Nagual

What my father refers to himself and myself as: Nagual - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagual_(Castaneda)

Strange whiteout conditions

So this last weekend Ryan and I went to Burning Man, the giant art city created in the middle of the Nevada Desert for one week out of the year. We've gone the last two years and it's always such an amazing experience. A giant 60,000 person community based on gifting and giving and art and music and self-expression. Ryan and I went together the last two years as well and it's always a special trip. 98 degrees during the day, no services around except port-o-potties, you have to bring everything you're going to need for however long you stay. All the water you'll need, all your food, sunscreen, shade structures, bicycles (to get around the city, because it literally is a giant city and you can't use your car once you arrive). It's a true experiment in temporary community and radical self-reliance. And then of course there are so many sculptures and art and such.

Anyways, so we were doing our thing, hanging out at Burning Man, meeting some of the nicest people in the world, biking around and looking at art. Because Black Rock city (the temporary city where Burning Man takes place, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada) is built on a dry lake bed, it is very flat and dry and dusty. Because it was such a dry winter the playa was not as packed down as it normally would be and the ground was very soft in places and would sort of poof up in a cloud around your feet when you stepped. Well, Saturday around 11am came a big wind storm which, hitting our dusty dry city, quickly turned the air white with dust, making the air impossible to breathe and see through. So everyone had their goggles and bandannas out to protect their mouths, noses, and eyes, and we went about our day like that. Ryan and I decided to go to the Cafe, which is literally a giant circus tent filled with stages for open mic poetry or bands to perform, plenty of dusty couches and benches to hang out and chat on, and lots of baristas and baristers making iced coffee/tea beverages for the masses. You can also fill out the annual Black Rock City Census, which is why we decided to come. Anyways, Ryan and I showed up, there was a really fun accapella group on one stage ("oom-bop, oom-bop, oom-bop, all your cares are gone when you're at burning man! oom-bop oom-bop lalala...") and the place was crowded with people trying to escape the whiteout going on outside. We wandered to a table to fill out the census and this very nice old gay man with good, sincere energy and blue painted-on glittery swirls coming out from the sides of his eyes stopped me, saying something like "Ah! Here she is, she will tell you!" to a middle-aged Irish gentleman that he was speaking to. I smiled and asked "What have I walked into?" and the Irish gentleman said "He's getting astral messages." Now, let me stop here and explain that at Burning Man many people do drugs. Ryan and I don't because honestly we're just not into them, but there are plenty of people who go and enjoy the freedom of their drug of choice. So I walked into this little group and figured that the old man with blue painting on his face was probably on mushrooms or peyote or something, although he did seem very together regardless.

Back to the story. So, the man was getting astral messages, says the Irish gentleman. Old man put his hands on my shoulders in a completely non-threatening manner (burning man is a very peaceful place, bad people do not tend to come) and said "She will tell you your Black Rock City name. But first, try to pick it up. Close your eyes and let it come to you." The Irish gentleman sort of chuckled, closed his eyes, and then said "I dunno." The Old Man said "That's it! That's it! Say it again!"
Irish Gentleman: "I dunno."
Old Man: "That's it! Idunno is your Black Rock City name!" Then he turned to me and said "And yours is Absolute Vision of Loveliness"
Me: "Why, thank you. That is quite a name."
Old Man: "And it suits you perfectly. Now, Angel of the Playa, go, and spread your good energy to everyone you meet."

And that was basically it. Just a funny little exchange between three strangers who met at Burning Man. Very good energy throughout the whole thing. But what happened next was very strange.

I wandered a few feet over to where Ryan was standing and filling out the census. I laughed and told him about the exchange and we both chuckled about fun characters you end up meeting at Burning Man. As I stood there beginning to fill out the census, I began to get a little light-headed. I told Ryan that I was starting to feel light-headed because of my hypoglycemia (when I have low blood-sugar I get dizzy and start to feel sick, it happens every once in a while, especially in hot conditions. luckily it wasn't very hot this day because the wind was cooling everyone down) and we sat down on a bench where i finished filling out the census. I then got up to walk over to the collection box and put it in. Ryan followed me and put his in. Suddenly I was feeling extremely light-headed and shaky and Ryan quickly helped me onto a bench to get off my feet. Rather than feeling better, I started to feel much worse, like i was going to puke and passout. Now, keep in mind that Ryan and I are totally clean here, no drugs, alcohol, anything, and we'd just had a nice breakfast and it wasn't very hot, so I was actually taking very good care of myself. Anyways, my muscles stopped shaking and started to ache and feel like they were melting. In fact, all of me started to feel like I was melting, like my skin was splitting in half along my limbs and body and like my skin was melting off. Not in a hot way, because it wasn't very hot in the cafe, more in a losing control of my body sort of way. I had a split second of wondering whether I was going to die here, at burning man, with no explanation. My sides and legs broke into a cold sweat and my head began drifting back. Ryan, trying to remain calm as possible, begins reminding me to breathe, and not let myself go, and stay awake. As he's saying this, the world starts getting very bright, the exact opposite of what heppens when you're passing out from low blood-sugar (when that happens, everything goes black and you can't hear anything. You have a blackout.). As the world begins to get brighter and brighter and Ryan is reminding me to stay with him, to remember to breathe, I really start to worry and smack myself in the cheeks to try and snap out of it, but everything is getting so bright that i begin to lose my vision and can no longer see where one person and another are in the world around me. Everything got so bright that I literally couldn't see anything. I manage to sputter out "I can't see anything - it's all so bright!" and Ryan says "Alyssa, look at me." I look where I remember he was standing before, I look in the direction of his voice, where I think his eyes would be, and he says "Your pupils are so pinned and tiny. Can you see me?" And I say again "I can't see you. I can't see anything." At this point, all the chatter of the cafe around me dies out and it gets very still except for the loud whooshing of the wind above us, and the flapping of the flags on top of the cafe in the wind. But I can no longer hear the accapella group or the people asking Ryan if I'm okay or need a medic (he's assuring them that I'm just light-headed from the heat and low blood-sugar, so they'll leave me alone). The whooshing is so loud and the world so bright that my vision seems to cut out and all there is is grey for a minute, like my eyes just stopped working. The only sound I hear is Ryan's voice cuttign through the wind and then everything bright and loud with wind again, and my vision begins to come back, and the wind starts to get quieter and other noises and other voices start to break through. I look at Ryan and he says "Do you want to go to the bathroom or the medic camp?" I had mumbled at some point while my body was melting that I had to go poo all the sudden. I stuttered "b-bathroom, bathroom". He rushed off quickly to find out where the medic camp and bathroom are and by the time he came back, my vision and hearing had returned to normal, though I still felt shaky and sort of scared. He took me to the restroom, bandannas around our faces and goggles over our eyes. For the rest of the day I was shaky with a headache, no matter how much I ate, napped, and drank water. We left that night and spent Saturday night sleeping over at moms.

I told mom about this, and she said it sounded like I was in a heightened spiritual spot and that the old man with the painted face was a coyote who had sort of shaken me up. I am still trying to understand what happened myself, though I don't think it was anything regarding my body or me not taking good enough care of myself, because I always take very good care of myself