I can't do it. I can't write. I don't know what happend, but every time I try to sit down and write something, the subject doesn't quite match the mood. That proud and glowing feeling I had on Sunday morning after the fundraiser has disintergrated. There's nothing left of it. You're just going to have to take my word for it when I say that fire dancing there was the most satisfying performance I've done in a very long time. I'm hoping that's a little taste of what it will be like to fire dance on the playa this year. And I fear that it will be nothing like that at all. There's a terrible, lonely feeling that you can get when you're in the middle of the desert with thirty thousand other people. You're certain that twenty thousand, nine hundred, and ninety-nine of them are doing something incredible, riding the wave of some peak experience that you will never, ever touch because you can't plug in.

I can't plug into the world today. I'll try again tomorrow.

This is just a place marker so that I remember to write about the Thunderdome fundraiser we had this weekend.

Stromkern played live. Marisa sang an aria while wearing giant bat wings. People beat each other up in the mini dome. Devon screened his Thunderdome music video with footage from last year's trip to the desert. Burn Unit danced. And danced. And danced. I got up the guts to spin fire in front of hundreds of people while wearing black leather hot pants.

Two of my friends stayed up all night finishing the binding on my corset so that I would have one to wear with my costume that night. I felt loved.

There's nothing quite so satisfying as doing what you like and doing it well. There's nothing so lovely as having friends who will stay up all night so that you can look pretty the next day. It made me proud to look out at the fire and the art cars and the giddy drunk crowd and think "I'm part of this."

Everybody has a favorite stranger. It used to be that you would find that stranger in the grocery store, on the bus, in the office hallway, or across the classroom. Now I sit on my couch with a laptop across my knees and I can see strangers as they are at home, strangers from all over the world. I know what they had for breakfast. I know what they think of their lovers. I can see pictures of their cats. It's like walking down a street where in every house the lights are on and the curtains are wide open. Sometimes all you can see is a big room and you have to guess what kind of person lives in a room like that. Sometimes they're sitting on the couch in their underwear eating macaroni and cheese.

When there are so many rooms, the novelty of peeking into other people's lives wears off quickly. There aren't a lot of places I come back to. But once in a while I press my nose up to the glass and I can't look away.

I have a favorite stranger. Her name is Banshee. She's a photographer. She lives in New York. She listens to Nick Cave. She looks for twenty dollar dresses. She has perfectly disheveled hair. I will never talk to her. I will never meet her. But I keep looking into her window.

When I was a kid, I had this vague vision of what being an adult would mean. I would live in New York. I hardly knew anything about New York outside of brief trips to Manhattan when visiting my relatives in Brooklyn and Queens. I only knew that it was huge and dark and humid ( it was always August when we went) with thunderstorms that soaked my clothes right through. I had to live there, even if in my head New York looked an awful lot like a Victorian flat in the Lower Haight. Being an adult meant living in New York with a boyfriend and a lazy gray cat, sleeping on a futon on the floor, doing something to get by while I pursued Art. Even then I knew that artists always did something else to pay the rent.

I wonder where my life veered off from the path I'd assumed it would take. I'm supposed to be some quirky, post-gothic, East Coast bohemian thing. I keep coming back for reasons that have less to do with Banshee than with myself. My favorite stranger is really quite familiar: an alternate skinny, dark-haired Never, living in a neat little apartment in a fictional New York where it's always August and the thunderstorms are coming.

Why not?

I have comments again. Know them. Use them. Love them.

If only you knew how close I'd come to abandoning Blogger and switching to Greymatter.

I've never really understood women who are obsessed with makeup. Television and magazines and night clubs are filled with perfectly painted faces. They've found a way to fake flawless skin. They know how to apply little wings of liquid eyeliner around their eyes. I don't think they ever sweat. They're poreless.

