'Only' seems to be the hardest word

Desert experience an inward search

IN TRANSITION #8

By Benjamin Toff, Globe Correspondent | September 18, 2005
Read it on Boston.com

This is one in a series of reports about the strange time between getting a college diploma and entering real life.

I always tell myself that traveling will give me perspective, force me to reflect, provide instant answers to all of life's questions. It tends to be -- like most things in life -- only sort of true.

After a grueling summer, I gave myself a vacation. More of a mission, really, to the dry, dusty, inhospitable Nevada desert for an art festival called Burning Man.

For those of you East Coasters who haven't by now heard of the 20-year-old weeklong celebration of all things beautiful, debaucherous, and most importantly alive, I won't be much help. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go attend it yourself. As the burners like to say, ''Trying to explain what Burning Man is to someone who has never been is like trying to describe what a color looks like to someone who is blind."

Maybe it was the severe dehydration (my cracked lips are still recovering), but the days I spent in the Black Rock Desert have stuck with me like a dream. I'm afraid attempts to describe it will violate it; the sounds and smells and stunning visuals might evaporate as suddenly as they once bombarded me.

But I will relay this one chance encounter I had with a musician. It was late one night in the days leading up to the burning of the man statue. My friends were exchanging massages with strangers in the colossal ''Space Virgins" dome. I started up a conversation with a guy sitting nearby, Dave from Seattle, who as it turned out was a songwriter who gave guitar lessons for a living.

''I've never had a real job," he said sheepishly.

We traded stories, talked East vs. West, and eventually moved on to the pros and cons of devoting one's life to a profession that would never pay a salary above poverty. In his case, music. In my case, writing. (After traveling thousands of miles, my mind kept circling back to the same questions as though somehow the foreign surroundings would prompt new answers.) He worried how the decision had affected his love life. His voice dropped when he described his financially successful classmates.

''Think about whether it's the only thing you can be happy doing," he said. ''If it's not your 'only,' you want to be very clear about everything you're giving up."

In the morning, the sun rose, flooding the still-gray earth with warmth and color. A crane modified to resemble an enormous sunflower (a Burning Man ''art car") rose along with it in the distance. I thought of returning to my 9-to-5 routine in Cambridge.

I wondered about the meaning of the word ''only."

After a whirlwind couple of weeks, I've now moved into a place in Somerville. Scratch that: ''moved in" is an overstatement. I have no furniture. I'm still living out of boxes. But at least I have my own room.

Stability compensates for the squalor. At least that's what I've been telling myself. Late at night, the fan in my window rhythmically thwacking (I found it abandoned in another room), I stare at the ceiling. It is crusty with blotches from water damage and neglect. But I see through it to the stars above moving slowly across the night sky, and I imagine spinning slowly along with them.

Benjamin Toff works as a temp and lives in Somerville. He can be reached at benjamin.toff@gmail.com.