Picture Pages

I've been slacking at writing, so here's some pictures of tour. I'll be writing more on the train tomorrow. Yes, the train...





We made people stop reading on the beach.





Booze sprained elena's toe.



So Emily and I had to do all the rigging in Portland...without a ladder.





This is Laura when she's in a bad mood.





And this is Laura in a good mood. (Moment captured by Mari Provencher)



Looking like sorority girls in Vegas.





This is how much acrobats eat.




WE MADE IT!

9/29--Dear Portland

Congratulations! You are officially off my shit list. You behaved yourself very well this time around and I'm glad to see that you have grown up.

That said...grow up. You are an oblivious 9 year old in a precocious princess dress. You read magazines about cool stuff and you make your mom buy it for you but you don't know how to organically evolve as a city should. Festering endlessly in a utopian dream, someday you'll have to move out and pay your own rent. Then you'll see...

Normal cities are grouchy and dirty. Thank god for all the homeless people downtown keeping you a little bit real. They are the constant reminder of Portland past...a city that's never really given a shit about the poor, preferring to build condos and freeways than maintain affordable housing.

Maybe I'm being harsh. Maybe I'm jealous that people here can trip over a sushi roll and land face first in a cup of coffee by just stepping outside their door. If you hate your clothes you can inhale really hard and suck a new vintage dress onto your body. Okay, fine. I'm sorry if I'm being unfair. I'm just a visitor, reaping the rewards while not having to sort any of the trash into recyclables, compostables or turn-it-into-art-ables.

It was a close call, though, Portland. Friday night was certainly a challenge, when you brought your most unentertainable minions to our 10pm show. We could almost hear the eyes rolling. You know, most people at least clap when a girl hangs from the back of one heel! I know you show your appreciation in a different way than most cities—the harder your arms are crossed over your chest, the more it means you like something...but it's just disconcerting for non-natives. Cameron almost whipped out a dental drill to start pulling teeth.

But, all is forgiven, and you have the Kennedy School to thank. Only in such an idealistic city would people think they could take an old school and fill it with bars, ahi tuna tostadas, a movie theatre, $4 mircobrews and a swimming pool and NOT have someone drown. But, Portland, you did this very commendable thing. I kicked back in the pool with 12 or so other tattooed, vintage-bathing-suit wearing 25-35 year olds and let some of my problems with you slide under the water and die.

The ice coffee with ice cubes made of coffee that I had the next day also helped.

So let's make a truce. I'll stop shit talking you to everyone that says the word “Portland” if you stop gentrifying neighborhoods and building ugly condos. “Too late,” you say? Well then, game on.

Love,
Shayna

My phone iS plugged in behind a mini fridge and I know there are many spelling errors below. Sorry.

I'm wishing I had my computer here. I haven't posted anything  in ages and now I'm in a bar in arcata California and it smells like shit. I'm glued to my iPhone because I've forgotten how much I hate the outside world. I've lost all survival mechanisimz for dealing with it after only having to deal with peole I like for the last 3 weeks. I have methods for I dealing with the 7 people on this tour and that's all I've been able to focus on. Hippies, college kids, crusties? No way. Emily, Elena and Laura, bring it on. 

Only, i dont know where they are. There are 4 bars in this town and they are all rigtht next to each other, but I've lost them. I only seem to want to get drunk in swanky bars lately and that's a far cry from here, so I picked the swankiest of the 4 Nd here I am. Blogging. I am what people talk about when the way that technology drive us from reality comes up  in conversation. "I was at this bar Nd it was so awesome And there wA this girl sitting there and she did t take her eyes off her iPhone the whole night. Oh, and she looked like a fat old lady."

That's the mood I'm suddenly in.

I haven't been running since I left. I've hardly doNe shit outside doing shows. I'd be totally happy with this if I didnt have examples of athletic ideals taking their clothes off everytime I turn Around. . 

Really clothes never stood a chance with them. Fabrics are made to disintegrate off such perfect bodies, so it was really just matter of time. And it was a matter of time until I started feeling totally aweful about my lack of clothing disintegration. I've always been uncomfortable naked and I've always been uncomfortable with my body, so how wonderful for both these issues to be poking me in the ee these days.

I don't understand how peole can just let all their floppy parts flop around. I prefer to be encAsed in layers of elastic and straps and performance Lyra/spandex blends. Naked in front of anyone for a second and I almost go internally deaf from my brain screaming "OH MY GOD! What are they thinking about my body!?!?"