I've seen their bathrooms. They own a dozen different shades of lipstick. There are so many little tubes and compacts and brushes that the entire assortment needs to be kept in a tackle box. All of those colors come with soaps and moisturizers, exfoliants and cremes to remove makeup. Everything has a little label from Lorac or MAC or Urban Decay.

I didn't get it for a very long time. I felt as if I was missing some essential aspect of girliness. I'm so meticulous about my clothes, but spending an hour in front of the mirror worrying about my eyebrows or my lips seemed like an enormous waste of time. I was convinced that somewhere I would find the secret to perfect makeup. Somewhere in some beauty magazine I would find a succinct guide to Louise Brooks' lips and giant Clara Bow eyes and those really high painted-on eyebrows favored by Marlene Dietrich.

I'd never read beauty magazines before. I didn't take long before I understood why. Beauty magazines are not there to tell you how to be beautiful. They're there to tell you that you're not beautiful, that you can never even hope to be beautiful until you lose ten pounds and buy, buy, buy. Women are empty vessels that can only be filled by Sephora. I couldn't read Vogue, American or French, or anything else with a moody-looking supermodel on the cover without feeling as if a huge, clawed hand was reaching for the contents of my bank account.

And how useless it all was! Something terrible has happend to fashion. It happend just about the time those awful one-shoulder dresses designed to make women look like refugees from the set of The Flintstones came into vogue. Those pouty gazelle women sporting the Look of the Moment are hiding behind the ugliest pink-tinted 1970's sunglasses I have ever seen. They're tan, so tan, and their perfect skin is shiney.Why would anyone deliberately make themselves look as if they'd just gotten off the Stairmaster?

What's a girl to do? Skin Two and Marquis don't offer makeup tips. There's no guide in the back of fetish magazines that will tell you how to do your hair like Dita or Mistress Midori. So I will never be one of those perfect china doll women. I don't have the patience or the know-how to transform myself into a flawless, untouchable thing every night. Maybe that makes me a little less girlie, but just thinking about all of the things I'd have to buy tires me out.

It's enough to come close. It's enough to be pretty. I don't have the energy to be beautiful.

Ladies and gentlemen, it's the final clinching proof that I have only one facial expression.

I think I've had too much sleep. My brain doesn't feel entirely in synch with my body.

My house is clean, even if not all of the major projects are done. Many things have been sewn. My bills are paid. I may be developing actual muscles again as a result of going to the gym.

This has to stop. I think it may be time to find myself a job. Sure, I enjoyed having so much time to myself. The BBQ's in the middle of the day were nice. The chance to see my friends in broad daylight was lovely; and if J and I hadn't had a month in which to work on the loft, we'd probably still be sleeping on the floor. But there are too many things I've been putting off because I can't stand the idea of spending money when I don't know if I have more coming.

No vintage steel medical cabinet. No blue velvet chaise lounge. No black and blue patent leather corset from Stormy Leather. Nothing at all from Gallery Serpentine. I'd feel guilty if I ran off to Boston or Las Vegas or Prague.

And to tell the truth, I'm a little bit bored. I miss having a room full of Sun gear to play with.

So I have updated my resume, polished it until it was shiney and bright, and sent it out into the ether. We'll see what happens now.

"You don't want kids? Ever?!"

Most of the people I know think I'm a little older than I really am. I have a stable relationship, a nice apartment, a good education, and a career. They think I'm coming up on that age when I suddenly get the urge to buy a station wagon and pop out a shrieking, mewling Baby Never that will leak fluids from both ends and suck out my soul.

"You're so good with children. You'd make a great mother!"

No. I don't think you understand. I'm good with other people's children. I love children who giggle and laugh with me, who feel proud when I treat them like little adults. These children that will never fall to the ground screaming in the middle of a Toys 'R' Us because I won't buy them a Lifetime of Distorted Body Image Barbie with Style-It-Yourself hair. They will not puke on my 1940's silk velvet bias-cut gown. They will not wreck my figure, fray my nerves, and obliterate my personality until the only name I answer to is "Mommy."

