As a white Capetonian it pains me to say this, but I did not go to Afrikaburn. As unlikely as it seems, I did not attend this years ‘burn. That’s right, I didn’t go “home” to the desert, I remained in the “default world”. It was bound to be quite a shock, so I decided to keep a diary of my harrowing time “left behind”. I have compiled the entries here as a way to work through some of my difficult feelings. I present them unedited, and I hope others will find this useful as a tale of survival, a guide, a therapeutic aid, to help those who also missed Afrikaburn.

Monday 24 April, day 1 — Things seem ok today, but I know it is just because its Monday and only a handful of the most committed burners are there already, the rest waiting so as to take less precious leave days. Once you hit the desert you are truly free, but before then you are still caught in the yoke of the man and his demand that you work 240 days a year.

Should have been me

Tuesday 25th, day 2 — I walk the streets, despondent. I hardly recognize these streets. Sure, they’re 99.94% the same, but that guy who usually unicycles to work on Main Road is gone and I am shook. I know he is in a better place, but us left behind are robbed of the joy of seeing him almost get hit by a car every day. I am getting strange looks for observing tutu Tuesday. If I were at the burn no one would bat an eye at a 32 year old man shirtless in a tutu, but here at the Mowbray KFC I get glances as if I am insane.

This is a normal and healthy outfit for a 32 year old man, I don’t care what the cashier at Checkers says

Day 3 — I am not sure I will survive the week. What kind of a cruel world is this? In the Tankwa people accept the natural beauty of the naked human form, but in this dysfunctional default world it is considered “inappropriate” or “illegal” to be nude at a 11am Ster-Kinekor screening of The Fast & The Furious 8. SMH. So instead I pace up and down my living room, naked and high on mushrooms, trying to astral travel to the burn, but the psychic trauma of being left behind inhibits my spirit and I end up crying while watching old episodes of Frasier.

Day 4 — I am getting despondent — store clerks keep cruelly asking for money in return for goods! It seems impossible that such an archaic system can exist in the week of the burn! But no matter my protestations Shelly at Pick n Pay will not accept my gift of pre-rolled cigarettes in return for the FutureLife cereal I so need! I laid in the dirt and tried to make dust angels, but unlike the Karoo, where the dust has been left untouched by mankind, the dirt at the construction site of the new Panaroma housing development is filled with concrete and cigarette butts and used needles. I scream in pain but no one comes to my aid, there are no rangers, there is no help. This is surely hell. I meet strangers and ask them to marry me, for it is Purple Thursday, the day of the purple wedding! My proposals at Afrikaburn are usually met with glee and laughter and every wedding ceremony is a thing of love and joy. Back in Cape Town the police do not even try to understand this, they just remove me from outside of the Clarinus UCT Woman’s Residence. Pigs! We humans are perfectly capable of regulating our own behavior even if we have drunk too much rum punch! It is absurd that we require a police force, we humans are free and our spirit cannot be contained!

This would be totally fine at Afrikaburn

Day 5 — I am in my tutu again. I have eaten nothing but pre-made stews for 4 days and I am weak with hunger — usually this is perfectly sufficient at Afrikaburn where my diet would be supplemented by brownies from kindly nude septuagenarians and pancakes at dawn, but here on the streets of Bree and Loop I go hungry. Clarkes also does not believe in the gifting economy, and my handfuls of necklaces with Africa pendants are worthless here. I start a fire in the parking lot of Canal Walk and it is glorious! The heat of the flames intensify as a nearby Toyota Avanza catches alight and through the warm on my cheeks I can almost feel the kisses of all my comrades at the burn! We are connected by the eternal force that is fire, the collision of vibrant particles accelerating and reacting, could there be any greater metaphor for human connection? Fire has given us so much, food and warmth and energy and power, dominion over this earth, no one can own fire, no one can take responsibility for its unknowable powers! At least, this is what I tell Sergeant Conradie of the Milnerton Police Department, but he is unmoved by my words.

This, but in a shopping trolley at Canal Walk

Day 6 — These fools think they have caged me, but truly I am the free one, and they are trapped in their crumbling world ruled by money and order, where all creativity is quashed and mankind is a shadow of what it could be! I am content in my tiny cell, they cannot break me! They think the smelly open toilet will wear me down, but I have seen far worse on Day 6 of the Burn, when the mounds of excrement approach the top of the open-air toilets of the buitekring! They think that boredom will drive me insane, but they do not consider that the very fire that landed me here and singed off my eyebrows also opened a vast cosmic portal of consciousness! The flames burned my retinas and they have grown back anew, with the ability to comprehend the 300km to afrikaburn as nothing more than a window pane, and now I dance with my comrades around the binnekring. I watch with tears in my eyes as they burn the statue of an obese Donald Trump, as the flames consume the giant McDonald’s arches, as fire engulfs the straw gorilla symbolizing the death of the innocent Harambe.

Who even needs cops

Day 7 — Ah the comedown begins. I am still connected with my fellow Burners and I feel them as they begin to leave the desert. I feel the terrible withdrawal with them, but still envy them, because I have the withdrawal without having even been to the burn. As they leave the Karoo, so do I leave the confines of the Milnerton Police Station. The Burners will have to dust off their wallets and return to this cruel fiat money system, just as my parents had to part with their worthless paper to cover my bail. As I walk into the cool Cape air, I realize that the Burn is over and I missed it. But I survived! It can be done, I don’t have to go to Afrikaburn. I had not thought this possible, but I managed to invoke the spirit of the Burn from afar! Thanks to my stubborn insistence at disobeying the rules of the regular world and my ingestion of near lethal doses of MDMA, 2CB, LSD, MDA and PCP I was able to pierce the veil of reality and I managed to turn the default world into AFRIKABURN! With this power, I will be akin to a god! But for now, I must sleep. I need to prepare my body for tomorrow morning the deluge of photos will begin and Facebook will never be the same again.