ZMFS!  It's 2 weeks away!!  Here's a mix I 'specially designed to get you amped for the playa.  Blast it with the windows down when you hit 447!!

dismalnv.com/externals/B...k%202009.mp3

"Burning man is like an arts festival in the desert much in the same way that the sun is like a light bulb"

Your body is a biological device. One of the functions of the device is to produce and sustain a virtual reality construct that you live within. This construct is a tool that allows you to interact with the external world - but it is not the external world you are looking at right now. It is a virtual reality construct your nervous system has created for you.

Look at something orange (or blue or red or whatever). That orange is not 'out there'. You created it. Your mind received a particle/wave oscillating at a particular frequency and interpreted it as orange and included into your VR construct.

In addition there is no way for you to know if my orange is the same as your orange (the question itself may lack coherent meaning or at least it probably lacks relevance).

Every moment your are creating what appears as reality to you. As a matter of fact, if you weren't creating it, there would be no moment.

It is not entirely accurate to say that you are creating it. You are co-creating it in conjunction with the external force providing input. There is no way for you to determine with 100% certainty what this external force is.

In one way this can be described as solipsism. There is no way for me to determine that any other humans are actually real. I'm not going to go into that here (I would start by elborating on the 'orange' passage above if i did though). I'd rather just point out that I don't indulge in this idea. I am firmly committed to the belief that you are sitting there reading this and thinking 'no, I'm quite real actually.' This, however, is a violation of logic since it is based on very compelling evidence but is ultimate founded on faith. There is no possible way for me to prove it - I just think it works as the most accurate model for me.

The more important aspect of this idea for me is related to the idea of thinking positively. We all know that thinking positively leads to a higher likelihood of positive things happening for you. This becomes a more profound thought to me when I realized that I am actually (co-)creating this whole thing I am looking at and living in.

Sure, I can't walk though walls or leap hundreds of miles because of the strength of the co-creating element ( whatever it is that is outside of me that causes oscillating particles to strike my eye [ that i then interpret as orange]). But I still have tremendous latitude in creating my VR living space.

This idea has caused me to become more observant and active. To increase the richness and detail of my VR construct, my personal reality. Observation is an act of creation.

"I am not disgusted by anything human unless it is unkind or violent" - Tennessee Williams