Mental calipers size every photo ofe to the bodies around it. At home I measure every dimension of my body everyday. The slightest increase equals a meltdown. There is a tiny bit of leeway there, and I have no idea if I am withi ln those boundries and it's making me crazy.

To make matters words, here I am, sneaking up on Portland like a ninja in the night. I'm doing this to reclaim the one part of my life that I feel totally withdrawn from, bUt strangely victimized by. For the last week iv drempt about the place. Apartments and people and record stores And streets. I've been trying to open my mind to the flood gafes of memories boring up against the levy. When my apart
Ent got broken into. My bike got stolen. 3 times. Suicide attempts. Breakup. Lives i destoryed because of my bullshit feminist politics. Research. Learning trapeze. Light rail. Bad e. Mostly bad e. Not e the drug, e the destroyer.  

And playing music. My former life. I'd spend every penny onnew I struments. Organs. Banjos. RotAting leslies. Spend every second in basements. Inventing new tuning and awesome band names. Trying to organize a collective and painting the walls of new venues before the owners grAbbed the money and took off for Mexico. 

And my last memory of Portland. Coming back after being awY for 4 years or so. Having an akward dinner with bad e at his shitty yuppie new apartment then going to a club. Hitting it off with his best friend and finally seeing someone else who could see through his bullshit for the insecurity it was. Then being treated like utter shit. Possibly worse than the cmbination of all those years of being treated like utter shit. Just a few moments of total disregaurd for my wellbeing of happiness that synthasized everything. I stumbled with black eyes to my rental car without saying goodbye. I'd said that goodbye a million times before. Laying and hyperventilating in the front seat I called the one person I knew would never disregaurd me. He talked me through it. He put his feeling for me aside and made the most important thing my safety. Maybe it sucked for him to hear me so upset about such a dick, but I couldn't read that from his voice. He just tLkex me through the steps of getting out of the cAr, getting a cab, And  getting into bed. Alone. I knew I'd fou d a good one. 

I swore to myself I'd never ever speak to bad e again. Now I'm having dreams that he shows up at my show in portland And nils walks out to kick his ass. So do my 7 best friend. 

I should probably leave the safety of my iPhone and go find them.        

9/16/09-Waking Up in Vegas

It's like herding cats. There are so many flashing lights to distract and trips to the bathroom to make. It takes us 3 hours to leave Circus Circus, which is of course where we stayed for our night in Vegas.




Lizzy and I were working in super-fast motion the night before and had to break off from the group. We went to every bar that sounded familiar as a celebrity hang out from Us Weekly. We bought saketinis at glowing bars and got guest listed into Lavo—hoping to bump into Britney or Mischa.
The other ladies blew their wads on blackjack and fake motorcycle rides, resulting in hilarious photo keychains.




We drove another white-knuckled 300 miles from Vegas to LA...about 50 miles per hour the whole way, the van still feeling like trying to do rola bola on a rolling globe. At one point I was driving a straight line and swerved, for no reason at all, into the next (thankfully empty) lane over. It was like an invisible giant came from out of nowhere and pushed us as hard as possible. WTF?! (I can't believe my mom is reading this right now...mom, we're getting it fixed tomorrow!)

Pulling up to Elena's sister's house in LA, I hardly stopped the van before I jumped out and ran away from it as fast as possible. And what I ran into was literally an oasis at the end of a desert trudge. From the front door I could see out into the back yard where a pool and a trampoline awaited us. A beer was placed into my hand. Four adorable children between 2 and 7 were buzzing around my feet begging me to play Barbie with them. Three old dogs lazed on the back porch. A huge dinner of pasta and meatballs and broccoli and salad and rolls was placed before me.

I'm in LA and it's 75 degrees and sunny. I remember why it was nice to live in Southern California. Tomorrow I'll probably remember why it wasn't, but for now, another perfect end to another insane day.

9/15/09-No Doubt

Emily is driving and there is something wrong with the tires again. We're at 5000 ft and descending. The car is swerving all over the road and we can't figure out why. We just got 2 new tires put on and this is getting exhausting. We should have rode horses.

“No Doubt is awesome,” Emily says.

“Yeah, totally,” I respond absentmindedly.

Actually I hate No Doubt. I mean, I can listen to them, and I think Gwen Stefani has awesome style, and her voice is even okay, but I just don't like them at all.

