I decided to write because of your mention of the man singing Blackbird when you arrived at the temple (more later). - This was my first year at the burn, and on Saturday morning, I woke up before sunrise and decided to walk to the temple to enjoy the welcoming of the new day. It took much longer than I expected, and the sun had already cleared the mountains by the time I arrived. I meandered through, taking note of all the people crying, wailing, thinking to myself, “Stupid hippies, just learn to live through your emotions and you won’t need this exorbitant display of grief.” - Maybe they do need it, they need to show people that they too, have emotions, maybe their roles in the default world won’t allow them to show that they really are human…

I had been watching the temple being constructed all month. I came as a crew member of Burn Wall Street, and while our crew was run like a military crew, with a mega-phone wake up call at dawn every day, “Get up! Get up! Gotta get up to get down you fucking hippies!”, the temple crew seemed like it was run as some sort of weird, cultish religion. There were regular gong ringing, to which we responded with loud horn sirens and hoots (doubt they heard us, but maybe). They had tea time, we were allowed to tap a keg of PBR when we had been yelled at enough for one day. Naturally, the first time I approached the temple, I had already been building up this premonition that it was going to be full of crying hippies (I use this word in the most generic way, as I believe anyone who is willing to camp in the dust for a week is a fucking hippie, myself included.) After a few minuets of looking at the scrawlings and photos, I had reached my fill of seeing all this sorrow, hearing the grief, seeing the opportunists scrambling to have their photo taken at the temple at sunrise, (I actually saw the spitting image of Woody Harrelson, clad in a disco-ball tuxedo, spinning in the sunlight, surrounded by a horde of photographers.) “Typical,” I thought.

When I left the gates, I saw some sort of display outside, I imagine it was the cocoon thing you mentioned, but by this time I was so thouroghly disgusted with the tradition people instilled in this wooden structure, that I had to leave. I made it out, and began to walk towards the sun, but was overcome by this feeling to sit and bathe myself in its warmth. As I laid back, and let myself be filled with the tangential energies that were bouncing around the temple, I suddenly started to sing Blackbird, and when I opened my eyes, several people had sat beside me and had joined in with the melody. I got up, none of them seemed to notice, and I began my walk back to camp for some dusty coffee and bacon.

— sparklpants

In the middle of the afternoon on the middle day of my Burn, I was sitting in the middle of a bench in the temple, working through the problem of my fairly happy life. After many years of struggle, my life had recently started to straighten itself out. My projects were bearing fruit. I had my health. I had found love.

Problem was, could I trust it? For the sake of myself and the people I loved, I was going to have to own this good life, take action, build on it. It was no longer right for me to hide and hope, to expect the worst, to stay small and safe. But as soon as I got to the threshold of believing that everything could really be okay, I’d start thinking about my family. All their hopes and suffering and directives and defeats, the small kindnesses they could never dare to depend on. My martyred mom, my angry, exploited dad, my alcoholic brother, all the suffering I’d grown up with, all the suffering my parents had grown up with, on and on, far-flung ancestors and recently deceased relatives. How could I depend on my hard-won happiness when they never even had half of it?

I called it survivor guilt, and I knew I was going to let go of it. I didn’t know how that was going to happen, exactly, but I brought along a red marker in hopes of writing whatever needed to be written on the wall of the temple, so that days later I could watch it burn.

All kinds of creatures were lying around the temple, dressed variously for shock or comfort, some meditating, some talking, some just dozing. In one corner, a pair of temple guardians played flute and drum. Nice enough. I didn’t pay it much attention, until a woman in a beautiful costume started dancing and the music began dancing with her, playing off her, building to an amazing crescendo. You could practically see the waves of energy swirling around everyone, uniting and lifting spirits up into the filigreed peak above the altar –

Until a woman’s tense voice crashed through the door. “I’m really sorry to interrupt, but does anyone know where to find a Ranger? A guy was parachuting into camp and his chute didn’t open and we need some help.” You could feel her straining to stay calm. A flock of people rose and moved to the southern door to lend a hand.

Inside the temple, the spell was broken. The exaltation of the music was a perfect stained glass window, now lying in shards on the ground.

All was quiet. The musicians stayed put. The energy fell quietly like mist. Long minutes passed in silence. Then, a few quiet percussive strokes. A small twitter on the flute. Plenty of space between the notes, testing the waters. I got deeper into my meditation, and soon the music came back, no longer a rising motive power, but a low, respectful undercurrent.

Then, a bellow at the eastern door. In burst a guy looking like an S&M jester, gleefully looking for people to spank. He yelled some bawdy invitations and expletives and chased people around, giving them a swift swat on the bum with his oversized paddle. Then he ran back out.

The commotion roused me from my trance. Dude! I thought. I’m meditating over here! I’m over here trying to get into lovingkindness and connect with the world as it is now and get rid of all my ancient, fucked-up shit and be more present and you can’t just come in here and… Oh.

Oh! This IS the world I’m trying to connect with – the one that’s vulgar and ridiculous and freewheeling and intentionally tries get you mad, get you off kilter – yup, that sounds like the world all right! Heads around me turned as I started laughing. That’s the world you need to be awake with, exactly the way it is, whether you have your way with it or it has its way with you.

I knew what I had to do. But before I could get up to write, a woman’s voice called out from the southern door. “Could we all say a prayer for the parachutist who fell?” she asked.

I felt everyone’s attention turn inward, getting ready to pray with all their power, when from the opposite door another woman burst in. “The parachutist is okay! He’s going to be okay!” she shouted excitedly. Laughter broke out and people looked at each other. We all knew there wasn’t time for our prayer to have had an effect, if you even believed in that sort of thing. But we may as well take credit for it. High fives all around – damn, we’re good!

