Jungle Journal
Death of a cone, birth of a Temple and…
The Friday morning after burning Coney Mc Coneface is brutal. We are at Burning Man , deep in the black rock desert. It’s hot and dry and we are all feeling decidedly average after a long night of emotional release & celebration. We have one more job to do. Clean up the burn site.
I drag my sorry self from my trailer armed with boots and gloves and cold beer. I drive towards where I think there used to be 60 foot cone. It’s hard to spot. It takes a while before I come across two of our hardiest souls with shovels. They are patiently watching the still burning pile of ash and metal. I grab a tangle of wire and realise that I am being way too keen. It is still very very hot. It becomes clear that the boys are wise, we clearly have to wait for the fire to burn itself out for a lot more hours before we can dive in and remove ground anchors and fill our buckets with the blackened bolts and less hot rigging.
I gratefully and selfishly leave the chaps out in the sun to watch the ashes cool down and return to my bunk. I slip into delicious and much required unconsciousness.
When I emerge again I discover the crew have rallied and cleared the burn site and are now resting up and looking ahead to actually going to the event. The population of the city has grown in anticipation of the weekend. Saturday the man burns. Sunday the Temple.
We all somehow dig deep and muster our energy. Further dust storms come to bugger up our day but we make it through. We meet our friends who have brought Pulpo Magnifico to the circle of art cars behind the masses waiting for the man to burn. Pulpo is in great form and gathers huge numbers of new and old fans as it lights up the crowd and the sky with its flame.
In previous years the man burn has taken a lot longer than planned It is common for more stubborn parts of the structure resisting the flames for a long time. This takes some of the spontaneity from the experience as everyone waits a little too long for the last posts to fall. This year there was no such issues. After a truly world class pyrotechnic display there was a blinding fireball that somehow takes the entire structure down in what seems like no time at all. Perfect.
Sunday is far from a day of rest. From first light our strike crew are preparing to take down the no longer required Media Mecca and I am required to be all over the process. By late morning much has been packed away . The main strike happens Monday morning but we have made a good start.
As the evening comes we are treated to home cooked food and we congregate onto our deck from where we have a good view of the temple. The Temple of Togetherness is an impressive structure. We have watched it rise slowly and majestically from the desert over the past weeks. Quite stunning and large. The temple holds a special place in many hearts. It’s a unique temporary non-denominational sacred space. Thousands of tributes , memorials to honour the dead and the chance to let go of emotions that are no longer useful. It is burned in silence as a symbol of release and forgiveness. We were the crew that built the largest Temple of all time ( so far) in 2011. The Temple of Transition was one of our proudest achievements. Just as we see the orange light of the flames the dust appears. A wall of dust . We watch the surreal glow of a burning temple through this veil. It adds a ghostly element . It is quite beautiful if not quite the plan of those who created it.
Monday morning arrives. I can hear frantic activity outside from inside my trailer . It’s about 8 am so that confuses me. Since first light the strike boys have been awake and working. The main area bar, the walls and the floor have already been dismantled and stacked in the container. The deck is down. It’s amazing the progress. We are lucky to be all over it as we see the mountains disappear behind a dark & huge rolling cloud that just keeps on coming. Our trailer “The Growler” is a basic trailer from the 1970s that I love. It’s simple protection from what the Playa throws at you. It might leak a little in the rain but we don’t expect much of that. This year we finally found an aircon unit that works so now it is fully upgraded. Jayne is far less impressed and is forever trying to break us apart. She wants a new clean posher version. I am not persuaded.
As the thick dust fills the air and it becomes impossible to survive outside we all find safe air to breathe inside. Inside the Growler. Our two person trailer now has a dozen people squashed inside. We bring all our remaining refreshments and make the best of it,…. for a full seven hours.
