As I woke and washed Friday the satellite image came to mind, which I naturally slept through the previous morning. At least it had been clear weather, and something wonderful to look forward to seeing upon my return to the real world. Carter and I met up in the early afternoon as arranged and rode out to see some attractions together. We headed first to the major art camp, with one of the huge tents devoted to the works of visionary artist Alex Gray. On the way in we had to pass through a kind of open tunnel, and something was blocking the way as we arrived. The wait was worth it however, as I came upon a bearded artist giving away a box of his beautiful Burning Man posters. One side looked deceptively slapdash and unexceptional, the other was a richly adorned Burning Man logo done in bronze and brown colors, built up from bulbous overlapping segments bearing eyes. I got one and managed to keep it in pristine condition. Poster in hand, I briefly toured the trio of art gallery configured tents, despite the extra bother some of them caused by wanting people to remove their shoes before entering. One work which I was struck by was a large fiery spiral composition, with close inspection revealing couples of many present and past species copulating, carrying the fire of life along the abyss of time.
We finally entered the tent of Alex Gray. To imagine his work one must see it, I can mention that my sense of intricate detail manifested in my own painting brings me special appreciation for the monumental body of work of this amazing artist. On one wall hung a loving portrait of Albert Hoffman, the inventor of LSD, whose state of consciousness has been an influence along the way for many an artist. His face was painted partially transparent with vividly colored layers of anatomy laid bare like someone unevenly turning invisible amid a hallucinogenic background while holding a model of the molecule whose effects he first experienced. Several huge hangings of print-outs of some of Alex's paintings hung along the other walls, with the artist sitting at a small easel painting a colorful swirling texture while chatting with fans. Other artists were there nearby creating works as well, the place almost seeming like a kind of artist colony.

The belief systems represented here are probably among the most varied of any place in the 'free west', probably running the gamut from pagan and metaphysically oriented beliefs to practitioners of numerous established faiths and a lot of people intuitively feeling their way as they go along. I believe there is an expectation of miracles permeating much of the social fabric of Burning Man as much as one can find outside of a specialty gathering. People are receptive to things which are suppressed in the outside world, intuition can be trusted more here, and more events fall into the places being opened up for their useful occurrence.
One instance of synchronicity I experienced Friday stemmed from a detour to say hello to Jane Heaven, then serving food at a Roman era villa decorated encampment. The tables were topped by big printouts of Roman mosaics gathered in repeated trips abroad. Having just entered the camp I was directed by a member to take my bicycle out of the fenced in area, and I then parked and locked the bike just outside the partition barrier. I chatted with Jane, who fed me melon slices which were great in the hot sun, then I noticed someone appearing to climb on my bike. I investigated, and learned he was staggering from loosening stilts and was saved from an uncontrolled long fall by the handlebars of my bike! My happening to move it to that spot at that place and time possibly saved someone from injury, and seeing that happen reinforced the sense of magic I had felt in past years, especially in 2001 when Michael and I were gifted by a passerby from a large sack at random with the very items we had wished for among ourselves!
Friday is the last day to appreciate the Tent City in its maturity, when everything is built up and running at full speed. This is the final day to live in the alternate world of our own making knowing it would be there tomorrow. Exploring is especially rewarding on this day, away from the central streets many hidden attractions would emerge along the outer blocks. In general the quality of life appeared better in the outer streets and excessively packed further inward than we were camped. There were still sizable areas roped off here and there for groups who never showed up. A friend, Russ, was to meet up with me at sunset, but he never appeared despite a search for him at the appointed time and place. Later I was to learn of his sad fate at the very gates to the event at about this time.

Just before sunset I came upon a remarkable contraption, an articulated mechanical spider which must have weighed over a ton, driven by someone sitting in a small seat in the abdomen. A path had to be cleared among the people and bikes in its path, a can placed under a foot was stomped flat. The spider vehicle could walk forwards and back, and rotate in place in either direction. It reminded me of a midget version of the mechanical spider in the film 'Wild Wild West'.

At night in my wanders I saw many things, among which was a woman climbing while winding herself in a length of cloth hanging from a huge stout tripod, to suddenly release herself to spin as the cloth unwound, stopping at the bottom with graceful gestures. A train whistle often hooted in the darkness, this evening I finally saw its source, a small working steam locomotive fitted with wide metal wheels, chugging and hissing its way among crowds of admirers.

The cathedral sculpture loomed above the horizon line of distant lights. Bathed in pulsing colors from nearby floodlights, it became a beautiful looming apparition in the darkness. people danced in the open cathedral late into the night, I saw once among them a man dressed like a Neanderthal with a traditional Jesus haircut sucking on a big pacifier, such as are used in raves to prevent teeth grinding under the influence of ecstasy, and he was holding upright a crucifixion sized cross. As I left the colorful cathedral many puffs of fire abruptly erupted from a long series of mounted synchronized flame throwers. The far end of the series is separated from the closer end by perhaps a second, twelve puffs of fire occurring with quick ordered succession in between. From a great distance it might look like a huge torch being waved about by a violently gesturing giant. The playa is lit along a line near the horizon by the furthest flare, and the last fills my surroundings with blazing orange light.

A smaller but more impressive use of coordinated fire fountains was on a giant metal snake skeleton, with each vertebrae along the long spine equipped with a nozzle. When activated, the larger than dinosaur sized serpent reared its rattlesnake head high, its fanged jaws gaping as fire erupted from its mouth and in moving jets speeding along its backbone in loud whistling puffs.

