So Long, C

The last few days have been exceedingly difficult for me. C performed in her final show, the switch to her replacement was made, and now she’s really gone.

C and I were in school together. She was a year below me. We had already done a contract or two together. When my circus was looking for another female artist, I thought that she would be brilliant for this show. It turns out the company thought the same and she stayed on right after her audition.

The entire experience with this circus has been trying. There have been many wonderful times too, of course, but as with anything, there’s also lots of drama. Plus, we’re both from Canada, both had to jump through the same French hoops, and bore a lot of the same burdens that only those far away from home can truly appreciate. She has been my closest confidante. And there are things going on here that I can’t share with anyone else. Now that she’s gone, I don’t know how I’ll get by. You can’t possibly imagine how lost I feel.

I miss my friend. I miss planning dinners together on our days off. I miss movie nights and teatime. I miss my rock. There are so many ways she helped keep me grounded. Who else will advise me to give my internal organs a massage before the show when I’m feeling particularly anxious?

Her last show went brilliantly and she was showered with a huge outpouring of love. Many secret, and not so secret goodbye messages were littered throughout the performance. A sign saying “So long C!” taped to the marimba, getting roses all throughout the show, her name in song, paintings in her honour, a sign held up in the technical booth at curtain call, a goodbye made before the entire audience…

After her last show, we finally had tea on top of the tent. We’d been planning on doing it for ages and never did get around to it. It was the right time. It was the only time we had left. It was beautiful.


When her replacement took the stage and C could finally sit in the audience to watch the show (the first night C was still backstage guiding D) she cried. Of course she cried. I cried for most of her last show, most of the first show without her, and at the end of the show where she was in the audience. I’m crying now. I’ll be crying for days.

It doesn’t feel real. It doesn’t seem possible. I keep expecting her to come back. As she was driven away to the train station, half hanging out the window waving, the car flanked by at least half the troupe, it felt like a dream.

I miss her tremendously. I can’t even explain. Everything I just wrote is like a single drop of water in the ocean. Truly, a light has gone out here. And not just for me. The first full day of her absence, almost everyone was reflecting on the realization that she was really gone.

The technician who pulled her in her act looked wistfully out the kitchen window and said “It only just hit me that I’m not going to be seeing that smile again…”

And I can’t even count the times where her flight status and possible location ‘right now’ was discussed. There are echoes of her everywhere. It’s always hardest for those left behind.

She gave me a string of decorative lights that had always bedecked her caravan. I admit, I always did admire them. I didn’t get a chance to tell her that I strung them up before she left and had them on throughout that last show.


They may not as bright as her own light, but it’s still nice to have a little bit of here shinning here with me.

So long, C. We miss you.

Blackout

For reasons unknown, I have been avoiding my blog lately. It's not that I haven't had anything to write about. In fact, there have been heaps of things worth writing about and I keep taking pictures of things with the sole purpose of posting them here. And yet there are no updates to be seen.

There has been a lot going on, mind you. And my mind has been occupied with some rather heavy life related things. And considering Blogger sometimes causes my computer to crash... well, you get the idea.

So hopefully my pluck will be restored very soon and I will once again regale you with the hilarity of circus life.

Until then, here is a picture of a giraffe:


I'd say that about sums up how I feel quite nicely.

Quite nicely indeed.

Chosen Life

Those who know me often marvel at this circus life I have chosen. They’re awed by the feats that my fellows and I perform, and envy the traveling and the mystique. For them, the romance of circus is alive and well. As well it should be. The magic of the Big Top, the spectacle, the thrills… it wouldn’t be circus otherwise. For the most part, even I’ve maintained this view of the world I now inhabit. There are hardships, of course, but you learn to take them with a grain of salt. After all, don’t all great romances have their share of difficulties?

But no matter how spellbound one might be by the world of circus and all its splendours, and I say this as an acrobat in the thick of it all, there comes a time where the consequences of having chosen this life come to harsh reality.

My grandfather died a month ago. A couple of weeks before that, I received some very bad news concerning my sister. And despite all the goodwill of my heart, here I was, completely helpless in Paris.

The initial news about my grandfather was that he wouldn’t live to see the end of the week. I was told to ask what the company policy was when there is a death in the family. I received this news a Sunday morning, right before a show. Every time I return to France for work, my great fear is that something should happen at home, and that I can’t be there. Every time I leave, I wonder if I will ever see my grandparents again.

This time I received an answer.

When I asked about potentially going home for the funeral, I was later told by the director that I was indispensable to the show and that it wouldn’t be possible. I mostly expected that response. In truth, I had hoped for it. I know that makes me sound like a terrible person, but under the circumstances, I couldn’t handle the stress of having to choose between going home and the madness that would accompany that decision, not to mention the guilt and disrespect towards the troupe, and staying in Paris to perform, not having that closure and being unable to be there with my family in that moment of duress.

I’m not proud of it, but I can’t deny it was a relief to have that responsibility taken away from me.

And I cried. And no matter who offered what kind of comfort, all I could do was ask them to wait… to leave me alone until the end of the show… otherwise, there was no way I would make it through. It was one of the hardest performances of my life. I scarcely remember how I felt, just that I hated every moment of it and was on the verge of tears the entire time.

Tuesday morning I got the call that my grandfather had passed. Being the weekend at the circus, there was virtually no one on site. I was terribly and desperately alone. To add insult to injury, Wednesday evening, just before the show I found some packages waiting for me in my trunk backstage. One was from my grandparents, signed from both of them. Of course it had been mailed before my grandfather had died, but nevertheless it was a painful reminder and a slap in the face from the Universe. Again, I cried. For the rest of the week I painted large bouquets of flowers at the end of the show.