"Oh, you'll feel differently once those maternal instincts kick in."

I don't want maternal instincts. I don't want to make baby noises and talk about my darling's latest poo. I don't want to become the drooling zombie slave of some thankless parasite. I don't want to love it even when it's ugly, or stupid, or "socially disruptive."

You see, I have a plan. I'm going to be my own favorite child. I'm going to love myself with unfailing devotion. I'm going to buy myself every toy I want. I'm going to spoil myself rotten and I will always be thankfull. I will never send myself to my room. I will never sneak out at night and not call myself, leaving me to wait up, sick with worry, until dawn. I won't deliberately embarass myself in front of my friends. There will never be tear-stained fights in which I accuse myself of not really wanting me.

I will never leave me. I won't pack myself off to a retirement home in Florida just to get myself out of the way. I won't talk about what a burden I've become to all of my friends. I won't talk about what a chore it is to spend the Holidays with myself because I always get drunk and start saying the most horrible things.

No, I'll be too busy taking myself on fabulous vacations and always buying myself the most perfect little gifts. After all, I know exactly what I want, so I'll always be pleased, even if it's a little difficult to surprise myself.

There will be those who will call me self-centered. Pay no attention to them. Who is more deserving? Who is more appreciative? What better candidate is there for my love and devotion than me?

We are fantastically close to Mars right now. Last night we reached opposition. The Earth, the sun, and Mars were all in a straight line. For the next two weeks, Mars will creep closer and closer until it is just 42 million miles away.

If you look up in the sky right now the way the three of us did in my doorway last night, you'll see it, a little disc almost as bright as the moon. J pointed, "There it is! Mars!" And the homeless guy down the street turned around to look, as if Mars was somewhere at the end of Folsom Street with the drunkards and the club kids, the taxi drivers and the policemen.

Through the telescope, I could make out shadows on the disc. We are 42 million miles from another planet. It has canyons and mountains and craters. Even across all of this distance, it glows a bit red. Through the telescope, it looks like a little marble you can reach out and grab, but it's a planet. It has no atmosphere to speak of. It has no planet-wide magnetic field. Its gravity is a fraction of our own. The average temperature is 85 degrees below zero.

Maybe it's just the result of a lifetime spent reading trashy science fiction novels, but I looked up at Mars, just 40-something million miles away and coming closer, and I understand why there are people who devote their entire lives to getting humans off of this rock. It seems so strange that we should only want a little dot in the corner of a universe that's so damn big.

At the last minute, my little brother scrapped his speech, walked up to the podium and said these words: "I've been here for seven years. I've spent the last three sitting in chairs just like the ones you're sitting in right now. I can understand why you'd want these speeches to be short."

He didn't thank everyone he knew. He didn't use the words "unique personality." He didn't say "this school has been like a second home." He got up there and told people that while he didn't like change, he felt prepared to leave.

I think he'll make a fine adult.

Tomorrow I have to wake up early. You're all going to laugh when I tell you I have to be up by nine, but I've aquired the habit staying up until four in the morning and starting my day around noon. If I'm not careful, I'll become completely nocturnal. I've had weeks where I stayed up until dawn and slept until the next evening. The downside of this schedule is that the day is completely shot if you want to do anything that involves interacting with people who are on a normal timetable. It could take me three or four days to get around to buying groceries. Waking up at noon is a reasonable compromise. I can stay up all night and still get things done during the day.

Tomorrow I have to get up in the morning and go to my baby brother's graduation. It's his last day of grade school, the same grade school I attended between the ages of nine and thirteen. He's in the same building with the same eighth grade teacher (that one extra tough teacher that everyone dreads and yet wants to impress) who once described me as the single most stubborn student it had ever been his pleasure to teach.

My baby brother is going to high school. That little blond thing I used to feed out of a bottle is now seven inches taller than I am. There's fuzz on his upper lip. He refuses to wear contact lenses because he thinks his glasses make him look smart.

