POSTCARD FROM THE EDGE

BURNING MAN, Black Rock City, Nevada – Rach and I wander the playa, despite the mid-afternoon heat. We snarf liquid-nitrogen ice cream, gawk at trees made of ballet shoes and animal bones, sip champagne and nibble cheese-old-enough-for-ennui in a tent complex painted like a Regency ballroom. We watch a man squirm through a pink net "rebirthing tube" 20 feet off the ground and lose his shorts, just like the attendant predicted.

Here is a vampire bar, there a women's pee-funnel workshop, over yonder the "Billion Bunny March" indoctrination camp (free ears!).

Nothing I write could express the heat-blooming lunacy. That electric Kool-Aid acid test. That ho ho, ha ha, hee hee. Hip mouth gulps nerd tail until the whole ouroborous spins out of control: just another playa dust devil. As far as the eye stretches, art-archy reigns.

Here's one of the reasons I retreated to this, my native, continent: not just to witness the decline of America, but to celebrate its wildcat beauties ...

Like, erm, the freedom to blow $hit up in the desert wearing a tutu.

Yee haw! Liberals are go!