WE SURVIVED... just barely

hello to all... another year has passed... another man was burnt.. unfortunately we are back in the default world once again... with "the man" but we can always look at pictures and remember the good ole days of fire spinning on the playa, setting off fireworks, dancing, peeing in stinky outhouses and talks of arnold swarztennegger(no i dont know how to spell it, does it matter... no) taking over THE WORLD... oh the good times that were had...

i miss you all already, and i will be adding more pictures another day... enjoy these for now... they were taken by me, mike or some guest photograper taking pictures of us...

you can leave comments if you have any questions or email me at freeyourselffromyourself AT hotmail.com or i have a myspace (shocking i know) spirals420 over there... ok...
lemme know what ya think!

our first view of the playa.... here we goooooooooooooooooo!!!! 

our first view of the man... he was lowered this day... they said they would raise him or lower him depending on if people voted for fear or hope... 

alex grey carved this for burning man... how cool is that....( there is 2 at the entrance to the man and 2 at the entrance to his tent in the "village")

 

this HUGE print of alex greys welcomed you when you went to visit "the man"... 

watching dust storms from up above is funnnnn. 

it was mega windy atop the man (as usual style at burning man) but i got my bud to take a pic of me and my wings... they were used (and abused by the wind) but i still love them...  

this thing... now dont even get me started... i will come back to this.... its getting too late to even start on it... 

my shadow on my pretty chill bike... gotta love the ghetto basket... 

me and leslies shadows on the open playa... i am wearing my wonderful wings from japan! 

this was corey's first year at burning man... and this is some "magnifying" art he made... 

corey found some yummy mushrooms... are they good? 

this was the enterance to alex grey's tent 

we visited barbie death camp again, loved it again... thse were some of my favorite ones.. i like the one with all the nails in its head... very sweet. 

this was in center camp... .very cool sculpture...a very distorted person.... GIANT hand and teeny head and upper body... very very cool. 

im a douche and didnt take apicture of the whole picture but i just really loved this part of it... the spiralling featheryness is awesome. 

super cool thing that hung from the middle of the tent. it glowed under blacklight...  

the inside of alex greys tent, some of his prints that were hanging up and one of the panels Tool used in their tour. 

i met this guy and his 2 parrots outside of one of the tents in the Entheon Village (did i spell that correctly?) how awesome are those parrots... 

dave and bridget fellow campers continue to party it up at burning man... it was both of their first years, im pretty sure they will definately be back! 

me and leslie (yes she is wearing her old dreads which she made into a dread wig) before we went out to explore the playa at night...  

this was on the big projection screen during the presentation when alex grey was talking about the sacred mirror panels that Tool made and used during their lateralus tour years back... (i saw that tour 3 times!!! and i was in the same room as those same panels at burning man, so fun!) 

alex grey talking about the work he did on the lateralis cover art he did for tool... 

this is me and mike getting our picture taken with Alex Grey after he had done his presentation... seriously one of the best moments of my life... i thanked him for all the beautiful art he has created and for all the inspiration he has given me in the creation of my art.... he signed my book/journal thing i had with me and drew a picture for me i will scan it soon and show here.. its glorious.. my own personal one fo a kind alex grey piece... how neat is that...

i think i am going to scan it, enlarge it and then print it off and make a pattern for my alex grey skirt i made recently because i have been doing some random abstract embroidering on the skirt and i want to embroider the drawing he did for me on the one side of the skirt... i will have to post pictures when i get around to doing it... (and post pictures of the embroidering i have already done on the skirt... 

i kinda like how this picture turned out... it looked like someone spirographed the tool sign 

spencer's inner demons were coimng out when he tried on leslie's dread wig!!! ahhhhh! take it off!!! 

a real cool spiral flame.. 

leslie in a vortex of flames! 

leslie spinning fire (hula hoop) with the Tool Man 

this is an amazing woman PYRO GYRO is her playa name and she would come chill out at our camp with us and spin fire for us... shes amazing... (she's older then my parents and loves Tool, how cool is that!) Age is only a number... always remember that... 

this is me doing fire hula hoop for my first time... all i could smell was burning... its SCARY! 