My baby brother is an adolecent. He's moody. He slouches. He has piles of science fiction novels by his bed. It's hard to tear him away from computer games. He racks up an enormous phone bill talking to his best friend in Sweden. In three months, he will be in high school, where he will be forced to play basketball on account of being so tall.

My baby brother is an alien. When I was thirteen years old, I was miserable. Had my parents had a less Spartan approach to medicine, I would have been pumped full of antidepressants.

I had a journal then. The entries went something like this: "Dear, diary...I hate everyone and everything. Other people are slimey, worthless, dirt-creatures. I'm going to read fantasy novels and write poetry now."

It didn't help that those were some pretty embarassing years. I had glasses and braces and even without them, I wasn't a pretty child. Worse yet, I was smart. I was smarter than anyone I went to school with and I told them so. I was surprised when this didn't make me popular. When I told my mother that I cried horribly every night, she shrugged and told me that she'd been hopelessly unhappy through most of puberty. One day, somewhere around fifteen years old, she woke up and realized that she wasn't depressed anymore. It's just hormones. You'll ride it out.

I imagined throwing things at her. Sharp things. I kept imagining that until I woke up one morning and I wasn't depressed anymore.

Dear diary...I'm fifteen years old and I've discovered sex with men who really should know better, Jack Daniels, and staying out all night. For the first time in my life I feel pretty and desirable. I think I'm going to do as many stupid things as possible to keep this feeling going.

I wouldn't wish this on my brother. I wouldn't wish this on my parents. In fact, I wouldn't even wish this on my worst enemy. I hope that adolecence is kinder to my brother. I know he'll make mistakes, but I hope that they'll be different mistakes, maybe even mistakes that will terrorize my parents a little less than I did. They've survived the Soviet Union, immigration, Israeli bombings, earthquakes, and a teenage daughter. Go easy on them, B, please.

I helped beta test a club last night. A year and a half after Jamie Zawinski purchased the DNA Lounge from Rob Schneider, the club is reopening. The sale was made with great fanfare. Here was jwz, internet wunderkind (nevermind that no one should be called a wunderkind once they pass thirty), Netscape multimillionaire, buying a San Francisco nightclub in a year when the police in South Station had made it their unofficial policy to shut down the club scene. Venues were being turned into dot com office space every month. Every single late night permit that came up for review was summarily denied. Local residents asserted time and time again that night clubs attracted the "wrong element" into their neighborhood. Nightclubs are noisy. Nightclubs make it hard to park your car in the evening. Having clubs open after two o'clock in the morning was "simply not appropriate."

Dear SFO, please stop flying airplanes at night. I have just moved close to the airport and the noise makes it difficult for me to sleep.

When Jamie won his appeal and successfully transferred the DNA's late night permits, I remember how giddy everyone felt. Rents were going up; housing prices were going up; parking was impossible and driving on the freeway was a nightmare, but here was a sliver of hope that San Francisco might not become some glorified suburb. Cities are loud and dirty and a little bit dangerous. Cities are where we go to discover ourselves through dancing and drinking and howling at the moon. No one gets carried away by a romantic impulse and moves to Concord.

When Jamie bought the DNA in March, he thought it just needed a few repairs and he could be open for business by Christmas. As it turned out, a few cosmetic changes weren't going to cut it. New ownership meant that the DNA would have to meet new noise abatement standards, which meant having to pour a new concrete wall two feet thick. The DNA turned out to be providing electricity for three other buildings on the block. The architect took months longer than expected to write up the plans. Contractors either stupid, lazy, incompatent, or flakey. Jamie started to refer to the club as the DNA Money Pit.

On Thursday night, the Money Pit had its test run. Jamie said he wanted the DNA to look like "that cool club you saw in that movie that one time." In that sense, the DNA is a success. From the industrial mesh on the walls, to the blurry TV's showing views of other parts of the club, to the steel toilets in the bathroom, Jamie's built a movie club. All that he's missing is a couple of vinyl-clad girls dancing in cages suspended from the ceiling. But the giddy hopefullness is gone. Everyone is too busy worrying about their rent, their jobs, and their car payments to think that the reopening of the DNA is going to change anything.