We reappear into the comparative dust free air and resolve to get the hell out of this place as fast as we can. Thankfully we are not one of the many thousands of folk who left for Reno this morning and were hit by the storm. No one can move in storms like that. They close the gates for safety reasons. We hear tales of poor buggers who took over 10 hours ( instead of the usual 4 ) to get to Reno.
It takes some effort to pack up and prepare for opening the trailer and container again in a year’s time without too many surprises. It’s Tuesday morning when we head out. It takes no time to get to the road and we are in Reno within a few slow and silent extra hours. We sleep and bathe and shower and bathe and shower until our bodies are finally revealed from under the layers of sweat and filth. A large group of freshly scrubbed survivors meet up and consume industrial volumes of Sushi before failing pathetically to stay awake past 10 pm.
The rest of the week its taken up with meeting up with what is left of our crew. We don’t need to say much, we all have thousand yard stares and occasionally shake our heads in disbelief at what we have all been through. Amazingly we are still all good mates, we have paid our bills and no one died. We consider this a complete success. There is even talk of future projects. This is my time to leave. Quickly.
Mexico embraces us home. Our Mate has kept our home from falling down and Mausetrappe has not starved. The rivers are still worrying dry but the jungle has overtaken all our space. Two casitas roofs and one kitchen roof have collapsed but that was inevitable and overdue. It’s rainy season and we can actually watch the fully refreshed jungle grow. A slowly increasing quantity of Fire flies seductively flash and blink as the sun drops below the canopy. It’s good to be back.
Our artist friend Leanne has been here the whole time. She has devoted herself to completing the mural she started many months previously. After only a couple of weeks work what she produced was remarkable. It started as a simple mural project and somehow morphed into an absolute mission to capture the beautiful vast chaos of her creative vison. It’s hard to explain what six months of her time can manifest. Best to just look. You can stare mesmerically at this kaleidoscope of images for a very long time and still miss some jewels.
It is not long before my mind is invaded by stupid ideas again. I keep them to myself. I’m hiding out in the jungle in a fabulous period of intentional antisocial behavior. I have no compulsion to talk to anyone. It’s tough enough to explain my life to others when I feel like it. When I don’t it’s impossible.
The rain arrives. I have seen a lot of rain here and when it comes we know it really comes. The volume is stunning even by Mexico standards. Late at night I venture outside and it’s like walking into a waterfall. The rivers fill up and restart flowing strongly again for the first time in a couple of years. This is great news . Our aquifer will be full and so we are a lot less likely to run out of well water in May again. The jungle loves it and makes extra effort to overgrow everything. It takes a great deal of machete work to get our space back.
After a few weeks I cannot contain my stupidity any longer. Kiwi and I have been chatting a little. In 2017 we had an over ambitious idea for a temple and pitched it to Burning Man. We spent a good amount of time in New Zealand trashing out specifications and budgets and designs. The concept was to create a Temple 4 Peace. This temple would feature within its design all the words for peace in every language along with symbols of peace from around the world . We would offer every regional burn event the opportunity to contribute artwork showing their representation of peace in their culture. Collaborative artwork from iconic Burning Man artists would be featured. The extraordinary Earth Harp would be strung from the structure to a purpose built raised performance stage. It was an unique and ambitious collaborative project.
At that time the ridiculous scale of what we were proposing and our ambitious budget scared them off and our offer was declined. We have now decided to offer a much paired down version. We will remove the 150 foot tower and lower the huge arches 20 feet. It is very possible that our more humble version will be accepted . We believe that the time for a collaborative temple for peace is perfect. The only way this will happen is if I go to New Zealand and spend at least 10 days thrashing it all out again.
Sad news. My good friend Munk has died. He was a memorable DJ and bloody good bloke. He was way too young and full of potential but his and his many friends hard and real attempts to exorcise the alcohol from his life ended tragically . We shall miss you ya magnificent bugger.
