the ax files

September 27, 2005

Ask Not for Whom the Man Burneth

My plans were solid, and nothing had been left to chance. Of course, chance didn’t like that at all and elbowed its way into the equation. It wasn’t there to do damage though. It just wanted me to roll with whatever it threw me.

Such was the Taurus horoscope for both me and my friend Danièle E. the day she left a surprise message on my answering machine looking for a last-minute companion on a Labor Day weekend joy ride to Burning Man. Surprising because I didn’t know her very well—we’d met on Mirkarimi’s campaign, and she’d come to a post-victory spaghetti dinner at my house once, but we hadn’t really spent any time together. I guess she thought the weird collections and accumulations from my travels made me a likely candidate for a spontaneous adventure and she was right. If you want a crash course in getting to know someone, Burning Man is a good classroom. In fact it’s a good place to get to know more than you may want to know about your best and oldest friends. The desert is nothing if not a test.

What of my best-laid plans? I had had very definite goals in mind for my three-day weekend, all of them boring and in support of my ongoing project to “get my act together,” which act, by the way, has never been together, to date. First, clean my flat, which really needs it, as I have not been able bring myself to dispose of the remaining organic traces of Jack since his death in July—his litter box, furball dust bunnies and sheddings upholstering the couch. Second, my 2004 taxes, already put off twice, due 10/15, and other repulsive paperwork, but mainly, the project of which I have repeatedly told myself, while deciding not to go somewhere or do something, “There is nothing more important.” That is to work on my book proposal, and while that is a giant priority, it will happen in the fullness of time, and here life had come calling and I had to answer its call. What the hell! The spontaneity of the suggestion was what allowed me to go. I had already decided flatly against it because I need the vacation time to work on my Portland house, and my usual posse of BM friends always make a week-long big production of it, but here was someone wanting to drive up just for the weekend, which I already had off. Kismet!

I’m not a BM fanatic. I even declared in 2003, “I’m finished with Burning Man.” This would be my third Burn and though it’s an extraordinary phenomenon constituting a world of its own in which virtually anything goes, I more or less know what it requires and what I’m missing and can pretty much take it or leave it. You can make it whatever you want it to be, but you have to have the time, the money, the stamina, the means to do it and a tolerance for extreme conditions. If I still had the choice, I’d much rather go to a Dead show.

Danièle had also not planned to go, but had just scored a job at the new De Young and wanted to celebrate. My agreeing to the trip was the first wish granted her by the enchanted halo hovering over her that weekend that caused everything she desired to magically appear (well, not everything…ahem). Then the last-minute tickets came through from Craig’s List shortly before she was about to give up. I had to take Caltrain to Palo Alto after work to pick them up at the reasonable price of $200 a shot. Unfortunately for Danièle the only one to say yes to the trip was someone who has not been behind the wheel of a car since I abandoned my 1949 Chevy pick-up truck on Whidbey Island, Washington in 1982. I have in fact driven less than perhaps a couple dozen times in all my life, all in my twenties, and after 23 carless years I basically don’t know how to drive, so that chore fell entirely to her. We left well after noon Friday and got in around 2:30 a.m. Saturday morning.

HEY, SOMEONE STOLE MY BURNING MAN STORY!

On the way I had had to insist to Danièle that we stop along the way to purchase at the very least a tarp and a shade structure. I had my first visit ever to a Wal-mart, oh joy! Not having any camping gear to bring along, nor enough time to borrow any, I hadn’t thought of bringing any tools to set it up with, so I went over to my neighbor’s tent, which was securely staked to the ground, and asked to borrow his hammer. When he looked up, the first thought to pop into my head was “I could have sex with this guy.” Not that I assumed he would accommodate me or that it would even ever come to that—he was just the first likely candidate to appear in my field of vision. He took the time to help me erect our shade structure, revealed he had come alone, and was friendly and responsive to me. As we worked at undoing the knots in the guy wires, I told him the story of the mother who had her own special method of judging her son’s three prospective brides. She gave them each a knotted skein of yarn and asked their help in untangling it. The first yanked here and there impatiently and finally threw the yarn on the floor in disgust. The second concentrated for a few moments and abruptly concluded she couldn’t do it, and the third loosened and followed one thread all the way through until the mass fell easily apart and she smiled as she handed it back to the mother. “That, my son,” she said, “is the wife for you.”