This is how my life has changed. When No Doubt first came out, the thought of them made me sick. Their girl-power anthem seemed so watered down to me. I was listening to Bikini Kill and Team Dresch and I knew what real feminist music sounded like. I had a shaved head and a septum piercing and a girl power tattoo and I lived in a basement for $90 a month in a house with 7 girls. We'd go the the Bins in Portland and get home and admire our sweater vests and baseball shirts. “Oh my god, that's so rad, “ we'd gasp.

Now I live in a van with 7 other girls and I say things like “No Doubt is awesome”. When we make $300 a week we feel loaded. When someone pulls a glittery, sparkly, trashy, skin-tight new costume from the Leo's factory outlet store out of a bag I gasp. “Oh my god, that's so beautiful”. Who am I? What have you done with Shayna?

Actually, I'd take the me now a million times over the 90's riot grrrl version. She was fully nuts. Certifiably crazy. Now, I'm only crazy for fun, and sometimes on accident. I often think of how sad I was then, how every bad thing would seem like the end, and every kind of bad thing would seem like a kick in the gut. I didn't even want to make it out of that time alive.

And now I run a freaking circus. I leave town for 5 weeks to do my art. I get my picture in the paper. I'm not saying this to brag. I look back at that time in my life with such relief that I had the resilience to pull through it. I'm so grateful that there were parts of my life that I loved enough to keep going for and that those parts have become what make my life awesome now. I had to work really fucking hard to get out of that rut, but I'm so glad I did. It makes it hard for me now to sympathize with people who don't think they have anything worthy of their lives. I'm so bootstrappy. I just want to smack people sometimes and say “snap the hell out of it!” You have no idea what lies ahead or what turn your life will take. It could go in infinite directions at every moment.

It's why everything scares the hell out of me, too. Flying, driving, riding in the van. Every second of travel makes my heart race, and in a panicked way, not an exhilarated way. Eight girls driving down a mountain pass in a van with screwed up steering is the kind of shit cable news programs thrive off of. For a moment we quietly imagined the memorial service that would be thrown for us if our lives went in that one terrifying, infinite direction. We laughed about the types of performances people would do to commemorate us. Then Emily told us to snap the hell out of it and we did, a bit relieved to take an order so firmly delivered.

Hanging from bits of cotton and steel, though, doesn't scare me a bit. In those moments I feel like no other moments exist to be afraid of. I know every hand placement and the right second to make it happen. I look forward to performing to relieve my mind from the almost constant dull ring of doom that still exists droning at the back of my days. Somethings change as I get older: my taste in music, clothes, ability to deal with personal crisis. Somethings stay the same, but just get blurrier: my girl power tattoo, my eyesight, my overarching and endless fear of my final infinite moment.

Who would think “aerialist” is the perfect career for dealing with it?

9/14/09-Day Off

I got dressed in “day off clothes”. Crocheted tights, a mini skirt and a Bumpit.

We all got “bodywork”. Colleen McKeown massaged the crap out of my upper back which was rocked from lifting Amanda...with my neck. It ruled, but if I hear the word “bodywork” again, I might walk myself into an oven.

Cameron and I sang “I've Had the Time of My Life” at karaoke as a tribute to Patrick Swayze. I ended the day off sitting in a hot tub. Under the stars.

This tour is pretty rough.

(This is a picture of me, being distraught about losing our 4-square ball. What else is there to do with the pump. A pump without a ball. So sad.)

9/13/09-The Hangover

Worst. Hangover. Ever.

Emily's dream came true. Well, Cameron didn't teach my workshop, but Laura and Helena did. I swayed around the house from my bed to the toilet and back again. Flush, rinse, repeat. I desperately had to snap out of this before the show at 4.

I tried to nap it off but I couldn't breathe. I was laying totally still and gasping for air, feeling like my throat was closing up. Actual fear made an appearance a few times. I wanted to get up, but I felt like I had to hide from the students I'd bailed on teaching hard tricks to. So I just laid there, gasping and thinking about what a huge idiot I am.

When it was safe to come out I dragged myself into the yard to stretch. Opening up my joints let even more toxins out and I felt worse yet. I joined Elena as the cafe and downed a bowl of potatoes, beans, cheese, sour crème and bacon. Ahhh...a little better.

