Burning Man Photos!

Please see all the photos here:
Visual Poetical Distractions, Burning Man 2009
I promise, they're great!

~~~~~

Hysteria

As she laughed I was aware of becoming involved
in her laughter and being part of it until her teeth
were only accidental stars with a talent for squadrill.
I was drawn in by short gasps, inhaled at each
momentary recovery, lost finally in the dark caverns
of her throat, bruised by the ripple of unseen muscles.
An elderly waiter with trembling hands was hurriedly
spreading a pink and white checked cloth over the rusty
green iron table, saying "If the lady and gentleman
wish to take their tea in the garden, if the lady and
gentleman wish to take their tea in the garden..."
I decided that if the shaking of her breasts could be
stopped, some of the fragments of the afternoon might
be collected, and I concentrated my attention with careful
subtlety to this end.
-T.S. Eliot

Burning Man 2009

This is what the Playa gifted me this year:
-A rainbow bead necklace
-A game to go with the necklace ;-)
-A rainbow earring
-Many nice compliments
-An amazing massage
-A fun little contraption (!)
-A beautiful magnet
-Two Playa moments (random encounters with random interesting people)
-Incredible and engaging conversation
-Wonderful connections with people
-Burning Man and Beaverton combined silver necklace (really, really special)
-Awe at the power of the desert and dust storms
-Momentary peace
-Thankfulness for knowing these amazing people

The Playa didn't resolve all of my questions, and perhaps this is good. I will continue to wonder if there is this one thing I need to let go of from back in Oxford, and do I need to be ok with letting it go, or can it just be gone?

Yesterday when I arrived back in NYC, A. commented that I had the Burning Man aura dripping off of me...this elated sensation that everyone is caring, nice, accepting towards me and others. Which is not always true in the default world. Decompressing back to reality here...

I will put up photos shortly, time permitting.

http://burningman.com

Photography thoughts

Apparently, it is a great idea to post photos on Flickr.

I have a photo included in a new online Paris Guide!

Also, in the past few weeks have posted many, many more photos on my page. These are from the final events with the Hertford College, Oxford MCR (Formal Hall and Boat Ride), London Pride, as well as an album from my trip Nowhere, the European Burning Man Regional in the Spanish Desert. Click on the link to the right, or just click here.

"My photographs don't go below the surface. They don't go below anything. They're readings of the surface." - Richard Avedon

LEGEND

"
-The heart's affection is enmeshed in vicissitude.

-What's most real is that which we never know, yet there - mid-point, invisible - constancy comes to find itself.

Inscribe these lines beneath a portrait, in which the eyes' impress and the mouth's disposition evoke a perpetual vigil. "

-David Miller, The Waters of Marah

You were in my dream last night.

She was standing behind him in my dream. He was speaking of people, encounters. Those that move through your life and then move out. I looked at her, she smiled, looking back. Yes, this is what we are.

Yesterday she told me that our interactions are new to her, we are both discovering them. I don't know how much to believe her - have never seen her any other way. We always talk of dreams, brains, spinning things. French words seep through in her conversation, delicious as sweets.

The School of the Dead

It can also happen that an author will kill himself or herself writing. the only book that is worth writing is the one we don't have the courage or strength to write. The book that hurts us (we who are writing), that makes us tremble, redden, bleed. It is combat against ourselves, the author; one of us must be vanquished or die...

What torments me is that the person who writes and who is sensitive to this kind of danger cannot not have the desire to die. The desire to die is the one thing in the world we cannot permit ourselves to admit; I am not talking about suicide: the desire to die and the temptation of suicide are two different things; suicide is murder, suicide is aimed at someone or something, whereas the desire to die is not this at all - which is why we can't talk about it.

The desire to die is the desire to know; it is not the desire to disappear, and it is not suicide; it is the desire to enjoy.

-Hélène Cixous. Three Steps on the Ladder of Writing. 32-34.

Poets, Academia

Please go here to read a very interesting article about poets, poetry and academia, specifically in light of the current Oxford Professor of Poetry saga. Highly recommend.