A year ago, the opening of a nightclub would have meant something. It would've been a potent symbol, a geek who made his money writing large chunks of Netscape's browser putting his money where his mouth is. Now the money's all gone and we're all in retreat, soulless yuppie hordes and working stiffs alike. A new place to drink on 11th Street seems a little trivial. Not that the DNA project wasn't an enormous undertaking, but I've heard people talking about this place for the last year the way people talk about the return of Jesus. The DNA was going to save us all. It was going to singlehandedly revive night culture in San Francisco. It was going to employ all of the bartenders, club promoters, and bouncers we knew, buy us free drinks, and never ask for ID at the door.

But it's just a club, a very nicely designed club. Anyone who expects more is bound to be disappointed.

Where have you been, lil' miss? What's been keeping you so busy? You never call. You don't send email. You don't chat or post on messageboards. Telepathic communication has been fruitless.

I've been sewing. I've been fire dancing. I've been lying in the sun. I've been barbequeing with my comrades in unemployment. I've been planning, God help me, for Burning Man, which is sure to swallow up my life for the next three months. I'd sworn that after five years, I was putting an end to it. I've done every kind of Burning Man trip there is. I've done the three day newbie trip, where I knew no one, walking delerious through the desert, living on drugs and Oreo cookies. I've done the week-long trip with friends, no drugs, but plenty of debauchery, that left me covered in yellow paint from Pepe Ozan's opera. I've done the trip that lasts a week and a half and takes all year to plan, when you spend more time working on your camp than seeing the rest of the event, where you don't even have time to watch the burn because you're too busy performing. I've done the July 4th camping trip. I've snuck out to the hot springs. I've lived day in and day out as a spectacle.

I don't think there's anything left for me to experience on the playa. There's the cold and the dust storms and the smell of kerosene. There's sneaking away to look at the stars, the brightest, clearest view of the sky I've ever seen. There's someone coming over from the camp next door because they've cooked breakfast and they want you to have some. There's watching the sun come up while you're sitting with your friends on either side of you.

There is nothing to do at this event that I haven't already done. I have fully explored it. I have maxed it out. Now I should just let it die. But a few weeks ago, I started drawing sketches. Last week I bought fabric, and last night, as I drafted a pattern for the vest I was sewing, I knew that I was going to Burning Man again.

This will be the last time, so I'd better make it good.

I don't think that I mentioned how important it is to help your friends move. You've got to get up in the morning and help put their things in boxes. You need to be there when the heavy furniture needs to be guided down a steep and treacherous flight of stairs. You need to sit with them and eat burritos when you're on the brink of exhaustion and there's just one more load to go. This is what friends are for. I've lived in four apartments in the last three years and I know how vital it is to maintain your Moving Karma.

So J and I helped S move from the Outer Richmond (the hinterlands of San Francisco, occupied only by immigrant grandmothers and fog) to the Inner Mission (occupied by junkies and trendy restaurants), which was widely considered to be a step in the right direction because now S is within walking distance of Rainbow Grocery. Most of S's things weren't terribly heavy and we were able to get them across town in just three truckloads, but a lot of his sculpture didn't lend itself well to packing. It was all dead roses and manzanita branches and metal busts of eyeless women grafted to television tubes. Once he has recovered from the shock of moving, we will all collaborate on a sculpture for the loft.

I need to come up with something else to call this place. "The loft" sounds like a big white box occupied by yuppies. Flat screen televisions are delivered to "the loft." "The loft" has gleaming racks full of Calphalon cookware which is never used to do anything more complicated than boiling water. There are no books in "the loft" because they didn't fit into the decorating scheme.

No. This is definitely something else.

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