Decompression 2010

"A plane is a bad place for an all-out sleep, but a good place to begin rest and recovery from the trip to the faraway places you've been, a decompression chamber between Here and There. Though a plane is not the ideal place really to think, to reassess or reevaluate things, it is a great place to have the illusion of doing so, and often the illusion will suffice." - Shana Alexander

Decompression is setting in pretty strong as I sit at Barefoot Coffee in Santa Clara.  It's actually one of the nicer places I've been lately that has reminded me a bit of Burning Man with its outdoor beat up couch, displayed art, and beautifully crafted latte foam (I only wish this coffee shop were in a neighborhood instead of a strip mall). 

A few of my friends have posted long and detail oriented posts about their experience, which I have thoroughly enjoyed reading...though that type of writing I find to be quite daunting...so I'll do my takeaways here.

• Leading a Camp - This year at Burning Man I co-lead Future Camp.  It was interesting to see my involvement go from "eh" to "I'm on it!" as the weeks progressed towards our adventure.  I found that leading gave me an interesting social edge that I really enjoyed.  I'm not much for jumping into group conversations, and being a lead meant that people would come up and ask me questions so that I got some one-on-one time with them and also felt helpful in the process.  It has probably been the best larger social setting I've been in in a while without feeling drained...I think having a role really helped me to socialize.

• Stomach/Posture - For the last few years I've been having stomach cramping that I think stems from storing tough emotions there.  I went to a Heart of Now workshop and was able to explore the stomach thing a little bit more with people who I don't know.  What I found was that I should be balancing out doing external work on it (massage, yoga, etc.) with internal work (listening for the feelings that come up and attempting release).  It seems obvious, but something about talking to these new folk helped it to solidify in my brain a bit more.  From thinking about my stomach, I've also been noticing how much my posture affects the relaxation of my stomach.  I'm noticing that I tend to hunch and round in, which increases pressure on an already vulnerable spot.  For the last week I've been sitting up straight, chest open, and that seems to help a lot.

• Noise pollution - Future Camp had the misfortune of locating right next to a super secret bass camp that was not so secret after Wednesday when they started playing techno music with so much bass that one could feel their eardrums shake.  A friend appropriately coined this experience as "Bass Rape."  This noise pollution caused a lot of stress on our camp and even made people ill to the point of needing to leave our camp.  There was no relief for much of 4 straight days, even after negotiating with them.  Eventually Nevada law enforcement was called in because the camp had assaulted some campers who asked them to turn it down for their well being (all this said, this is extremely rare at Burning Man and would not deter me from going again...we'll be reporting more to the organization).  One thing that all the noise pollution brought me was some introspection on the noise in my life.  It was really apparent after returning to the grid with over 150 emails waiting to be sorted.  Many of them junk...so I spent a lot of time unsubscribing to mailing lists and products that I just don't need in my face daily.  I've also started to attempt cutting down on my email time by checking and responding to email only twice a day...so far so good.

• Displays of appreciation/attraction/connection - One thing that I really enjoyed was the level of connection with people in general.  Sometimes day to day I do not enjoy the attention that I get especially from people finding me attractive...the vibe feels more that someone would like to get something from me and it's very uncomfortable.  At Burning Man the attention felt more like appreciation or recognition.  When someone would compliment me or give a hug (or kiss on the cheek...those were fun!) the feeling was one of gratitude and like the person wanted to share something with me, an offering.  I wish more of this happened in the "real" world.  I also found this to be true with gifting on the playa.  I received some really beautiful gifts that were given with a level of authenticity that I haven't seen in a long time.  It was really easy to receive these gifts since there was no implication that I would then offer something out of responsibility or guilt.

• Bliss - This was probably my favorite art piece of the week.  I'm now kicking myself that I never saw her at night. 

       

• Relationship - Burning Man was great for my relationship with James.  There are pages dedicated to how Burning Man can really test a relationship and I can see how that can definitely be true.  However, for us it's always been really great.  This year, James went out a week before me, so we were apart for a full week without any communication.  It was interesting to what would come up for me during that time and to see that any fears I had about us being apart and out of communication for that week were quickly eased when we did see each other.  James and I worked really well together at camp all week, did a lot of outings together and spent some time apart as well.  It was really really nice to have a week without other things needing attention so that we could connect more.