So I arrange to leave a much wetter Mexico behind .. Jayne will stay in Mexico and further recover. It’s been an overwhelming year so far. She will appreciate the space to restore and rest. I also need time and space to reset. I will get to see family and friends in the UK on the way there and back. I prepare myself for a lot of travelling and get my head in the game to construct an irresistible temple proposal. Here we go again.
I arrive in London late afternoon and hire a car which I drive as far North as I can before I can’t anymore. I check into a cheap hotel just South of Leeds and remarkably find it impossible to collapse for the night. Despite my absolute bone aching exhaustion after 50 minutes solid sleep I am awake and unable to sleep again. At 6 am I am still wide awake and outside the nearest Greggs Bakery to order a bacon butty and a steak bake. I have been fantasising about both since I left the UK many moons ago..
I collect my daughter Suzy from Leeds and we drive to Lincolnshire to see my Mum for the first time in many years. It’s good to catch up. A pub lunch of my first proper fish & chips for years is paired with a few pints of Guinness. This empowers me to drive Suzy back home and head North to Darlington. I haven’t slept properly in days and it’s a struggle. I eventually land late and meet the usual suspects in my mates bar. It’s been about three years but it feels like last week. Same faces, same beer same craic.
Compulsory Sunday lunch is arranged. More than a dozen of my mates turn up. First time they have been together for a while. Its good to be the catalyst. A perfectly acceptable lamb dinner is also paired with a number of pints of Guinness. A few post lunch pints in the pub and this near perfect Sunday ends perfectly. A bath with candles,. A glass of Chardonnay and a pile of Sunday papers. Pretty much my favorite place to be. Life can be splendid sometimes.
Before my flight to Shanghai and onwards to Auckland I am treated to the wonder that is a Weatherspoon’s chain pub in Rochester Kent, many times . Another day of driving but worth it. My mate takes me with her girlie pals to imbibe of more Guinness and sample the cultural delights of Medway. She is keen to point out that they have castle ,a 600 year old cathedral and the second oldest school in the world. Also quite a lot of pubs and Guinness so I am very content.
By the time Shanghai happens to me I am pretty done in. On the flight I manage to sleep for 12 minutes 12 times in 12 hours. About an hour into the flight my body collapses and gives way to a good old fashioned British flu. My joints ache, my nose is streaming and when I finally stop coughing it’s replaced with sneezing. I have a towel over my head to keep the germs in. It’s not pretty.
It was in fact brutal. On arrival I discover that it is not possible to get to the airport hotel I booked to recover in as I am in transit for 9 hours . This is bad news. On my way to the transit terminal I am marched past a line of judgmental uniformed women with resting twat faces. Not a flicker of joy from any of them. They are the medical security team and looking for diseased people. I suppress coughing and sneezing but they collar me. They shout at me about having a fever and at one point I realise that I’m being detained. They don’t speak English which helps. They are very distracted and don’t seem to know what to do with me. I help them out. At the first chance I get I walk confidently away and don’t look back. Somehow this works . I am not on my way to some Chinese clinic for the diseased.
There is no WIFI to speak of at the airport so I can’t encourage any sympathy from anyone, The Chinese government has shut down all social media so WhatsApp and Facebook are out. The though of my nine hours layover nursing my man-flu ( the worst kind of course) in this very clean but deserted and soulless terminal is frightening. I still have my now unspeakably grotty towel to soak up the endless stuff that is now falling out of my face uncontrollably.
Empty 
Soulless
I wander the empty terminal in snotty despair . After a while I pass the executive lounges. The staff are arguing with some German blokes who are trying to show them evidence that they are allowed through their doors to access all the nice free stuff. Curiously none of the airport staff seems to speak English well enough to be understood so German is absolutely beyond them. I take advantage of this chaos and walk straight past them into the lounge and sit down like I own the place.. They are too nervous to approach the big sweaty bloke with a disgusting towel so I stay there. For nine hours.
