Tony Brasunas

The maps, the design, and the many elements of the manuscript of Double Happiness continue to absorb me.

The possibilities and potential of managing publication of the book on my own — complete self-publishing — continue to unfold.

There has also been interesting recent communication on the agent front, keeping conventional publication on the front burner.

I have much to think about. The route Double Happiness ultimately takes to publication will become clear, as clear as flames against a midnight sky. Soon. After some contemplation, after a brief hiatus, after Burning Man.

Yes, I’m off once again to a world I love: The playa, Black Rock City, the temporary city that rises in the desert dust, hosts an art, music, and sculpture extravaganza of some 50,000 people, and then vanishes again into dust. I wrote about my first visit to the magical city in 2003, as well as, a year later, my second visit in 2004. This year I’m creating and installing a sculpture myself, one that I will live in: The Threshold of Heat and Light.

At the end of the week, after the Man burns, the Threshold too will burn.

The Threshold of Heat and Light is a temple to transitions. Not coincidentally, my life and my book are in the moment of their transition and transformation. The walls of the Threshold of Heat and Light will ask visitors and passersby to write messages about where they’ve been and where their lives are going, about desired — or feared — change now transforming their lives. With its construction, consecration, and final immolation, the Threshold will ritualize and advance all the transitions written on its walls, propelling them into the future, into the sudden present.

In that moment, in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, as the Threshold burns against the midnight sky, Double Happiness will advance down its road towards publication, flying along its path from being a manuscript occupying my attention to becoming a book shared by the world.

In that light I will see how it is to be published.

That’s what I anticipate. The unpredictable universe and the gods of the harsh high desert may have plans of their own. But that is my intention. That is where I’ve been. That is where I’m going.