3 people playing with fire at our camp... i see mike doing fire hula hoop on the right there... 

me and leslie went to a "boutique" at burning man and i dint find any clothes but i found a pair of the hard plastic rainbow glasses... if you are unfamiliar with them they are plastic lenses that make all lights have an aura of rainbows around them... very cool stuff... and this is the tool sign looking through the lenses... 

sorry this pic is so blurry.... im no photographer thats forsure.. but i still wanted to show what was here... it was big flaming things that were controlled somewhere to shoot out HUGE flames and this line of fire went for like a football field if not further... seriously cool... they would shoot randomly, all at one or in a crazy sequence one after another.. soooo cool... 

this is me reflecting the HOLFY FIRE panel that was under the man... it is Alex Grey's work... check him out if you dont already know about him... seriously amazing.. 

colorful rainbowiness of the TRIPITRON INFINITY.. thats not really its name but we dont really know what its real name is... nor did we know last year when they had the TRIPITRON 3000... if you dont know what i am talking about check out last years pics (link is in sidebar) but this years tripitron kicked so much ass.. seriously... a GIANT circle of the little colored balls of light.. and it just went on and on forever.... so beautiful and hypnotic... Leslie took a video of it going so if one day i ever figure out how to add video i will... or if anyone is interested i will get it to you... but it is the COOLEST thing ever... and will be FOR EV ER! 

a close up of a ball of light on the TRIPITRON INFINITY 

as the sun was juuuust starting to come up it made the sky real pretty. 

Its a TRISH dancing in the early morning sun.... good times were had with this chick... 

it was so bizarre how fast the sun rose... at first it took forever to get up over the hills and then it just zoomed on up there... 

i liked this picture of the artcar cruising out to the edge of the playa to watch the sunrise... 

early sunrise saturday morning... thought this picture was cute. 

alex grey (and allyson grey, shes like reaching for something) in their tent doing some painting and drawing... i watched alex grey produce 2 kick ass original pieces.. how cool is that?! 

part of our gang quickly jumped on a passing art car for a nice ride out to the playa to get a sweet seat to watch the man burn... the art car was a GIANT HUGE grim reaper on like a semi flat bed thingy... who really knows.. all i know is i rode my very first art car and it was SWEET... how can you go wrong with death?!?! 

oh dust... how i love thee... me and mike before the celebrations! 

mike squishing the man! 

his arms are raise and he is going to be BURNT to a freakin crisp! damn the man... (save the empire) 

fireworks and the man.. maybe one day i will be able to do the fireworks pyro stuff in the man.... that would be killer... 

burn him! 

some fire works going off... and the GIANT tornado of smoke and heat coming off the fire... crazyness.. 

so much fire! 

can you see the man on fire? 

still burning... 

this was really neat... 2 guys in fire/heat protecting suits got into this play area with a whole bunch of fans pointed at the center and they turned the fans on and shot flame throwers into the middle of the fans which made the flame go into a giant huge flame tornado into the sky... it was super rad! 

this is a real big flame the guys with flamethrowers got.... fire tornados are cool.. 

this is a funny picture... it doesnt really show what we were looking at but thats ok i will explain it the best i can...
the real funny thiong about this picture is that whats going on behind us was where the action was going on... it was a giant circle of like 20 flames that were controlled by a little circle platform with little sensors on it (same amount as there were flames) and when the person on the platform would pass their hand/leg/foot/scarf over the sensor the corresponding flame would shoot... it was really cool.. but what we were fixated on was what our shadows were doing... when different flames on different sides would shoot it would make our shadows dance... it was really neat... i think leslie took a video of it, i will have to ask her how that went because i think it was one of those you had to be there moments... but for those who were there.. wasnt that the coolest thing ever! hahaha 

this is a craptastic picture of something that was actually very cool... its me there checkin out the VENUS FLY TRAP... it was usually raised mega high up in the air but they had lowered it because i guess people were climbing up into it and going way up high travellin around the playa... it was sweet... 

on the night of the burn we all partied it up real good. we were chillin at the camp and some guy with a GIGANTIC cowboy hat (that looked like a taco) came up and i new i had to wear that sucker... 

here's the Reno guys, texans and ... Spencer.. putting this years sweet Tool sign in the burn platform to be roasted... thanks guys that sign totally rocked... 

walking away.... from another sweet tryp. 

mike in his desert gear on the last day we were there... i miss the goggles and the bandanna... it was fun being anonymous.. 

last look at the temple the day it was going to be burnt.. unfortunately we did not stay for the burning of it this year... we did not feel any connection with it at all... i did touc it briefly and thought about the new goals i have in my life for this next year, but that was basically it for me... Leslie on the other hand brought her old dreadlocks (in the form of the wig) and we tied it onto a part of the temple to be burnt... she decided it was time to let go.. they are gone... 

this is the last look at BURNING MAN... 2 wicked hippie vans in front of the HOPE and FEAR THE FUTURE sign... good bye for another year playa....