ADAPTATION

"In order that any great amount of modification should be effected in a species, a variety, when once formed must again present individual differences of the same favourable nature as before; and these must again be preserved, and so onward, step by step…On the other hand, the ordinary belief that the amount of possible variation is a strictly limited quantity, is likewise a simple assumption". –Charles Darwin

She dipped her toes in the puddle of water one at a time, watching the dry desert heat suck them dry within seconds with amusement. Even her reflection in the metre wide water hole was blurrier in the midday sun. Morris slowly felt the euphoria rush through her blood like the diagrams they had often lit up at school, all of those two years ago, to show fluid paths in the human body. Her fingertips tingled. She closed her eyes and lay back on the dusty ground that graduated in colour from blood-red to a muddy brown, where hundreds of people had trampled and aerated the sandy desert.

Above, a lone eagle swooped over the collaboration of naked, painted, chanting people. The only thing containing them was a border of green cactus, tufts spurting from the infertile land. She was now far removed from the leafy closes of suburbia, and she liked it. At night no longer did she have to secure the back door with three locks, close the blinds in her bedroom before she took off her clothes or even keep the noise down to a minimum. Black Rock city had sucked her in—sucked her in one circular street at a time until she now sat at the centre of the temporary town, watching, thinking about what was going to happen when she had to go back to reality. The reality of her job, the reality of living up to expectations of a successful job—most options the 8-6 kind.

Morris had arrived at Black Rock city alone, clutching only one backpack containing a tent and a change of clothes and at her first view of the vast setting had to take a deep breath. She sucked in hard, holding it inside for at least ten seconds while she surveyed the eclectic landscape before her. She was merely now a molecule in a Petri dish—a minute figure in a social experimentation attempting to generate some kind of spontaneous culture. Hundreds of people streamed through the entrance, ready to enter a week with no boundaries, a playing ground for those wishing to exhibit anything from their contemporary art to themselves.

The first large spectacle inside the gates was a globe the size of an average bedroom, and adjacent a human-sized cage filled with beach balls. Each coloured ball had been written on by participants and placed inside the giant bingo wheel. Every now and then a man dressed in a velvet blazer, most likely 20 degrees too hot for the desert sun, would call out a phrase belonging to somebody in the crowd. BINGO! In the foreground of the rising sun pole dancing workshops bustled, neon-painted bodies glowed in the evening sky and buses full of crusty hippies migrating from mid-western states continued to arrive. The heat continued to alter her mind more than what she was seeing or what was in her back pocket.

As the horizon faded further into darkness at the centre of Black Rock city, a fifty- metre tall figure of a man, his skeleton flesh and skin made from woods was set alight. Painted bodies danced under the burning effigy of a man until the fireworks stuffed inside ignited and the beast became alive. There was something so primal about what she was witnessing. It was as if all the individuals coming from all corners of the globe to strip themselves of any previous identity were reborn. A circle was formed and Morris’s hand slowly slipped into the one beside her.

After only days of roaming the festival, talking like old friends, discussing their lives, what they had escaped to try and find some sort of new meaning, Morris and the young man she had met on the first night had become inseparable. They walked around to see displays, involved themselves in demonstrations, and ate food from the carts.
‘So, I don’t even know your name,’ said Morris.
‘Ha, you’re right. Just call me Milt. What are you doing here anyway?’ he said in his thick southern accent.
‘Well, about three weeks ago I got fired from my first real job in the city. I wanted to get away, beyond Australia, and I read about this festival so just booked my ticket, packed up my things and did it. Figured I had nothing to lose. The smog was bad for my asthma anyway.’
You could tell she had been awkward her whole life. As she spoke, she looked down at the ground, wringing the bottom of her baggy grey T-shirt. She alternated this with the twisting of her messy red ponytail. For a few years she had tried to hide her natural hair colour with packet dyes, but after finally rejecting the notion she should make herself attractive she had come to accept it was too late to bother putting in any effort at all. Morris’s standard self was the most unusual thing in the desert. She was a myna bird in an aviary of tropical parrots. Milt on the other hand was fabulous.

On the last night he had taken her to the very end of the city. They hitched a ride with a transsexual in a glittering art car from their camping site. The car was an old Ute painted pink and decorated with much fervour. Morris and Milt rode in the tray, holding onto old disco balls that were perhaps going to be reincarnated into some kind of installation. She felt like she was in some kind of bad B-grade film with minimal budget and maximum story line. There was something about meeting someone in a foreign setting and the experiences you had—the romantic notion of running away and adapting to a new life. Perhaps it was the only way to survive in the rat race, she thought. Not the cliché of running away and falling in love in one week, but being open to any possibility.

At home, Morris would often sit at her office desk and get an overwhelming anxious feeling like she was stuck, stuck in a moment that would play on repeat over and over again for the rest of her life. There would be a rush from her stomach to her chest and she would be overcome with a fluster of panic. But somehow now she was at her calmest, with hundreds of what were classified as the most eclectic people in the world, and this man, Milt, in the back of a drag queen’s ride.
Before they reached the full lake bed they passed another three camps. The road was pitted with lamplighters; fully grown men who had designed their own metallic costumes and lighting devices, volunteering to act as guides for any vehicles after dark. Morris had almost nodded off to sleep when she felt the jerk of the glamorously dressed male pulling back the gear stick.
‘We’re here, my darlings!’

The rain poured thicker and thicker from the open sky. The two bodies now lay intertwined under the Big Dipper and Milky Way. For the first time since she could remember, Morris was completely relaxed, beside Milt. Her mind flickered over the city, the week she had had with hundred insane strangers. The feeling of rigidity was gone. Now all she had in her mind was her new painter boyfriend who collected spare parts for a living. When he’d told her he lived alone in Texas as a sculptural professional, interested in visual communication of the kinetic form, Morris had felt apprehension to say the least. But now he just inspired her. Inspired her to leave her family home for good, like everyone else in her town had. Now all she could think about was her new life with Milt, writing children’s books from their travelling abodes. Having kids into double digits and living an amazing alternate lifestyle, letting them all roam around naked while they creatively made their living—anything would be possible. She looked at his slight body draped in a torn shirt and closed her eyes.

She awoke with the dry desert sun nipping at her cheeks, feeling as if she was about to hear a gentle sizzle. She peeled off one sock at a time, rubbed both eyes and moved towards the remnants of last night’s rain pooled in the red earth.

Milt secured his seatbelt across his chest and leant over, placing his hand on Morris’s knee. Neither of them could have been more content. She rolled down the window and stretched out her legs, looking over at Milt and then out the windscreen at their journey ahead. Morris tuned in the local radio station as they picked up a fuzzy signal on the beaten up transistor and Milt picked up the speed until they sat at a consistent pace. The double yellow lines stretched all the way to the horizon, parting the desert with perfect symmetry.

The ‘deluxe’ camper van was cosy to say the least. Although they only had one bag each Morris couldn’t begin to imagine living in the vehicle for the next part of her life. She would do it though. She would stick by Milt and traverse the continent, she thought, trawling through city by city, making ends meet by selling pieces of his art.

Behind them platforms of rubbish were being burnt away. Now everything had been disassembled, taken apart and packed up and Black Rock city began to disappear without a trace. As they moved further and further from the temporary town, the people dispersed in all directions until the desert was again just an arid expanse. No longer were there oversized moving sculptures, people dancing under the moon, or hundreds of coloured bicycles colouring the landscape.

At bottom every man knows well enough that he is a unique being, only once on this earth; and by no extraordinary chance will such a marvelously picturesque piece of diversity in unity as he is, ever be put together a second time. — Frederick Nietzsche