for yourself someday.