By some miracle, we did our best show yet. BY the time we'd finished acro, my hangover was totally gone. I felt like a normal person again, just in time to rock the frame with Crockett. Another standing ovation...6 out of 6 ain't bad.

However, it's after the show that the magic happened. I don't know how a day can go from feeling so utterly dismal to so mindblowingly amazing. Something about us, I guess. The combination of us-ness. We jumped into our bathing suits—old fashioned onesies and surfer girl bikinis and back into the van for a trip to the hot springs. About ½ way there I heard Amanda screaming, “OH MY GOD!” We all looked out the window and saw A BABY BEAR wandering across the road and waddling its cute little baby bear butt up a hill. We all were screaming at the top of our lungs. “A BABY BEAR A BABY BEAR WE JUST SAW A BABY BEAR!” We hadn't even finished screaming when Amanda started screaming again “OH MY GOD! A RAINBOW!”
“AUGH AUUUUGH AAAAAUGH! A RAINBOW!” We saw a baby bear at the end of a rainbow.

Our minds were totally blown and we hadn't even hiked down the gorge to the Rio Grande to sit under the stars in hot springs, 8 naked acrobats in nature. Stars shot across the sky as we plunged into the freezing river and tripped up the rocks back to the hot springs. “Where are we? What in the hell is going on?” Cameron kept muttering. Seriously.

The only thing that could have made it better would have been pizza. Oh, and we got that, too...hangover, gone.

9/12/09--Pre-Hangover

Wake up in the mansion. Stumble to the coffee pot. Granola. Workshops. Drive to Penasco. Rig for the show the next day. Get drunk.

And there is where the problem lies. Cameron and Emily made amazing steaks and sweet potato fries and broccoli. They drank ½ bottle of Jack in the process. I felt the need to catch up. A beer and a glass of whiskey with dinner, then Elena passed out on the couch and the rest of us retired to the theater. I drank more. A lot. In fact, I can't really remember the rest, so I'll yell to the back of the van and make a list of moments other people remember.

Dance party.
An undisclosed member of the company who thinks this is something to be ashamed of tried to teach Lizzy to do stripper booty dancer moves.
We played Closer by 9 Inch Nails and I commented that it's a fucked up song to dance to.
Helena and Emily danced salsa.
Amanda did a frame swing lap dance with Laura.
Amanda tried to learn to follow.
I got trapped in the bathroom by a painting.
Emily found me crying on my bed because I couldn't find my phone.
Helena tried to feed me bread and I kept spitting it out.
I got lost at 4 AM trying to find the bathroom and had to wake up Amanda to help me find it.
Emily had a dream that Cameron had to teach my workshop because I was too hung over.
I drunk dialed my boyfriend.



Basically, I was a fool. I don't know how it happened, but again, I will blame the altitude.

9/11/09—A Tale of Two Audiences

I thought it might be the altitude. It made me wheeze just walking across the parking lot and totally doubt my ability to lift Emilys and Elenas way up over my head. Would I be able to hang from my toes while gasping desperately for breath? “That must be it”, I thought as I heard the crickets chip during our first show. The babies cry. The chewing of gum. Every sound but applause.. What the hell?

First of all, we were exhausted. We'd rigged and teched the show earlier in the day, nourished only by the amazing burritos that Nick Spence had delivered to us. (Nick Spence, who painted our van, designed our t-shirts and posters and postcards and is just a general awesome dude.) I'd taken the van to get fixed. We warmed up acro. We put on make up. We put out fires. I think I'd forgotten to stretch. Basically, we were al frazzled. It was our 3rd city in a week.

The 6PM audience ambled in. They sort of mozied. A bit of a golf clap when Cameron introduced the show. Blank looks for the song and dance. We were deflated.

There are different styles of audience. There are different types of act. Maybe we didn't match the two up well enough. This was the polite audience, watching quietly and applauding only at the end of the act. Some people like this. Some people want the act to be taken as a whole and there's definitely something to that. But when you're up there busting your ass, actually in physical pain and trying to make it look easy, it's nice to get a little encouragement. Even when we did the splits, there was just a smatter of applause. Even after my biggest, craziest most unexpected drom, only the crickets gave it up.

It was a little disheartening. Even more so because we knew there were circus people out there. We just wanted it to end. So it was strange at intermission when we sold a bunch of shirts. Hmmmm...odd.

Of course, when Amanda performed there was a hailstorm of applause. It's her home town and she is loved. It's like everyone was just waiting to see her insane hat manipulation and comedy trapeze.