One eerie night time landmark was a bluish white line of light generally extending straight up looking like a very tall tower. I eventually happened to pass near its base, revealing it as a very long string of colored lights held aloft by a large unlit balloon. The 'tower of light' was high enough to observe an odd visual impression of the blend between the rapid motion near its base, from wind and deliberate manipulation, and the steady swaying relative stillness of the distant top of this ephemeral 'tower'. The apex of this ribbon of light appeared as a bridge to the stars themselves.
By this time the pair of metal framework hands noted earlier were joined by a dense web of ropes sturdy enough for several people to climb within them. The nature of this work of art had changed a good deal since the original isolated metal sculptures I had admired early in the week. parts of the metal sculpture were doing double duty as percussion instruments, with resonate echoing rhythmic clashing being sustained by people wandering in and out of the pool of random musicians.
At night on the playa I use the stars to keep track of time. When the Pleides rises above the eastern mountains at this time of year it is about Midnight. They look like a little patch of light with the brighter members of this nearby star cluster standing out under scrutiny. When Orion is rising it is about two in the morning, time to start thinking about sleep if you want to start the next day fresh.

Saturday the city is no longer stable, everyone is aware of the coming ritual of this night marking a kind of 'half life' of the event, when a major landmark will vanish and the Tent City will begin to unravel. There is a sense of urgency to see what has so far been missed, to drink in the experience which in the earlier part of the week seems like a timeless existence, but whose time is at last beginning to run out. On this last day I would have access to the interior of Uchronia I ventured out to it and wrote the name of an old friend, Gregory Yob, who had died last October shortly after I had regained contact with him, making his memorial a repeat performance after reacting to an earlier false death rumor during my last attended Burning Man. Actually he is perhaps not quite dead, as his head has been delicately cryogenically frozen and stored for the time a new existence can be made available for such subjects. I wrote his name in bold letters and included other names he used. Many other memorials and other messages were written across the reachable wood, one read 'The end of the world will be better next time'. Many people were gathered to reflect on those who had died recently, and a respectful hush predominated.
As the hours pass and as the shadows grow the plans for the night take form.
About 2 or 3 in the afternoon I began to limit my water intake for this day only, reducing the occasions and amounts of urination to the point of not interfering with the enjoyment of the Burn during the three hours I will be stuck in the inner circle. I had been going through a gallon a day, or to put it another way I has it go through me. I plan ahead in this way so as not to be in the position I had suffered in what otherwise was the most memorable concert I had ever attended, Bill Graham's 'S.N.A.C.K. concert at San Francisco's Kezar stadium on March 23, 1975.
This time, for the first night of the event, the clouds look as though there could be a really nice sunset. with this in mind in addition to the wind direction, of which there is little by which to judge, the best vantage point this year would also include the brighter part of the sunset behind the Man. This location is near the ''far' side from the bulk of Black Rock City, and because of the slightly longer path to get here our region of the inner circle fills up more slowly than elsewhere. At about the time the Sun sets behind the mountains practically all the inner circle is staked out with the slow drift of people to the site steadily picking up.
The area inside the circle of buried lights surrounding the man fills with Burning Man Rangers who congregate in several groups, getting their final directions. People can still walk in or ride past the lights to an inner zone physically marked with yellow plastic tape suspended over wooden 'sawhorses', Rangers guarding the now hazardous inner pedestal of the Man. Most of the day the nooks and crannies of the interior have been carefully filled with layer upon layer of fireworks in industrial quantities. All these fireworks were delicately handled yet positioned with regard to likely ignition sequence. The last ones to obtain looks and photographs from close to the Man are being shooed away by the Rangers spreading out from their conferences. About every 30 feet a Ranger faced the people who already knew the boundary of the public was defined by the lights.
This year brought the inauguration of a new set of lights encircling the Man and defining the minimum safe zone from the fireworks. Last year the old set of hemispheric plastic lenses, with inner lights strung together like a giant necklace, was dark virtually the entire week. This new light array was placed within a series of plastic tubes housing different colored lights which were used in programmable sequences. They were tough and could be ridden over by bikes, and they worked all week.
While the Rangers are being adjusted to the form they would take for the rest of the formal evening, the sunset takes place with the unlit Man in silhouette. The clean desert colors wash across the bottoms of the clouds, fiery orange and red colors spreading to the west as the window to the night slowly rises in the east.
By now people are arriving in the thousands, piling up along the near side to the city and drifting around the inner circle in a kind of steady encirclement. It is dismaying to see people bringing coolers, blankets and tripods to the inner circle, in a crowd all can be liabilities. Rangers come up to most of the visible examples and explain the error of their ways, but they give higher priority to shooing away people with bicycles. One ranger who is now nearest me, named 'Peaches', recalls horror stories of forests of standing and prone bikes working mayhem in the darkness. She mentions being a liaison for law enforcement and reports smooth going from her perspective. To her right is a Ranger who acted supervisory to neighboring Rangers, to her right was a kindly fellow who gave away flattened pennies emblazoned with the Burning Man logo. The number of people has become too great to see the horizon, and although people have not been told yet to sit most people are sitting with standing up being the rule perhaps 60 feet beyond my innermost position. Twilight lights the sky behind the cloud silhouettes and the Man is still dark, I wonder if something is wrong. A burst of fireworks and the lighting of the neon then announce the festivities, the smoke left from the fireworks played upon by the distant laser of 'WOW' camp. Fire dancers arrive and find their groups. Soon the interior space is filled with people spinning and gesturing with fire to a hundred drumbeats, instruments being played within the crowd, and periodic bursts of fire lighting the surroundings from beyond.
Finally the arms of the Man are being raised, accompanied by cheering and a cacophony of horn blasts. This is the traditional call for people to gather, but by now practically everyone has arrived. The population density of the outer regions must be at the level of a ghost town about now!

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