Then he (a German living in New Mexico) laughed when I told him I am 25% German, 25% Russian, 50% Polish and 100% American. We hit it off easily enough, but as luck had it, some other chickee had gotten there first. I saw him leaving with a woman from another camp and so much for him. I was having breakfast at my camp when they said their lengthy, kissy goodbyes and as his car drove off, she swayed and danced and waved at it till it was out of sight.

Later on she told us the story of their unexpected “heart connection.” They had met, as neighbors, and she hadn’t thought anything of it, but later on she asked for his assistance, or something, and before long he (a masseur) was giving her what turned out to be a four-hour massage. Later she confessed to him she wanted to kiss him (but didn’t). God, she hadn’t thought of having a “playa romance!” Well you know, things unfolded from there, and while engaged in a marathon necking session they collapsed a cot belonging to a fellow whose “playa name” was “Egypt.” (His license plate read NORMAL.) Later they discovered how small a small tent can be.

I thought with different timing and circumstances that whole thing might have happened to me. But it didn’t—the heart connection, whatever other connections are made—rarely does. I did, however, reel in a few Burning Man kisses, very sweet ones, from an Israeli guy named Ari I stumbled upon while Danièle and I held hands and thrashed our way through the post-Temple burn. I’d been warned at my first BM to grab onto someone I know when the crowd “surges” after the Man falls. Against the backdrop of a smoking orange sky shooting sparks and the glowing silhouettes of the crowd moving in front of it, this guy was surveying the scene wearing a dopey-dreamy-high expression and saying in an indolent slur, “Hello, beautiful people, I love you all.” As the beautiful person closest to him, I felt impelled to kiss him. Then he kissed me. Then Danièle tugged at my hand and the third kiss was goodbye. I love those time-and-place encounters, which Burning Man by its nature facilitates.

Why don’t drug stores sell single condoms to go? Men’s bathrooms do, don’t they? I had left my stash behind and the smallest you-can-never-tell quantity I could find was a twelve-pack. No matter how lucky I got I could never dispatch that in two days so I told Danièle I had more than enough to go around, should the need arise. Whenever I wanted her opinion of a man I would simply ask “Condom?” We scrutinized lots.

The next most likely suspect was a silver fox who had popped a champagne cork somewhere behind us at the Temple Burn, answering another of Danièle’s wishes. Champagne sounded good, and the fellow somehow picked me to boldly squeeze in next to and offered us some. He was a silver fox who looked like a cross between my old flame Doug and Bill Clinton. He had come down with a posse from Whistler, British Columbia, but he tends to “roll better solo” and had left them behind. But we left each other behind when the crowd surged.

Other wishes granted Danièle were a chariot when she was tired of pounding the playa—two gals in a rickshaw pulled right up and said “You ladies want a ride?” While enjoying the free ride I announced without provocation that I was going to give her a foot bath and massage to relax her from the long drive. As soon as she expressed a desire for a sorbet, someone handed us grape popsicles. We saw an art car laden with fake bunches of purple grapes and she wished for some wine. “Want some wine?” And so on. There was magic in the air, and the universe was doing its job providing.

No matter what else happens or does not, you will see something at Burning Man you will never forget. My first time there it was the multiple giant tornadoes of smoke speeding into the sky that the Temple burn produced. Words don’t do it, you’ve got to see it and be of it. I turned around and tall, dark, handsome, strong Dustin Shanky of my camp had tears rolling down his face. I was very moved. Second time was the spectacle of the self-same Dustin practicing handling his fire baton (I could only wish that task had fallen to me, ahem) or some other implement, whereby I discerned the entire progress of mankind as delineated by the movements of the human form. It was like a quick tour of how with his arms and hands and back and legs, man created the built environment. This time around at the Burning Man burn D and I had scored front row perimeter seats and an enormous roiling wall of orange smoke and cinders advanced towards us like a tidal wave. I was gasping with alarm and backing up on my butt into the crowd behind me but it never reached us. It was an awesome sight I’d expect to see on Mount Olympus, not some earthly realm like open desert. I had a flashback to some tribal past of humankind in which the primal surge of dancing naked with fire on the land was a sacred ritual. In the twenty-first century, this joyful indulgence in elemental forces provides a much-needed healing oasis from the reality of too much everything—people, cars, consumer goods, information, communication. No wonder it’s gotten so huge, and greeters at the gate usher you in with “Welcome home.” I have found that kind that kind of corny, kind of clubbish, but it is for many the only opportunity on this planet to live as they see fit.

