Sitting in the train on my way to Berlin (again). I am trying to use as much of my "summer" as I can, given that I was robbed of two weeks of holidays with my family due to COVID. So every weekend in September and October is planned with travels. I hope I am superhuman (vaccine + COVID = 2000U/ml antibody titer right now).

While all this travelling is happening, I am having a very mixed time. Managed to go to a single Burn this year kiezburn, which is the German/Berlin version of a local burn, named after the Berlin Kieze, which is just another way of saying neighborhood, but it's smaller than a neighborhood, usually. So instead of a camp at a burn, they call them Kiez at Kiezburn.

I mentioned briefly in chat (and promised steve a small update, so here it is) that it was probably my toughest burn. I had a tough burn before, which was just after my weed-induced psychosis, but that was obvious why. This time, I went quite stable in my mind, not expecting 5 days of dread.

I often deal with a specific feeling of loneliness. Even though I am surrounded by people, friends, I feel alone. The reasons for it are not clear to me. I always wish to be part of a "group", a crew, a gang, a swarm, whatever you call it. But I never am. I always end up swimming between swarms. Being a connecting link. Introducing people from one tribe with the other. But I never really felt part of one. My strongest relationships tend to be 1-on-1 relationships with people that are not directly connected to each other, spread across countries, cultures, and social bubbles.

The only place I always felt like I belong was the burn. Any burn. Whether it was MidBurn in Israel or Borderland in Denmark. I always felt like I "found my people". This was the first time I didn't feel like it. I felt like a foreign squirrel amongst fish.

One particular dynamic kept repeating. I probably didn't choose the right Kiez/camp for my first time at Kiezburn. The camp consisted of the main organizers of the burn. Which meant that they knew each other for a looong time and throughout the whole burn it was hard to disconnect from the organizational part of the event, and just be. So I went out to find me some peers, which wasn't hard. Nearly every day, I met one person or groups of people I felt comfortable with or found interesting and asked if I can tag along. It went well, at first, until, I was forgotten. People would leave (as a group) to another place, or something, without letting me know.

I did cross my mind that maybe they don't want to have me around. But all of them went through the effort to find me on social media after the burn and kept contact. So I guess it wasn't that. I kept wondering why this would happen over and over. Add a little bit of alcohol, FOMO, and I end up feeling like crap every night when heading to bed.

I got to talk to one person I met, who was also part of such a group, and I asked her what she thinks happened. She said that she always had the impression that I "know everyone", which lead to the assumption that I am not part of the group. Or rather, that I am "fine without a group". I have heard this a few times over the years, and I always wondered where this impression comes from. Either way, it is the opposite of what I actually feel like.

This is a small excerpt of what made this burn tough. There was also a lot of miscommunication with a former lover/friend from Israel that joined me for the burn. But I learned my lesson. Never take responsibility in planning a burn for anyone but yourself. Why the heck do I keep maneuvering my self into positions where I am responsible for shit??

Long rant. Anyway. Off to Berlin for a psychedelic research conference :) If you are interested, there are live-streaming tickets and the program is quite nice https://insight-conference.eu/program/thursday/