A Fairy Tale

The last 6 weeks were made of a fairy tale. I joined a group that did circus, I met the most supportive and loving group of women I could have imagined, each beautiful by her own right and with a sense of humor.

In the performances, something went wrong for everybody and everyone broke a little at some point, but every time I saw another girl or more was there ready to help her get back up and at it. If you even looked frightened someone was there to help you.

Yesterday was the cast party. It was fun, with people running around and just enjoying themselves. Children and dogs were welcome. People were responsible with their children and generous with their food. There were none of the little annoyances we ignore every day.

I was going to let it all end there originally, but it appears there will be a 6 week fabric class for only $15 a class and a tumbling class. I might take these. It is ridiculously tempting. What is more, one of the girls I met wants to go skating and another wants me to start dancing with them. She can teach me poi and I can teach her weapons. It sounds wonderful. I'm not ready to part ways with all of these fantastic people. It makes me want to cry that it is over.

I have no idea how I am going to be able to go and handle real life when I know that people can be like this. I feel like I was in a fairy tale and now I have to go back to the real world filled with insecure nasty cynics.

Circus Day 15

Spent all of circus today going over acro stuff for the show on Friday. This is apparently the most ambitious show they have ever attempted for this level. It was a lot of fun and I realized how far we have all come as we prepared for it and were able to do moves easily that we thought were really hard a bit ago. Nothing new, but there were three things that I was able to do without a problem that I had not been able to do in the past. I have a giant painful bug bite on my elbow, but barely noticed during the class (I have since discovered all anti-itch creams in my house have aloe as the first ingredient, which I am allergic to).

On the way back, we had a hitchhiker who was along for the ride to help on costumes. She is from Montreal, so I asked a question that has been seriously bugging me. This is whether there are other circus school opportunities like this one. She said yes, one other, in Australia. This amazes me. I really hope that other circus groups will take that to heart and start helping random women work on circus stuff. This has been one of the nicest groups of girls I have ever met and a seriously positive experience. It has renewed some degree of faith in humanity for me.

Circus School Day 14

Tonight was fun. I did a clown piece with . We have a lot of good interactions together. It was hilarious and we are perfecting it even more.

Aerial was a blast. We did a couple of runthroughs of the act and the music is awesome. I was able to get up the cloth in a way I wasn't on Tuesday, but I am still having a major problem making myself do one of the drops. I have watched THREE other people do it. I was in a hugely painful position for many minutes looking down at the ground thinking "okay... NOW... I mean... NOW!" I have done it in slow motion three times. I will get this damn thing down before the show, but I seem to have major trust issues with things even as solid as a piece of fabric.

I will get this. I will I will I will.

The instructor for fabric told me she had the same damn hangup.

Circus School Day 13

Today was aerials only. We have a routine that seems both doable and challenging. This is exciting. Two of the three of us tried the first drop. I had some problems getting into star position (pants are not good for this position and somehow it snagged and my hip was being pulled out of place), so I didn't get to try the drop. I will next time, however.

We have to do that routine twice in one day. Oy. But it will work.

This has become an extremely fun class. I am so glad and lucky I was able to take it.

On the way back, we saw the most beautiful sunset. I will post pictures soon taken by the goddess_ironica on my camera. They were actually worth it, methinks.

Circus Days 11 and 12

Day 11 was aerial and clown.
Aerial was fun, but since I missed the warmup as I hit traffic on the way out of albuquerque, I felt weak and not as brave as usual. I think the almost fall on day 10 helped with this fear problem, but I should be okay in the end. We started coming up with a routine, which is continually mutating but is definitely attractive. is doing her bits in the middle since she is much better at being pretty than the other two of us and the other two of us will be symmetrically (with slight asymmetry) climbing up and doing tricks from the air.

Clown was hilarious. Clown is basically a game of "let's pretend" and I have plenty of experience with that. Like Dr. Dorian in Scrubs, I spend a large part of my life silently watching witty counters to real-life situations. I was told that some of the things that come out of my mouth are hilarious. For me, these things are normal. I guess I am a natural?

Day 12 was Acrobatics, Performance Skills, and Conditioning

Acrobatics was somewhat fun but mostly spent figuring prancing and showing off so that Kate (one of the acro teachers) could figure out the movement act. In the end I get to do some things including a double-dive-roll across the floor. I need to figure out how to do ironing board with Nancy. I can do this. All it needs is a handstand (which I've mostly got) and to keep my legs straight. My hips need to remember to be flexible. Stupid hips.