Another time a dust storm blew through and as we stood on the playa in white-out conditions holding hands and waiting for it to pass, I could just make out a traffic sign bearing the word LOVE barely emerging out of the milky cloud.

But the sight we would never have forgotten that we did not see was Matt Gonzalez running naked in the desert, as previously advertised by h. What I had expected to see was a mysterious crowd of celebrants moving together in a pack over the playa, like Jesus and his disciples, with Matt not visible at its center. But no sightings. (I did however spot him in the row behind me at the George Galloway event, and in cazh mode with his shirttails hanging out at the antiwar march of the 24th.) It’s a good thing for Munchkin I didn’t encounter him in that setting. I have an inborn tendency—it’s kind of a hobby—to terrorize shy men, and the shyer the man, the more outrageous I feel impelled to be. I’ve been known to flirt with men by proxy, so I don’t even have to be on the scene, as with this column. The lack of “rules” on the playa could very well have induced me to scandalize the poor boy right into his goddamn grave. But we were both spared the consequences. Or perhaps the Burn had rocked his world and he was already letting it all hang out.

“Allow me to revolutionize your life,” I used to say to the architects in my Portland office. I am going to turn you inside out! I announced to a guy before leaving on an exotic trip with him. The only thing that turned, though, was my stomach with Montezuma’s Revenge. The last thing some men want is to be hit over the head with a sledgehammer of a woman, but you know, my motto has always been, “If I’m too much for you, mister, then you are not enough for me.”

WHAT I LEARNED AT BURNING MAN

It doesn’t have to be a major production. Though I like to travel alone, I had thought I couldn’t possibly ever go myself, without the infrastructure of my friends’ truckloads of gear, tools, equipment, furniture, a goddamn harem-style tent just for costumery, forgodssake, accessories galore, glorious sun showers and cooking stuff. There are any number of rides for you and your stuff to get out there. One does not, for instance, have to provide for and eat cooked food, and chances are someone will feed it to you anyway. Recreating your living room and bedroom are not necessary—but you must have “indoor” sleeping accommodations in case of dust storm. Everyone has a list of what they’ll bring “next time.” In fact Egypt had a friend who made a list of everything he wished he had brought from his condo….and eventually got rid of everything else! For me the trip was a success because of the sudden immersion into another reality, and because I now have a new gal pal to hang with. We saw someone she knew across a room the other day and I asked if she wanted to invite him to grab a bite to eat with us. Because “condom” is somewhat risqué for public use, we now assess men with “dinner?” (good for dating or hanging out) “or dessert?” (i.e. condom).

And anyway, what would I have done if I hadn’t gone? Vacuumed the lint from behind my dryer.

ALL ABOUT MARK MARSH

Speaking of dinner and dessert, I was surprised the other night to find Mark Marsh, 56, firebrand political artist, poster propagandist, stone cold silver fox, and my old boyfriend, jabbing my leg with an umbrella to get my attention at Richard Heinberg’s talk on peak oil at New College. I think Mark taught screenprinting there. He had walked out of his way while on his way to the monthly meeting of the Mycological Society, just to set up a date with me for later. He was headed toward the Castro so I suggested a favorite little hang of mine, Orphan Andy’s.

Mark lives in Berkeley—we met telegraphically while I was admiring the artwork he hawks on that avenue on weekends—and I don’t get much of a chance to connect with him, but a few days after the lecture I also ran across him at the march, where he was hoisting his own work, and reflected that Mark, the epitome of the silver fox type—oh yes I mentioned that already—came as close as anyone ever has, to being Mr. Right. Except that he was wrong. I can’t keep track of however many children he has sired or acquired along the way, but he was “put on this earth to be a father,” he once told me, and that was one reason I got out of Dodge right quick, because I was so not put on this earth to be a mother. I would have had a child, had fate stepped in, but I pity the child who might have drawn the wild card of me for a mother. I’d love him or her plenty, but I know myself—constitutionally, I just don’t have it to give 24/7. I cannot be consistently responsive to people. I’m a low voltage gal who needs a lot of down time and solitude. Me with my kids: “Mommy has a headache. Mommy has to lie down now.” That’s why I’d rather live alone and choose when I’m going to see people. It’s one reason, at least, I haven’t married, can’t manage to live even with my best friends, and why I won’t even have a dog. Husbands, children, roommates, dogs—they require too much attention, response and daily ministrations. I don’t have it to give.

