I don't know why I started, what made me think of it but I was looking at Burning Man stuff, the sheer scale and beauty and silliness of it
And knowing that even if I lived in the same country, there's no universe I could attend because on every level I am not suited to hanging out in a desert, on a basic level.
But then I looked up the Australian burns and I felt very sad that I wouldn't be able to ever try to go to one.
It's not practical from a physical, emotional or logistical sense but still. Idk. It reminds me of the best parts of my childhood.
the things I loved about my mother being a part of the belly dancing communities in rural Australia, the dance retreats that were like little dance and meditation and weirdness experiences over weekends, or longer sometimes.
And reminds me of driving to see Kati Thanda–Lake Eyre when it had water in it for the first time in a hundred years, with my dad and sister.
It was the least prepared journey of all time. At one point we used a map on the back of a paper bag from a bakery to help us navigate. We got caught in a locust swarm.
But we stayed with a uranium mining protest camp when we got there, for free. The mining company had come in and poured concrete over their water pump, so my dad helped dig it up, and me and the sibling just hung out with adults who were genuinely interested in us and our stories. And we watched a film on a wind powered projector, projected onto a sheet. Ate vegetable stew in the pitch black of the desert at night.
What a strange little mental thing to unlock, a weird little longing.