Then, to our total amazement, as we walked up to take a bow, people stood up. They weren't standing to leave as fast as possible. We were getting a standing ovation! They actually liked us...they were just a quiet audience.

Standing O or not, I didn't know how the hell I was going to get through the next show. I couldn't breathe. My muscles ached and my arms were shaking. I ate a powerbar and felt a little better. I forced everyone else to eat one, too. We had 20 min to the next show and I popped my head into the lobby to see how ticket sales were going. Sold out with the waiting list getting longer by the minute. There was such a buzz of excitement out there that it broke my heart to turn everyone away. So screw it. We wouldn't turn them away. We couldn't let them in the building due to fire code, but they could watch from outside. We threw open the curtain at the back of the stage and opened the garage door. This time, people poured in to take their seats, and huddled around the open garage door. It was a beautiful night, warm, starry and magical. All the energy that had eluded me in the first show came rushing into my veins.

The second Cameron went on stage they started cheering. They were a roudy audience. When Cameron played “Ask a ringmaster”, fielding questions from the audience, she got questions like “How many licks does it take to get to the center of your ringmaster?” They clapped for every move we did. I nailed my back flip and they went nuts. We even screwed up our acro act royally, but they still gave us the love.



At the end of that show, we got a standing ovation again. They leapt to their feet. No one would leave after the show. It turned into a dance party to “What A Feeling”, everyone doing their best Flashdance moves. It was still hard to breathe, but at least I felt like trying.

We went back to the mansion we stayed in, and crashed hard.

9/10/09--The Death of the Grump.

I had tried to tell Amanda several times that we were getting into Santa Fe in time for “some crazy thing with stilts and giant puppets, where the whole town goes out and parties” and she just wasn't connecting what I was saying to the annual Zozobra celebration. But when she finally figured it out she went nuts. For the 6 hour drive to Santa Fe, I emotionally prepared myself to dance in a field surrounded by hippies, fully anticipating a little Burning Man.

Now, I've never been to Burning Man, but if I ever get the chance, I fully plan to not take it. Spending any amount of time in a desert with any amount of people wearing any amount of patchwork sounds like torture on so many levels. Throw in things like “art” and “compassion” and “PLUR” and I'd sooner be water boarded. Hippies taken one at a time can be judged on their individual merits, but an entire desert city of them would just be too much. However, I respect Amanda on many levels, one of which is her non-hippiness and her enthusiasm for this crazy event led me to bury my skepticism and give peace a fucking chance.

Holy crap am I glad I did! I knew right off the bat that this would defy all my prejudgments when I saw people who aren't white walking around. And not just one or two! Also, no dreadlocks. There were some fairy princesses running around, and some freaked out 18 year olds sitting on the ground crying and throwing up as the cops around them paid no mind at all, but I also saw people in baseball caps and little kids in wagons. NPR fans and dudes in low-riders. It seemed pretty much that every man, woman and child in Santa Fe had crammed onto this football field.

(Apparently it also seemed that way to homeland security, what with all the snipers on top of the surrounding buildings. Weird.)

Zozobra is a giant puppet that stands 50 feet tall. He is meant to represent all that is gloomy, depressing and generally a pain in the ass. For weeks before the celebration there are boxes in grocery stores in Santa Fe where you can write your worries and drop them in to be collected and burned with Zozobra. School kids do this in class, too—writing the names of their teachers or siblings to be burned (hopefully) unknowingly. Then, the entire city starts fresh. A brilliant idea. I'd love to see the bothers and annoyances to be burned if they did this in Chicago, all of them written on the back of parking tickets and building permits.

But even though this is an 85 year old Santa Fe tradition, this would never happen Chicago, and here is why: The very first thing to occur (following the awkward singing of the national anthem) is that the mayor of Santa Fe emerges from between Zozobara's gigantic legs. Now, while Mayor Daley rolls out of bed with Evil every morning, the Santa Fe mayor has him one upped by wearing what looks like a sorcerer's robe and saying positive things and not being heckled or haunted by his own evil deeds. The mayor talks about how Zozobra must be punished for stealing happiness from the people of Santa Fe, for making their babies cry, for making them lose their wallets and making their tires go flat. He sends the crowd into a frenzy, 10,000 people screaming “BURN HIM! BURN HIM!” and pumping their fists into the air. It's a sort of terrifying scene, to be honest. I imagine this same scenario being played out under the Mujaheddin only with real people at stake rather than an elaborate puppet. For a minute I feel sick and very gross. Then I remember where I am and what decade it is and that this is all for fun.

