Sobriety Bites: The Sunday Spinster Sermons: Part Seven

Hello and welcome and a good Sunday to you all, spinster or otherwise.

We are gathered here today to celebrate the Bacchanalian Fiesta named Burning Man and best understood through myth and faerie:

Titian's Bacchus & Ariadne - Wild men & dryads dancing to the flute & horn

Paton's A Midsummer Night's Dream - Victorian's excuse for naked ladies nibbling one another

'Let us read and let us dance; these two amusements will never do any harm to the world!' Voltaire

So this year, it was not all dubstep and the need to be rescued by a burly American, it felt more like this:

The affection began with beloved friends from Hong Kong and flowered as I met their friends and my heart opened and expanded, making room for just about everybody. The Hawaiian Thundercat. The EastEnd Unicorn. The Suave Eurotease. Friends would bring fairytales to me. The faerie. The elf. The dwarf. The mythical creatures. I may have begun dancing on my own but soon my arrival was heralded by inhabitants of Narnia and my bellini in the horn was known across the land.

The happy couple

Singing Rick Astley, Never Giving You Up, lying on couches glowing with liquor and soft blankets. Brushing lips. A Titian painting. Rich and opulent. Redolent with sunshine. Men with flutes. Men with fur legs. Men in leopard print. Horns. Excess. Bacchus. Ariadne. To be wiped clean again by the grey of playa sand. Pulling everyone into soft focus. As children. Horny, deviant children. The island of lost boys. Carefree and smiling. Sometimes skipping. Pandora’s dressing up box swung wide open, allowing hope and depravity to fill the air.

Pandora's Breakfast

Meanwhile, in tents, and RVs and deep playa orgiastic delights await. A young man resplendent in raven feathers and sequins thrusts into a young Adonis with supposedly legal ID. A tent door falls down to reveal a lusty ringletted maiden’s maidenhead being brought to rapturous spasm by a tall, dark, handsome stranger. In the deepest playa, a hand is broken following a misjudged Icarus flight to the sun via an unexpected perimeter fence. His beloved tends to him in way all husbands must when in the deepest playa.

Aslan rabbit hybrids

Lay on giant marshmallow pillows, a seductive sun god delights in watching nymphs swoon as he pours wicked delights into their ears while filling their vessels with intoxicating nectars and laying no finger upon them. A goddess dreams of sensuous oil massage followed by feather light kisses for an hour and a day that build to orgasm that rumbles through the dusty desert air.

Of Unicorns & Men

A leopard skin wearing Moor warrior with whirling planets in his eyes battles rhetoric and philosophy with a goat-faced Hun in the shade of the camp’s storage. Erotic mosquitoes flash their golden pink eyes and head valiantly into the sandstorms. Mystical monkey juice is sipped and mind bending forest gifts are nibbled.

Plato

Dogs & Mozzies

Nibble. Gulp. Snort. Lick. Swallow.

The moon itself is intoxicated and pulled by strange gravity to land, moments from the earth itself. There to be transformed to her red warrior brother, Mars or so her glowing ruby orb would suggest.

Bless me Father, for I have sinned

Amongst it all, a noble creature appears, a magical vision. He approaches, looks into a heroine’s eyes with deep pools of obsidian and utters the age old prayer, ‘Oi, rutress! We should totally make out!’

Oi! Rutress!

Mermaids draw pearls from their deepest parts as the play dust creates these rare gifts usually only found in the sea. Lesser souls’ feet and hands crack in the face of the storm. Mermaids know how to use their materials. Pearl strands adorn every tent.

Transformations abound under this red moon.

Maidens return as snow queens. Altered by sights of seawitches tipping the velvet as they devoured tiny sapphists and muppets losing their minds. The desert is a dangerous place at night. Simple travellers may fall prey to deaf impersonators when asking directions. Particularly when sampling the forests’ bounty of magical mushrooms. Sampling unicorns is imperative to keep oneself safe. As are talismen worn in the safety of camp, ‘If you can read this, I will lick you!’

The things I saw that night whilst lost in the wilds...

One must not be surprised if a flaxen haired Legolas appears at your tavern, nor muscular Thor. Even Absolutely Fabulous finds purchase in this land, with star appearances from Saffy’s cousins, the Swahillihotties.

Gimli commits to BM

Elven & 21 last week

Absolutely Fabulous Cousins

To reach this mythological, high fantastical tableau, Herculean tasks have been completed. People have travelled across many seas and through many skies. Some have used parachutes. Mighty structures have been erected. One of these closest to our camp is Anubis, the God of the Underworld, the Pluto, the Hades, the shadow side. Anubis holds the scales which weigh the heart against a feather. One must remain light hearted or risk soul destruction. He reminds us of renewal. Of death to be reborn. He was met at the beginning of our trip and then again as we left Reno. We pulled our RV into a small reststop to see signs banning the feeding of animals. To the far right we saw an animal, a dog, and laughed at how ineffectual the sign had been. As we got closer we realised it was not a dog, but a coyote. The American equivalent of the Jackal, or Anubis. The trickster animal. The scavenger. The one to remind you not to take life too seriously. To laugh at it before it fools you.

Anubis burning

You can just see the coyote's eyes to the right. Mirroring Anubis.

Or maybe it’s all a reverie. A hysterical fantasy induced by falling 13,000 feet through the Nevada skies. I’ll allow the pictures to speak for themselves.

If we shadows have offended,
Think but this, and all is mended,
That you have but slumber'd here
While these visions did appear.
And this weak and idle theme,
No more yielding but a dream,
Gentles, do not reprehend:
if you pardon, we will mend:
And, as I am an honest Puck,
If we have unearned luck
Now to 'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will make amends ere long;
Else the Puck a liar call;
So, good night unto you all.
Give me your hands, if we be friends,
And Robin shall restore amends.

Puck – A Midsummer Night’s Dream

Remember to keep flying. Keep adventuring. Keep questing.