I manage to nap a little bit and take full advantage of free food and Chardonnay. My flu is getting worse and I am coughing and sneezing enough to be scary to others. The endless Chardonnay helps. Another bonus is that there is a noodle chef on duty. There are practically no other passengers in the lounge so she is my personal noodle chef . By the time my flight to Auckland is called I’m stuffed with noodles and Chardonnay and flu. Could be worse.
My noodle chef 
Best medicine 
Strange treats
After a torturous twelve hours of thick soupy samey time our wheels hit the tarmac at Auckland. I rent an oversize truck at the airport head North a few hours to Dargaville. A colloquial farming town that seems to be from another time. I will come to love it. The journey is interesting as the sun sets over the thousand shades of green that is the New Zealand country side. I am knackered but feel that this is the place I need to be. I have been in the country over an hour and haven’t had a cheese and steak pie yet. I resolve myself to mend this discrepancy. First fuel stop I find I pull in, and of course, find a bakery section with a pile of pies. There are a dozen varieties to choose from but its late in the day so the steak and cheese are all sold. I start my pie journey with one pepper steak and a further mince & cheese version . It is fabulous but I still hanker for a classic steak & cheese. That is an important mission for tomorrow.
I arrive at Kiwis place late and find he has sorted a very acceptable space for me at the end of his modest cabin house. He has cleverly stuck a caravan to the other side and that is his bedroom. It’s very functional for a bloke or two. The middle bit is a kitchen and an “office” where we will spend a great deal of time. We open a bottle of chardonnay and get straight into it. Shall we build a temple ? Would it kill us to build a temple ? Why would anyone build a temple? We have to find how much money ? Are we actually insane ? These are recurring questions we ask ourselves daily.
It’s a few days of research and a many more bottles of chardonnay before we get into the actual application process. We call all the architects and engineers we know to persuade them to knock us up some technical drawings to demonstrate we are not just making this up. We are actually offering to build a real and large real life building. If we were doing this commercially it would take us many months. We are grateful we put so much work into this in 2017 . If we had to start from scratch it would not be possible. We have to press the button and send this application out on November 15th. That is no time. Only three weeks away.
Dargaville has a number of pie shops. I have done my research and have my favorites but feel compelled to give all pies a chance. I am averaging three pies a day. Mostly steak and cheese but occasionally I will go wild and have a seafood or kidney . I always revert back the old classic. So I am fortified with pie and wine and spend hours thrashing out a lot or words and numbers. We are in a continual loop of design and budget and explanation. I am sort of waiting to find out the very good reason why we should not be doing this. Worryingly I haven’t found that reason yet.
This is the propsed monster from 2017 we are pairing down to a more humble challenge.
It has taken a day or two but both Kiwi and Tony, the only two people I have interacted with so far , are also now down with the lurgy. The three of us are wheezing and coughing like dying possums. We all take negative Covid tests and resign ourselves to the horrors of a good old fashioned British flu. It’s ugly. We have named it Tourette’s flu. We take it in turns to cough and spit and sneeze interspaced with loud filthy swearing. Swearing is a big part of it. It makes the misery just about bearable. I should be feeling guilty for infecting everyone but am too full of self-pity and pies.
After a week of work while continually whining & whinging about our health we are getting somewhere. The story sounds good, our concept is well explained. The final design has appeared and our collaborators are lined up to join us. The challenge is to produce five sexy and informative pictures to go along with the application. We are a bunch of old traditional buggers and entirely out of touch with the modern ways of the world. We are relying on others to transform our pencil drawn designs into CAD images that can be rendered into sexy pictures. Our equipment budget extends to pencils and rubbers and pencil sharpeners.
So our next step is a frustrating one. We are waiting on others in faraway places like Vancouver and Reno to send us CAD drawing and then we need to find those clever buggers with rendering skills to transform them. My work here is done for the time being. Time to move onwards. Need some precious space to mediate, fall off the world entirely for a while and catch up on some much overdue writing. Seems like good timing for that.
