nny | (no subject)

The Facts in the Case of the Departure of Miss Finch.

It's a Neil Gaiman short story.

That's where I was tonight.

I went to the circus.

I didn't want to go, because a circus sounds like something I can't control, something chaotic and different and new, but my hedging got me nowhere and I ended up in the back of a landrover, ten in the back of the landrover and the little one (Smaller) said please don't roll over (mymatehadoneofthesebutnoonewashurt). She didn't come, wouldn't come, but still ten in the back and too close on corners until we got to Barry water front and pulled up to a tent. A tent is like a tardis. It's one of those things that you just accept- the space on the inside is always larger than it could possibly be.

A fat lady on the door and an accordian player with a flower in his hair who wandered around and welcomed us to the slaughterhouse in a bad Russian accent; I think he was supposed to be French but the folk song they sang later was Russian, I'm sure, so why the berets and the stripes and the headscarves? Dark poetry about childhood dreams and childhood fears, and people dressed in black to start. A wardrobe, I think they spoke of, about dark coats hanging while people hung in dark coats. And span and almost-fell and climbed and moved and later, later there were two, and it was strange and sensuous and beautiful.

There were Victorian bathing costumes and people in tutus-and-UV on bungee cord and spinning fire, though that came later. I think there was a story but I couldn't hear for gaping up and smiling wide enough to hurt. We were ushered around the ring, told to move out of the way of the trapeze, watching a man in small shorts and high heels bounce-juggling as children far too small to do what they were doing were spinning on ladders, and always in the background the French accordian music that had you remembering the strangeness that made you fear the circus as a child, even though you'd never been.

Everyone, he said. Everyone can do it. No matter who you are and no matter what you can do, if you can give everything to it and train and work and try there's a place for you. Howard, Howard used to be a gardener. Screwed up his A-levels, trained as a gardener, wanted to be in the circus and worked and tried and did it.

It was an ambition, he said. Howard. It was an ambition, and I did it, and now a six month marathon of touring. You've got to know what you are. If you're an apple, he said, you have to be the best apple you can be. Work hard at it. If you're a banana there's no use trying to be an apple just to fit in. You have to be who you are as hard as you can. He grinned. A gardener's metaphor, maybe. Last year you missed it, he said. We rained envelopes on the audience full of words of wisdom we put together, printed out, gave as a souvenier. Couldn't do it this year - it ended up costing us a grand. But it's pretty good. And the proud smile on his face... yeah. Makes you want to follow your dreams.

That's what the circus is.

nofit state circus