Wherever Mark goes, pregnancy follows, but the real reason I left him while still in love with him (only time I ever did that) was because he was interfering with a nervous breakdown I was busy having. He was perfectly happy with me but I couldn’t respond to a lover just then and I ignored his several attempts to contact me. But months later when I had recovered and felt better I sent him a postcard from Italy about the pictures on the wall (he had wanted me to go on a mountain trek but I was going to Italy and he said “Italy? There’s nothing there but a lot of pictures on the wall”) he responded with a letter and I went to see his new house. He was foxy as ever and I might even have gotten back together with him—except that in my absence he had impregnated another woman. See!? I found it pretty damn strange when he took me inside and introduced me to his pregnant girlfriend who was already in bed. I later caught her looking askance at me when she recognized me at a Jim Hightower event.

THERE ARE OLD MUSHROOM HUNTERS
AND BOLD MUSHROOM HUNTERS
BUT THERE ARE NO OLD BOLD MUSHROOM HUNTERS

At the diner Mark was there having a cup of tea. I ordered a root beer float. Mark’s a naturalist who’s into mushrooms. I asked him about the mycological meeting and he whipped out of his bag a monster specimen, “The Prince,” agaricus augustus, the shroom with the almond perfume (when you scratch the stem), which caused our gay waiter to whistle with admiration. We laughed.

Mark treds lightly on the fine line, he admits, between groping and affection, and insisted on moving to my side of the booth to sit next to me. He says he’s got a warm spot for me due to the unfinished business of breaking up before our time. Mark claimed I once had him over for dinner and offered him my breast as an appetizer. I don’t specifically recall that maneuver but it sounds like something I would do—and hey, thanks for reminding me, I’ll put that back into my repertoire. I had told Mark a while ago that I had plugged his website in my column; he mistakenly thought I had written about us but couldn’t find the reference. Why, I asked, do you want me to write about us? Because the next Ax Files is going to be All About Mark Marsh. Too bad, you hound dog, you can’t recycle this piece like you did the priceless original manuscripts of the love letters I wrote every day while you were away on a camping trip I couldn’t join you on because I had just taken a new job. Mark said they were “too hot” to keep lying around for his new pregnant girlfriend to find. But that’s the end of this tale because Mark himself is still too hot to keep lying around.

CONGRATULATIONS LAWRENCE

Ferlinghetti on your National Book Awards new “Literarian Award” “for outstanding service to the American literary community.” I can do without the award but my new aspiration is to someday be called a “literarian.” Hell, I’ll just do it myself. “So what do you do?” “Oh, I’m a literarian.” I like it!

SENTINEL v. CHRIS DALY v. SENTINEL, SENTINEL v. JIM MEKO v. SENTINEL

Boys, boys, boys! Take it out in the back alley and let’s get back to work.

POWER TO THE PANHANDLE…TOILET

There are 168 hours in a calendar week. Between the time I get up and the time I get home I spend close to 12 of the day’s 24 hours supporting my two mortgages. I enjoy my commute because I can use my hour on Muni and the Transbay Bus to Berkeley to wake up, have some breakfast, put my makeup on, talk to fellow travelers, read the Examiner or the Onion, make a dent in a book, work on this column, admire the city and the bay, chart the progress on the East Bay Bridge, pay my bills or hit the snooze alarm and zone out. I like my job OK, I love my coworkers, my office is attractive and pleasant, and I return home pretty damn tired, because I am not an office manager for a renowned architectural firm; that’s what I do for a living. What I am is a writer who spends half her day getting paid for doing someone else’s work; if I could spend it doing my own, the universe would crack right open. But I am not yet at that point, and in the remaining 12 hours of my day I must allow for 6 to 7 hours of fitful sleep—so out of the 168 hours of a week total, roughly 60 are spent earning a living and roughly 50 in some kind of altered state approximating sleep. I’m not one of these Women Who Do Too Much, but that leaves me weekends and about 5 hours an evening to fit the rest of my life into—writing, reading, attending art and political events of interest, staying on top of current events, socializing, learning new things, maintaining and upgrading a house I live 540 miles from, shopping, eating, cleaning, short trips, and being exhausted. Between whatever attractions compete for my attention, I often find myself starved for rest and solitude.

