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.