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LAST_THE_NIGHT

                                             January 14, 2008


  Listening to the Burning Man insider
  "pq" (short for "playa quest") on
  KPFA tonight... he discussed the way                 His take: it's the
  Buring Man had changed his life.                     greatest party in the
  Before he went to Burning Man                        world and also a
  (paraphrasing, from memory):                         tremendous spiritual
                                                       event, both at the
  "I was doing work I disliked for                     same time, and that
   people I hated, and I thought I                     makes it unique and
   was happy.  I was making a hell                     irreplaceable.
   of a lot of money."

   And then the trip to Burning Man, the
   embrace of weirdness, the adjustment
   needed just to say hello to strangers...
   the discovery that life could be
   different.

   And he's changed, forever.

      The thing that always seems weird
      about these stories: why did it take
      Burning Man to wake this sleepwalker?
      Shouldn't this revelation have been
      obvious already?
                                               PLATYPUS
        "What shall it profit a man --"

        "Money can't buy happiness"

      The sayings become trite,
      the knowledge is so common                         The party lures
      it gets lost.                                      them in to where
                                                         the spirit can
                                                         take over.
         But sometimes,       ARGUMENT_FROM_BOREDOM
         the sleepwalkers                                Too far gone for
         wake.                                           the spirit to
                                                         appear in any guise
                                                         but the painted woman.
            Who am I to sneer
            at your satori                               WAY_OF_THE_PIRATE
            alarm clock?



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