And while I must admit that the idea of a funeral scared me (this is the first grandparent I’ve lost) and the image of my grandfather in a casket rips my heart to shreds and I don’t know if I could have handled it, I envy my siblings for being able to be there and having that closure. To a certain extent, none of this seems real. I’m just going to go home and never see my grandfather again. How do you deal with that?

My answer, of course, is baking.

Since I couldn’t be there for the actual funeral, I felt it was important to make some kind of gesture to mark my grandfather’s passing. As such, I baked the most complex, elaborate and chocolately cake in my repertoire. I invited the troupe and those who work at the circus’ bar to share it with me. To my great relief, one of the more senior members of the troupe led the proceedings. I said some words and we shared a moment of silence. Then we saluted my late grandfather and enjoyed the cake baked in his honour. Though I did have to remind certain people who were very excited to eat cake (“Le gateau! Le gateau!”) that it was not so much about the cake as it was about the passing of my grandfather.

And so a month has gone by, I have another 20 shows under my belt, and more than ever the fence surrounding the lot feels like a cage keeping me in my circus bubble. Two and half more weeks and I'll finally make it home... two and half more weeks...

The In-Between

Back in my days as a camp counselor, I used to love the in-between times. Specifically, the time between sessions. That's when I could really take in what was around me, spend time with my fellow staff members, drink tea and reflect. It was that kind of camp. I especially loved rainy weekends on the back porch behind Canary Cottage, mug of tea in hand, water dripping off the trees and onto the roof. Those were cherished moments of peace and perfection.

With the circus, it's different. During shows, I'm still trying to figure out how to manage my days. How much can I go out, how much time can I spend in the sun, at what time should I eat so that I have enough energy but don't feel weighed down? And during a run, just how much can I do on my day off? I want to go out and do things, but I know my body needs rest. The clowns went and biked 80km on one of our days off. They saw beautiful things and got horrendous sunburns... Clowns may not have the same physical demands as an acrobat, but the job of a clown is very demanding physically and certainly emotionally. I don't know how they did it.

I'm sure I'll find the answers to these questions once the show runs longer. But in the meantime, I feel like I'm not exactly using my time as well as I should.

But the hardest thing for me right now is in-between cities. With this circus, we never move to the next town immediately after finishing in the town we're in. We usually have a week off, sometimes more. I find these periods very stressful and I tend to get kind of down. I think a lot of that has to do with not actually having a home anywhere in France and scrambling to find somewhere to stay, something to do.

More than anything, I feel lonely. I don't have a home here yet, and my friends are the people I work with. In between work, I squat in the apartments of of acquaintances and friends working in Europe. So strange, this circus life. How do you find the balance between the traditionally nomadic reality of circus life, and the more sedentary-except-when-on-tour reality of contemporary circus life?

Picking up the pieces

Every time I sit down to write, my mind goes blank. The events of the last two weeks have consumed all of my time and energy. My head has been a complete and total mess. I came very near to hitting the bottom.

Oddly enough, one of my friends and I had pretty much predicted the way things would go. The first two weeks would be brutal on the body, the third and fourth weeks on the mind and soul. Did we ever hit our mark.

I don't feel the need to go into to much detail. It was one of those "everything that could go wrong did go wrong" kind of things coupled with having met my limit on pretty much everything.

The good thing to have come from all of this is that I have learned who my real pillars of strength are in this circus family of mine. Also, by some miracle, through the thickest moments, I managed to create most of my number.

This is a big deal for a couple of reasons. For starters, it usually takes me a really long time to choreograph a number. Not to mention that ordinarily, I wouldn't have been able to work on anything in the state I was in. I think that in all the chaos of creation, German wheel has been a rock for me. I know I'm good at it and I love it to no end. In the past, it has always been a source of nervousness. Now its my greatest comfort.

Have I ever even mentioned that I do German wheel? No so much, eh? Well, that's what I do and I dare say, I do it well.

My friend and I never did figure out what the fifth week of creation would bring. I hope it brings some German wheel stage time. I'm getting ready to show where I am in my work and I could use a small victory.

Reality Check

I’m not sure what it is, but I was feeling a little down when the week started and it just seems to be escalating. Circus has a particular blend of anxiety, fear and doubt unlike that found anywhere else.

Oh sure, there’s the whole ‘I just left my home, family, lover, and everything I’ve ever known thousands of kilometers away’ burden to bear. That, on it’s own, is pretty standard. But if you combine it with the stress of mastering new skills on a new apparatus, meeting your own ridiculously high standards, feeling like you’re not good enough (or at all), and the overall fight to find your place in the show, you get a pretty noxious emotional cocktail.

The worst part is that I have no idea how to get out of it. I have ‘tools’ to work through creative blocks and creative doubt, but mostly I feel like I’m blanketed by an overall sense of malaise and have no idea how I can even begin to deconstruct it.

I want to be alone

I want to be with people.

I want to forget.

I want to remember.

I want to go home.

Shit.

This is home now...

I titled this post ‘Reality Check’ for a reason. My first thought being that the reality of my situation, starting this new life and leaving home, has finally hit. Almost immediately afterward I was struck by a considerably more relevant reality check. That these things that are eating away at my happiness are mostly things I can control. They’re parasites that have plagued me since high school… waning confidence, doubt, timidity… even I describe my standards as ridiculous!

So, yeah, the reality is that things aren’t really as bad as they seem. I just need to figure out how to get over the part where things do, in fact, seem bad. Quel vie de cirque…