Many in the NY Burning Man community have heard the doubly tragic news of Dragon's (IamTony) and JudgeCal's passing away.

Tony was caught by a riptide while surfing in Costa Rica on July 21st, 2008. Like many who knew him, I was crestfallen and overwhelmed at the news.

For a few years now, Lowroad and I have been going to a little piece of heaven on Fire Island. Every summer , sometimes 3 or 4 times a summer, we would gather a few of our favorite people, pack up tents, guitar and whiskey, and go back-country camping in the dunes of Fire Island, falling asleep on the sound of crashing waves or late-night singing.
It was as we were planning this year's trip that Lowroad informed me of Tony's disappearance.

We immediately planned on celebrating his existence by a beach memorial, which we were to make of stray material granted by the sea. It seemed only fitting as his body now belonged to the ocean ; the water of his cells having returned to the primordial waters.

On August 1st, as we were walking to the train that would lead us to Fire Island, Lowroad informed me of JudgeCal's tragic fate.
Cal's inert body was found by his landlord ca July 25th. The causes of his death are still unknown at this time.
A beautiful obituary can be found here : www.huffingtonpost.com/belisa...45.html

I was also in shock, and everyone immediately felt like the memorial should be dedicated to them both.

The next day, at sunset, we set out to build it near the high water line ; it was to live for a few hours, then get dissolved by the Sea.
Lowroad set his footprints in the sand , facing the ocean, and drew what seemed like concentric circles around them, in a revolving river of sand escaping to the ocean. I gathered shells of various sizes and was looking for ways to generate two intertwined spirals out of them, when Lowroad , looking at me with slight surprise, said "El Niño, this *is* a spiral". He had beaten me to it.

I started randomly dropping stones and shells inside the spiral, before a scheme coalesced, whereby large shells would occupy the periphery and shells of decreasing size and more delicate aspect would converge to the center. All were organized in tight radials making the spiral only slightly depart from axisymmetry.
DaFong, Big Dawg, Sera, Lowroad and I worked in silence to ornate this impermanent monument to our friends.

I felt frustrated that my attempts to reach the center would always mar the periphery, as sand is such a movable material under our clumsy feet. Thus, once all ornaments were in place, I seized a large shell and redrew the spiral by lifting the stones& shell one by one. Once i was done, Lowroad nodded and simply said "It is proper".

I rose up from the sand and looked at what we had all achieved. With no prior design and little conscious effort, a beautiful spiral mandala had emerged from the Sea. It was a circular path from the immense waters into the vortex of human existence, their presence (the footprints) left by our friends, for the short time they had had on this planet, and the even shorter time we had been lucky enough to know them. The crooked wood piece in the center symbolized the more organic and unpredictable element that their soul was made of ; there is no such thing as straight line in our non-Euclidean universe. The water was starting to flow into the trenches and we sensed it would soon all return to the sea.

All who were present (the above crew plus my girlfriend Vanita and two of her friends) then grabbed hands and gathered in a semi-circle facing the ocean. We stood in silence for a while. Sera led the ceremony by sharing her emotions about the tragic loss. Those who felt like words best honored their souls spoke a little ; those who felt that silence best honored them, remained silent.

I knew too little of Cal and not enough of Tony. Both always struck me as men of few words - and many thoughtful actions. It felt proper to honor their shining trajectory through our lives by making a piece a collaborative piece of art in silence - that is the way most of us had first and last interacted with them.

We then parted and let Lowroad and Sera's baby Sequoia wander into their spiral ; her irresistible life taking over the temporary remembrance of their passing, as a timely reminder that nothing is eternal and that we should cherish the time we have we those who love. Within a few hours the Sea had eaten everything.

Rest in Peace, Live like you mean it.