Zozobra waves his 40 foot arms in the air, fingers the size of our van flopping in the wind. His jaw unhinges and snaps back shut, groaning and moaning. “MUUURRRAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!” “MUUUURRRAAAAHHHHH!", like the House Bunny remebering names. I start to feel sorry for him. I have a problem with proscribing human emotions to non human things...puppies, stuffed animals, salt shakers. Poor things. They all know what's about to come to them. All Zozobra can do is wait for the inevitable...after 85 years, he knows damn well what's coming, and so does everyone around me.

“BURN HIM! BURN HIM!”

A flame flies across the field and hits him in the kidney, then more flames shoot out of his head. It takes a while. First his jaw keeps moving and his mouth fills up with fire. It burns up behind his green flashing eyes. Bits of his head fall off and balls of flame drop to his feet, staring a new fire there. Finally he's totally engulfed and crashing to the ground. He looks like a burnt out car, but you can still see his eyes glowing through the orange flames.

Lost wallets. Mean teachers. Foreclosures. Citizenship battles. Divorces. Broken toys. Sexual droughts. Pink slips. 401Ks. Broken bones. They don't matter for a while. They burn with the evil Zozobra. A shower of fireworks erupts.

We all look at each other. Seven girls who had no idea what to expect and one who did. We fall into a hug, 2000 miles from home, with no real understanding of how we got here, other than in a van, and no comprehension of why we are so lucky. I couldn't help it, I was getting all “PLUR-y”. Tears stampeded down my cheeks. We were exhausted and dirty and shell shocked by the enormity of our adventure and free to move forward without gloom. Thanks Zozobra.

999

My feet are touching the bed where I should be sleeping. I don't want to let go of this day. I wonder if the entire earth was waiting for this day...for the 666 to be turned upside down.

Today, my health insurance company called. It wasn't to tell me some claim had been denied. In fact, it was to tell me that my wallet had been found. I hope they don't charge me $2500 for this service. I called the woman who found it and she came with her grandson, as our guest, to the first show of the day. We nailed every act. We got our second standing ovation. We are two for two.

Obama gave his health care address and I didn't get to hear it, but if it goes how the rest of the day went, tomorrow I'll get up and have a full body ex-ray. I need it. I'm dying to know what's going on in there. Hell, throw in an MRI. They will be like, “there's some serious shit going on between your toes”. Then I'll ask how much it costs and they will say “It costs nothing.”

Did you think this would be about circus? There is nothing to say about circus. Circus is just the back drop to my metaphors and adventures. Circus is just the excuse. Fun is the reason, and I'm fucking having it! Here, I'll talk about circus...

“My toes hurt.”
“My back hurts.”
“I need a massage or something.”
“My eyeliner is killing my eyes.”
“Do you have my glitter?”

See, circus talk is freaking boring. What would you rather hear about...how my rope act really ripped my toes apart, or how me, Elena and Emily stayed up until 5AM playing “never have I ever”, putting on facial masques and getting wasted from beer, whiskey AND white wine? See, I thought so.



What other good stuff happened today? OH! Chase forgot to cancel my debit card when it was lost, so when the woman returned my wallet, my card still worked. (Good thing she was the sweetest woman on the planet.) I hung out at Whole Foods and ate delicious varieties of raw fish. Many people gave us care packages and fruit baskets. We rocked all our shows.

We rocked them so hard. We nailed every trick, I barely screwed the music up at all, we got a 3rd standing “O” and actually made lots of money! Here is how we are different from you...when we make $300/week, we think we are rich. Loaded. We blow it on buffalo burgers and Jack Daniels.

We played 4-square. I bought a 4-square ball—from Jamba Juice, of all bizarre places—and some chalk from the Office Max next door, and as Helena grilled some sweet burgers I drew out those beautiful chalk-lines...I couldn't wait to play. I LOVE to play 4 square. I can't even explain how much I love 4-square. I love diving for the ball and skinning my elbow. I love spiking the shit out of the ball. I love playing in the dark, in the back of a strip mall by the dumpsters, smelling raw meat slowly turning delicious. I stared with annoyance as everyone ate, utterly shocked that they would put food before 4-square. Cameron ate slowest and I tried to estimate the bites left on her burger. As soon as the last bit went into her mouth I dragged her out back by the shirt collar. Our fourth player, our ringmaster. Game freaking on, damn-it. Go 9/9/9!

