Here’s a photo from above. I took this while flying in an experimental plane in which I should not have been experimenting.

And here’s a closeup of the same place.

This was taken during the worst year of sandstorms ever at Burning Man. I was in a rather severe one and completely lost, but I kept walking in a random direction, because it was as good as any. Out of the sand came this Japanese tea ceremony. Right after I took this photo, I sat down and was served tea with floating gold leaf. When I was done, he folded up a small piece of origami and gave it to me. Upon it, the message read, “You are a God.” Finally! The thing I’ve always wanted my wife to say was confirmed by this sand-swept Japanese gentleman.

Almost anywhere on the playa you can see all kinds of acroyoga. I don’t ever pose my shots by the way, I just look for organic happenings.

Everyone is in costume or fanciness all week long. And many of the women really take it to some impressive extremes.

There are many things that happen here and there and everywhere and happen without reason or forethought. Terrible things fall around us and into us, random events of trauma, and worse, doubt. Not everything in this world is there for a useful purpose. So why not have huge white flowers in a desert? If you ask why about everything, then you’re probably not always asking the right questions, I tell myself.

Charon crosses the river Styx, ferrying a lost soul into the beyond, forever. This is where the souls go that have no hope, the endless void. Travelers come and pull and twist and spin and see the strobes alight upon the skeleton bones. The neck tilts and the head bows in a deathly pose, a skinless grimace pulls back a macabre grin of hate; the hate of a man who dies alone, between worlds of understanding.