As the energy settled down, I decided it was time to go. I picked up my red marker and stood up on the bench. My hand hovered next to the large space I had chosen on a wooden beam just above my head. Where to start?

Then I realized it was a whole lot simpler than that. I wrote, “I forgive you.” I looked it at, then put the cap back on the pen. I smiled, gathered my stuff and walked out.

Immersed in grateful wonder, I failed to notice how low the doorway was. Smack! My forehead slammed into the beam and I saw stars. “OMG, are you okay?” said a well-coiffed young seeker, the sort I would have hoped to impress with my chill piety. I laughed. “Fine. Thanks.” Hugs.

When the temple burned I cried and rejoiced, just like everyone else. The memories were still there, the tether to my family as fierce as ever, but the pain and guilt were truly gone. The bruise on my forehead stuck around for a while, though – a reminder of the great gift of that irreverent jester’s figurative smack in the ass.

— MetaKim

In October of 2007 I was diagnosed with a grade 3 oligo-astrocytoma, a rare form of brain cancer that is virtually always fatal. After a year of brutal treatment, including chemotherapy and radiation, I was told in November of 2008 that the doctor’s had done all they could for me and I likely had “weeks or months” to live. My wife and I decided to move in with my parents in rural southern Ohio so that I could die around family. Months passed and MRI after MRI showed that, despite the lack of ongoing treatment, the tumor was not growing.

Hope is a double-edged sword when battling cancer. You need hope to keep going, but a battle against cancer is full of cycles of hopes raised and dashed. It takes great courage to continue to hope knowing the great probability of disappointment that faces you. It was in the context of these same thoughts that I decided to return to the Playa in 2009 after having missed the previous 2 years. It was my way of committing to believe I would live despite the probability that I wouldn’t.

As the months passed and the Burn approached I found myself increasingly anxious, wondering if my tumors would remain stable or if my hopes would be dashed at the last minute. Each dollar and hour I invested in planning and putting together my ‘burn kit’ represented to me a commitment that I would make it there. I had t-shirts printed saying “I’m not dying of cancer, I am LIVING with cancer”.

Finally the day came when I passed through the BM gates in the late evening. The next morning I went directly to the temple and wrote those same words on the Temple, willing the flames at the end of the week to burn away my fears the the temple. I began to weep then, as I am weeping now, overpowered by the simple thought that life is possible.

I return to the Playa this year for the first time since then. As then, I find myself renewed in my fight, having been diagnosed with a recurrence of my cancer in 2011. My cancer is still here, and still threatens my life every day, but my journey back to the Playa represents a triumph over fear, not by conquering it, but by accepting it, understanding it and embracing it.

Burning man is a culture of giving. I have neither the time, nor the skill nor the ability to create great art installations or mutant vehicles, or to commit weeks to cleaning the Playa or preparing it. I deeply appreciate everyone who does. My gift is the one thing I can give. My gift is hope, and the message that hope is possible and life is possible, even when the odds and the weight of reality tell you it isn’t.

— Ted Chapman

In the last 4 years my uncle, my dad, my mom, then my brother had passed away. Up until the burn i had some pretty tough times in my life and i still do actually. That was all about to change. At Burning Man i was finally able to let go of them at the Temple. The night before the burning of the Temple i went into the Temple to write down words of love for my loved ones and said a prayer for them. The next night as the Temple burned i hug my fellow burner family as i cried. I then began to pray and meditate for my loved ones. Inside my minds eye i saw red lights transform into flowing blue lights that radiated throughout my body then bursting outwards in rays of blue light into the surrounding atmosphere around myself. When i finally opened my eyes again i knew that the rest of my life would be different and that i would be better. Burning Man has changed my life. The thing i love most about Burning Man is that i fell in love with the people of Burning Man. I may have lost my old family but i had just gained a new FAMILY <3

— Bill Ball

I moved toward the burning flames. As close as I could stand to the center of the smoke and heat. I knew I had to circle three times, three times round for this ritual I was creating. I walked as slowly and meditatively as I could, with those others pushing and surging from all sides, to get toward or away from the crumbled, burning temple. It was Sunday night. I was sober. I was alone in the crowd. I looked for him. We had reconnected miraculously the evening before, during the chaos and celebratory madness around the cinders of the Man. Of all those people, of all the souls, he appeared in front of me. I had said to him, I know you! And he had greeted me, without speaking, with a passionate kiss. We played all night, running around the dark playa, offering fresh coconut water and healing to others, touching and kissing with passion and abandon. I had lost him in the wee hours, and unable to find our meeting place among all the other tents grey and drab in the predawn, I trudged back to my camp alone. And as I circumambulated the hot coals, the burning sorrow, the tears, the solemn faces lit red, I looked for him. I passed two women, clad in ripped white fabric, skin rubbed with grey ashes, twisting and contorting in the agony of Butoh. They shrieked silently, bare-chested, their beautiful bodies now containers for decay and destruction. Their audience looked horrified, mesmerized. They were death incarnate, all the mortality and pain of life. I walked on. Looking for him. I passed drum circles, couples, people offering items grasped in their hands for immolation. Round and round. I walked. Skin aflame. Everything glowing. And then he appeared in front of me. Drew me to him. He said, I knew I’d find you here. We joined again in the passionate dance of our bodies, arms holding, mouths kissing, hands touching. Heat and heat and heat. We left the dying flames, and made love in his small tent. Our breathing hard, our bodies cold from the night and burning from within. Joining together, so that we could part. I slipped out of the tent alone, to find my camp and drive back “home.”

— Limen Lioness