Home. Or well, back in Seattle. Saturday I head home to Maine.

I adapt to another life in Black Rock. Living for weeks in the desert, eating in the commissary, showering in the shower trailer. Working in the dust, sleeping in the back of the Suburban, with occasional trips to get out of the city. A couple friends and I watched the Saturday burn from outside the city and a few folks without tickets to the event were shocked that we were out there by choice.

When I was leaving, F asked if P was coming with me and said that we were cute together. I couldn’t comprehend a response. With all the time that P and I spent together, it was a reasonable assumption to make. But what happens at Burning Man, happens in an alternate, nearly schizophrenic world. It doesn’t stay there, it isn’t separable. At times it seems to stay physically, but events still cause ripples outward in time.

As I stop and redraw my life; consider what paths it will take, I’ve been thinking about how different it could be, how circumstantial it is on my intimate partnerships and on their lives. I recall trying to convince L that I wanted to support her, and her misinterpreting that as my wanting her to “cry on my shoulder.”

This is the end of a period of my life in Seattle. 2011 has undoubtedly been a year of transitions. Having Burning Man form a corner of that change only serves to make it more abstract, with jagged loose ends comprising of threads made up of compassion.

What would life have been like if L hadn’t run off? Who knows. What if Burning Man wasn’t such a temporary life? Everything continues to underscore how complex life is, and find peace with that.

On a somewhat related news, I’ve been considering starting a charitable foundation. That just feels absurd, but I have the resources to do so. Notably, I’m only considering it. While I’m confident I could do so, I have to humbly laugh at myself for not watching TV instead.