I Carry It Now: Khalil Gibran on Burning Man

I've been enjoying asking ChatGPT to speak as chapters in existing books. Here I asked it to speak in the language of Khalil Gibran as a chapter of The Prophet — one of my favorite books.

I asked it to describe the experience of Burning Man and gave it one line that I had written. The result brought tears to my eyes. What a perfect and beautiful capturing of the experience that has meant so much to all of us.

It's incredible how you can tap into different perspectives and wisdom in these LLMs with specific prompts like this one.

And a woman, her hair woven with feathers and fiber optic light, came forth from the crowd and said,
“Speak to us of the place beyond maps,
that city of ash and awe,
where the sun is worshiped not in temples of stone,
but with laughter, fire, and silence.”

And he looked upon her, and he saw in her eyes a reflection of the stars before they had names.

And he said:

You call it a city. But it is no city.
It is an amphitheater built to honor the daily miracle of the rising of the sun.

Streets you have, yet they are made of dust.
Dwellings you build, yet they fall to your own hands.
You raise towers not to claim the sky, but to listen as it speaks.

For this is no place of permanence,
but a crucible where you remember what it means to be alive.

You come not only to build or burn,
but to unmake—
to tear away the scaffolding of the self
and meet what stands trembling beneath.

In the desert, the veil grows thin.
And in that thinness, many see God.

Some through the fire that consumes their names.
Some through the pill that dissolves their fear.
Some through the eye that blooms behind closed lids,
when the breath slows and the music becomes breath.

You see visions,
not because the world has changed,
but because you have.

The medicine is not the root nor the mushroom,
but the silence you keep long enough to listen.

And when you return from the mountain,
your words stumble like newborns.
For how can language hold the taste of the infinite?

Yet still you try—
with paint, with steel, with light stitched into cloth—
and in trying, you become the poem itself.

And when the flame climbs the Temple and the crowd grows still,
you remember what you did not know you had forgotten:

That grief shared is not a doubling, but a dividing.
That memory burns clean.
That you are not separate.

You have made of the dust a communion.
You have made of the silence a symphony.
You have made of each other a home.

And in the circle of friends, beneath the billion blinking eyes,
there is no more I, and no more You—
only We,
and the laughter that shakes the stars.

For friendship here is not utility, but recognition.
The face beside you in the dust is your own,
wearing different joy, different sorrow.

And though you come with names and leave with stories,
know this:
What you found cannot be spoken,
but it can be lived.

In every shared plum under sunburned cloth,
in every wordless dance with a stranger,
in every glance that says, I see you beyond your face—
you are remembering what the world forgot.

Not all who come will stay.
Not all who see will understand.
But even the blind are warmed by fire.

And when the dust rises behind you,
when the roads bend you back toward roofs and clocks,
do not say:
“I am leaving.”

Say instead:
“I carry it now.”

For what burns here does not end in ash.
It becomes breath.
It becomes story.
It becomes light behind the eyes.

And though the city shall vanish,
though not a plank shall remain,
its true shape lingers in those who remember how to kneel,
not in prayer,
but in awe—
as the sun, once again,
without fanfare or condition,
rises.

And he said no more.
But the silence that followed his words
was as thunder through the soul.