Performance skills was pretty boring. We spent the first half arguing about colors. The lesson was to make eye contact. I will gladly do so if I am not 10 feet in the air freaking out. We all already knew this.

Conditioning was fun. My abs are extremely sore. My rotator cuffs I think are mildly strained but functional. I am a stronger girl than I was before conditioning. Yay!

Today, Aerials only. and I need to come up with an act for Thursday clown.

circus school days 9 and 10

Sunday was performance skills. I don't think either of us learned much, which was sad. I felt like it was pulling teeth just to get my group to come together and figure something out. We missed the acrobatics part of class for a wedding. C'est la vie.

Today was aerial fabric only. I had a blast and got to relearn some stuff. Unfortunately at some point in the class I had complete arm muscle failure 5 feet above the ground at the point when the knot in my foot slipped, but the instructor helped me get down before I died. My foot was even with her head, so this puts me at around 5 feet. I need to stop thinking I am infallible and can do anything. I am wrong. Other than that scary moment, I did all sorts of fun stuff. Every once in a blue moon I make the mistake of realizing how high up I am and freeze, thinking "whose stupid idea was this???" but I think I'm over it for now. Going down stairs, which used to hold some level of trepidation for me, is now easy though. ;)

Circus school was fun yesterday, clown and stilts.

I forwent the stilts and just spotted since I was sick yesterday and had major vertigo। इ देसिदेद स्तायिंग ओं थे स्तिल्ट्स व्हिले दिज्ज्य वास अ स्तुपिद आईडिया.

Clown was awesome. The more we do it, the more I think that I use clown logic all the time. The other girls had some interesting concepts. I now have two red noses in my car. I hate those things with a passion. The whole time it is on, I feel stupid and like I want to claw the stupid thing off of my face.

We had to choose specialties yesterday. I chose clown, aerial fabric, and poi. I'm excited. I need to make some nicer poi that don't hurt so much when I hit myself in the head however.

Circus day 7

Circus school yesterday consisted of acrobatics and aerials.

Acrobatics was awesome. We did a lot of tumbling type stuff without the mats. We did partner-cartwheels. We worked on handstands. My wrist started whining at some point so I had to slow down a bit and wrap it. I cannot do a handstand yet, but will certainly be able to by the time class ends, darn it all. We then did partner acro. I paired with this girl who is exactly my weight and we had a lot of fun. The first one I have no memory of name of, but we got balanced right away. That one is actually fun to fall on. The second thing we did is called possum. She liked it so much we did it over and over and over again. We worked a bit on box and swan. The instructor was impressed when on something we were doing she dropped me and I fell landing on my forearm instead of my wrist or elbow. All the falling training I've had from the various things I've done continues to pay off! For a small person, I make a good base. People love me as a flier because I don't weigh anything. It is awesome. By the end of class, I was exhausted.

Then we had Aerial:
I finally figured out the single-foot unassisted knot for fabric. I was pretty happy about that. It is harder than the one she is teaching but I think more applicable. We did some other things, including one thing I didn't have the strength for when I last took fabric. Then trapeze. My rotators in my thighs are too strong apparently and started pulling my hips out of socket for one of the trapeze moves. I did the rest, but got the hell out of that position quickly. I'm just plain not built for trapeze, although it is fun and the instructor adorable. I have a total girl crush. Yes, I'm still straight. :-P

Most of the girls are adorable and all are nice. This is continuing to be a positive experience.

Circus school day 6

Circus school was fun today: acrobatics, clown, and conditioning.

Acro:
* Two-person tumbling is awesome.
* I make a good base, not just a good flier.
* I need to keep working on my flexibility. I'm not quite there; the instructor was sympathetic because she was once where I am-not flexible but pretty strong.

Clown:
* Entertaining
* The instructor is really good at inventing games for us to play.
* We got to play the different elements. This was entertaining and fun.

Conditioning:
* Insufficient-it was taught by the clown instructor. While the lower body conditioning was probably sufficient, I don't think the upper body conditioning came close. To be fair, there was only a single instructor there at that point so it is possible it wasn't safe to do more.