9/8/09: Sorry About All the Gravity

I woke up thinking about hairless cats. From a distance you think, “oh look, a cat. I love cats”, but as you get closer something definitely feels weird. Their ears seem a bit long. They look frightfully skinny. In fact, as you get right up next to them, you realize they look an awful lot like Madonna.

I forced myself to touch the hairless cat. The cat needed no such emotional preparation. I had a new best friend. I couldn't sit down without its freakish face rubbing maniacally against my chest. I tried to breath deep and look at it as a living creature that needs love just as much as any critter graced with fur might, but in the end I had to call it a mean name and push it to the ground. Gross. I'm sorry. I had to get out of there.

We took the van to get a new tire. Emily and I did lunges in the waiting room. Twenty five on each leg was all it took to totally wind us. This insane altitude, man! It got us drunk fast the night before and prematurely ended the amusement and pleasure of the mechanics who took turns peeking at us from around the corner. If not for the thin air we may have never gotten our tire changed. Panting, we rubbed our thighs and wobbled back to the van, inviting the mechanics to the show if they want to see more.

And so at 8PM, Mountain Time, the El Circo Cheapo tradition of acrobat wrangling began. Acrobats moving chairs, acrobats putting on false eyelashes, acrobats chugging sugar-free Red Bulls, acrobats groaning in pain. All I really want the acrobats to do it stand on and jump over each other for 10 min. Is that so hard? Oh, right. Yes, it is. But eventually we warm up, open doors and the show begins.

The thin air and the dancing in the opening number make my singing sound like the hairless cat. I'm panting and wheezing. Pathetic. The audience for our first show is packed with old people...they don't get the joke and they are pissed that we started 30 minutes late.

We have a lot of work to do.

I can't run the sound. I keep hitting the wrong song, it turns off ½ way through the act if I look at my computer wrong. The 16 foot ceilings are more terrifying for us than the 30 ft we are used to. Will we hit our heads on the ceiling? Will we hit them on the floor? Stupid future, being all full of mystery and shit.

The very second that Cameron opens her mouth, though, they are in love with us. They want to kiss us and marry us. We hit the ceiling and we hit the floor but we defy minor injury for the most part (at 16 feel you're not defying death, your defying bruises). We hit our acro act, we sell 4 shirts at intermission and at the end of the show...we get a standing ovation.

Gravity is for chumps, and sometimes we're chumptastic, but no one really seems to care.



Emily and I venture out to find dinner...a tall task at 11:30 on a Tuesday night in South Denver. An hour later we come back to find ravenous acrobats about to eat blocks of chalk and wash it down with spray rosin. Instead we give them pizza, pasta, steak salad, garlic bread, chocolate cake and Jack Daniels. We stuff our faces, watch “The House Bunny” and fall asleep under the delicate glow of the florescent light that we can't figure out how to turn off. I am profoundly happy.

Good night, bad luck.

Sept 7th:

I lost my wallet. My debit cards. My driver's license. MY DOMINICK'S CARD! And so it begins.

I need 8 hands and 100 pockets. I need an external hard drive for my brain. I need someone who follows me around and picks up the things I leave laying around. Amanda called the bank and pretended to be me, canceled everything. Nils is over-nighting me my passport and expired driver's license. On Wednesday everything will be back to normal again.

I picture everyone hitting me with a trapeze as I sleep.

We taught workshops today. I love teaching in new places because the students really seem excited and respectful. They look at me with expectation, like I'm going to unveil the secrets that will make them aerial stars. They still hold me high in their minds because I haven't farted or burped in front of them. I haven't let loose a rampage of creative swear words. My pants haven't fallen off while demonstrating a trick. They still think I have my shit together.

And I look at them as an entirely new group of people who will soon hit me in the face.

Surprisingly, I didn't get hit in the face until much later in the night. I managed to duck the flailing limbs with cat-like agility. It helped that I had some really fantastic, strong students. Nice work, Colorado. I taught them handstand on the bar and would stand back and admire each one as they hit the position, hands pressing the bar back and up, one leg wrapped around both ropes, the other extended backwards. Some would bend their back leg to their head and I'd fill with a bizarre combination of pride and rage, like a painter who makes a self portrait that looks more beautiful in oil than they could ever look in person. Why can't I touch my damn foot to my damn head?

