erik davis on burning man 08
Fifteen degrees or so above the horizon, the thin beaming sliver of a waning crescent moon hovered over the not-yet-revealed sun. Taking this in, I realized the admittedly banal fact that when we gaze on the crescent moon, we are looking at the backside of the orb, its back on us to face the source of light. Watching this near conjunction, it is like peaking through a window on lovers lost to us. With next morning’s unscripted wedding on my mind, I recalled the fact that, while our culture codes the moon as female and the sun as male, these genders could be reversed, as they are in Japanese Shinto and, indeed, the Atlantean mythos. The supple dynamics of this cosmic gender-swap charged the sweet sky with potency, with the sun and moon providing the polarity that drove the horizon’s brimming, candy-colored transformation.
Erik Davis shares his impressions of this year’s Burning Man.