Digital Hiatus – Burning Man

Hello all,

Pretty soon I plan to vacate the East Coast for a week, leave my studio in the capable hands of my colleague Sarah, and head out to Black Rock City in the Nevada Desert. That would be Burning Man, where I haven’t visited since 2001. This is exciting. I travel a lot (sometimes), but I don’t typically get away from the routine.

When I’m on the road, usually I surf from wifi network to wifi network, writing horoscopes and blogs in motel rooms, coffee houses and airports. When I stopped and thought about it, the only other time I was offline for that long (a whole week), since the Net began, was the first time I was at Black Rock City.

In my absence, Len Wallick will be providing you with daily astrology. I trust he’ll be doing a better job than I have been doing lately. I caught onto Len’s talent for astrology in the comment areas; you’ve probably read many of his ideas already. We will mark his posts with the friendly yellow Daily Astrology logo.

Even if there is Internet at Burning Man, I don’t plan to use it. (I’ve rented a nifty satellite telephone to talk to Chelsea every few days, though.) I’m sure I’ll have a few stories to tell from this high-intensity trek through an alternate reality. It’s a world of its own, one where there’s a lot of art and many curious people.

Len, thank you for keeping the space warm and well informed.

Readers or Planet Waves staff with any technical questions can contact anatoly (at) planetwaves.net. Customers with any product questions can contact chelsea (at) planetwaves.net or call her toll free at (877) 453-8265. For local contact in Kingston, drop a note to sarah (at) planetwaves.net.

I’ve written next Friday’s horoscope already, and this coming Tuesday we will be distributing Inner Space monthly to Planet Waves and Next World subscribers. If you happen to be going to Burning Man, you can find me at Poly Paradise, at the corner of 4:30 and Chaos.

Catch you on the other side.

love and lovingly,

efc (Fidel)

PS, in his post below, Len is quoting Burnt Norton, one of my very favorite poems of T.S. Eliot. Here is a little more. There is some mystery about what exactly trilling wire is. As I recall, my professor at SUNY Buffalo, who granted me an independent study on Eliot, said that it was barbed wire used during World War I — tri meaning three points. The barbed wire of these insane wars pierced our flesh and got into our blood. Eliot was not one to use his metaphors carelessly. Even if you can’t quite grasp the meaning, you can feel the elegant rhythm of the words: in light upon the figured leaf.

Garlic and sapphires in the mud
Clot the bedded axle-tree.
The trilling wire in the blood
Sings below inveterate scars
Appeasing long forgotten wars.
The dance along the artery
The circulation of the lymph
Are figured in the drift of stars
Ascend to summer in the tree
We move above the moving tree
In light upon the figured leaf
And hear upon the sodden floor
Below, the boarhound and the boar
Pursue their pattern as before
But reconciled among the stars.