We teched the show, then drove back to Boulder. As soon as I put the van in park and shut down the engine I heard that familiar, dreadful hiss. I wish it had been a huge poisonous snake waiting just below the car to take a chunk out of my ankle. Instead, we were getting another flat tire. Our second in less than 24 hours.

Helena put her thumb over the hole. We told her to stay their all night, and she would have, but then we realized that if we were to drive the van, she'd have to move. It was going to go flat, and we just had to accept that. We excused Helena from her post and everyone sashayed carefree from the van. There was beer to drink and a honky tonk band to listen to.

At the brewery, I attempted to lift Amanda in a “dirty dancing” over my head, but instead of jumping, she just sort of thew herself chest first into me. Elena started laughing and throwing her arms around in such as way as to ensure that hitting me in the face was inevitable. Then I lifted her. Then Laura hit me in the face. The pain sensors in my face have retreated so far back into my skull that I hardly even notice any more.

We walked back to the house as we'd walked away from it: as a huge gang down the middle of the street, screaming and singing and waking up the neighbors. We passed the free stove and the free vacuum cleaner and imagined the circus acts we could create with each. As we passed our van, the problem we'd abandoned in favor of drunkenness, we realized that the tire had magically stopped deflating. There it sat, ¾ full of air, as if it was compromising with us. “Okay, I'll stop deflating, if you buy a spare tomorrow.” Deal van, it's a deal.

See, sometimes getting drunk really can solve everything.

El Circo Cheapo Tour Day One: Sept 6th.

Miraculously, everything fit in the van. All the people, all the stuff. It's amazing how small a circus can get when you shove it it boxes and bags. You think of a circus as being huge, but most of it is just air and fear and imagination.

Moment of Panic #1. We fill up the tank at California and Division before getting on the road. Key into the ignition, turn it, nothing. Do it again. Nothing.

“Elena, can you think of a reason the van isn't starting”. Elena looks at me white-faced (not wearing clown makeup).
“Is it in park?” It is. I take it out of park and put it back in. Van starts. We all breathe.

For the first few hours of driving, everyone is singing and chatting and laughing. We listen to old skool hip-hop. No one farts. Slowly it gets quieter, conversations dwindle, eyelids droop. The farting begins. We drive through Iowa cracking the windows every 30 min or so. We stop at Dairy Queen and drive through Nebraska cracking the windows every 15 min or so.

When you're on a trip around the country for 4 weeks and you see a craft brewery, you get off the interstate. You drive down little streets. You get lost. You waste a lot of time, but ultimately consume delicious beer from Kearny, Nebraska and play pool. Big deal if end up at your destination an hour later than planned.

Well, had we known a nail would find it's home in our front passenger side tire at 1AM, we may have opted for Wendy's or Subway and saved ourselves that hour. But there's no way of knowing. There is a way of making the situation a bit better, which is looking real quick under the van before, leaving Chicago, to confirm that there is a spare, but I was in a hurry and that would have taken like 10 seconds or something--and I would have realized that there wasn't a spare, and I would have had to go get one, and that would have been more time and money. So, screw it. We're probably not going to get a flat tire in the middle of the night, anyway. I mean, when's the last time I got a flat tire?

I must have been overdue.

So, at 1AM Helena called AAA. They told us that we wouldn't be able to get it fixed until Tuesday, because of Labor Day. We pictured ourselves between greyish sheets at the USA #1 Motel. We pictured the van getting towed to Walmart at 7AM. I pictured everyone taking a turn hitting me with a trapeze after I fell asleep. But when Helena told AAA that that's unacceptable, they sent a guy right out who put a new tire on for us!

Everyone learn this phrase: “That's unacceptable”.

James was awesome. He'd been working 23 hours straight and showed up with a smile on his face. “I don't mind”, he said. “I like helping people.” I exhaled a long held breath. I thought about laying on my belly on top of the loft in the van as Elena drove, feeling like Superman flying down the expressway, Lizzy and I putting our fists determinedly forward and looking down on an imaginary village below. I remember looking up and seeing 7 of my best friends sleeping, driving, reading, cuddling and thinking, “I'm so happy right now”.

“I don't mind, I like helping people”. I thought about why I'm doing this tour. I thought about spending the next month indulging the absolute core of why I exist. Anything could have happen. I couldn't mind a bit.