BOO HOO, h IS NOT GETTING HIS WAY

So you will excuse me if I don’t take the time to read all about it! regarding the Panhandle Toilet controversy, whatever indeed it is that has h’s panties in a twist, but you’ve got to pick your battles and that one ain’t mine. I can’t speak to who I think is right or wrong, because I will not make time to read those ricocheting emails, but this one from h to Ross Mirkarimi caught my eye:

Ross,

Bad mistake. You're siding with the enemy and looking like a fool. Go get your pic taken with Gav & Tiger. Bring ear plugs. You're right that we can't do this without you. But we can do without you.

h, what’s with you?

h hopes to somehow disrupt and thwart some Tiger Woods event that got funded while city services went down the toilet (pardon the expression). Dissent and civil disobedience and exploring alternatives are the lifeblood of changing the world, and we all love the salt and pepper you put on the meat and potatoes of life, but one can be angry without being a bully, state one’s case without insulting someone, disagree with someone without belittling him, and be disappointed by someone without cutting him off, this man who has been a friend to you—so at your invitation and encouragement I will repeat in this column what I wrote to you about your treatment of Ross after he informed you your citizens’ remediation plans for the toilet would not go through:

…it was unnecessarily cruel, and childish.

I know rattling cages is in your blood, but a simple “fuck you you fucking fuck” would have sufficed. And if you have an M.A. in this and 20 years’ experience in that, and are expert in the other, why don’t you have a job? Perhaps the fool lives in your mirror!

Anyway everyone knows h brown is a no-good keyboard-poundin’ booze-houndin’ commie subversive who routinely accepts free booze and the occasional baked good from some of the city’s highest-ranking politicos. He’s not only watching City Hall but goading it, hoping it’ll screw up so he’ll have more nasty, mean-spirited things to say about it. How many journalists do you know who hawk sweatshirts as a “fundraiser” for their forum? I submit, h brown is no journalist, but a political action committee who should be investigated by the Ethics Commission! Get on it, Daly, won’t you? I’ll front you the five bucks to take him on.

And need I even say, no we can’t do without Ross. How many progressive Green Jewish Russian Arabs have made it into elected office in this land? He’s ambitious, loves the limelight and I’m sure the power, but all that is fueled by his love for this city and its people, his basic decency and extravagant intelligence. Not that you’re not justified about whatever it is you want from this toilet, but you think he’s deliberately out to screw you and side with the “enemies”? Come on! If he’s still morphing from a grassroots activist into an effective politician, let him learn. I’ll be surprised if you’re not there slurping up the red, red wine at the next art party.

I don’t envy Ross his position. I went into Fillmore Whole Foods wearing numerous Ross campaign buttons and the counter clerk said to me, “How’s he going to stop people from getting shot? By being a liberal San Franciscan?” Even if he were the caped crusader he claims not to be, the Western Addition murder rate alone is a massive challenge for a newbie Supervisor, and I’d rather see him expend ectoplasm on issues more substantive than defending his stance on a toilet, regardless of what rock star royalty once peed in it.

ISSUE MORE SUBSTANTIVE

I’m going to get serious on your asses now, if not medieval. I ran across Matt Gonzalez’ thousand words on depleted uranium in Mesh magazine—but we all know what a picture is worth. I’m not going to repeat what others who know more than I have already put out there—except that it’s the weapon that keeps on killing; the stuff has a half-life as long as our universe is old—look it up on www.firethistime.org or check out the DVD’s “Poison DUst,” and “Metal of Honor,” available from www.Leftbooks.com.

Before campaigning for Ross, I investigated him on the web—my limited experience of him as a leftist babe needed fleshing out with hard info—and was exposed to his work documenting the horrific effects of depleted uranium for The Arms Control Research Centre, in his report of 1992, “The Environmental and Human Health Impacts of the Gulf Region with Special Reference to Iraq.” Ross reported that midwives no longer look forward to childbirth because they “don’t know what’s going to come out.”

WARNING: DISTURBING OUTRAGING IMAGES AHEAD

There are about 500 links to Mirkarimi + depleted uranium but strangely, I just found these pictures on a site called http://www.jesus-is-savior.com which has some surprisingly cogent political content along with the usual what you’d expect…e.g. “How to Go To Heaven” etc. Ross wanted these pictures to be publicized as widely as possible so here they are. They were taken in Iraq, by Professor Siegwart-Horst Gunther and, I believe, Dr. Beatrice Boctor, have been rendered public domain and in no way infringe on the rights of Luke Thomas. But take my word that I don’t know if you’ll ever see anything so awful. These are newborns stripped of their precious birthright to a normal life, asked to pay, as Ross put it, “the highest price—the integrity of their DNA.” If you’re squeamish, be prepared. But these pictures need to be seen. Show them to everyone you know. And hug your kids tonight.