The Pink Door

First, has anyone seen my website? I hastily made it live during rehearsal week #3 of the tour, when a chick from Dancer Magazine interviewed me and I thought I had better not give her a bunk URL. Creating this website probably made me feel more moronic than anything else I've undertaken in years. Of course now that it's finished and on line (it's alive!!) I get to feel smug again. Kind of.

I've been making, trimming, costuming, and rehearsing a lyra act for The Pink Door, a fabulously delicious Italian place where I get to dangle from the ceiling over the heads of the populace having dinner. Yay! What I have not been broadcasting, but will tell you, is that this is the first time I've performed aerial hoop.** It doesn't feel that way, because I'm prepared, but every now and then I pullover into the hoop and think, "huh. I really haven't ever done this before."

**edited for clarity

When did I get a lyra, you ask? Well one might also want to know what happened to all the cash money they paid me for my presence on tour, and while I sincerely wish I could respond to that buy throwing you a dollar, most dollars have gone right back into the system by being invested in new equipment. I found that gigs were lining up for me...on apparatus I did not own because in San Francisco I found I did not need to own it to train on it.** Now I own it. I own a beautiful steel 38" lyra taped in black (thank you SpitFire Forge), and a 12' polished stainless steel pole. Both spinning and static. Who the fuck needs money for food when you can have THAT?!

**edited for clarity. sigh.

That's a joke by the way. I would never, ever go without food.

My own definition of wealth, it is polishing itself.

Whole New World

Let me tell you about this place I find myself in. Life is, once again, ineffably altered since my last post. With the completion of the beloved Moscova Affair tour with Vau de Vire, my circus family flew back to the fog and I flew up here to the rain.

Seattle. Finally, a place that understands my need for 10% sunshine, 90% rain, gloom, and grey. That 10% really knows how to work it, making all the gray and fire-colored trees show to their best advantage. This place will suck the breath right out of your lungs.

So, I am happy. I'd have to say that I'm pretty stupid butt crazy happy. Sure- I'm still inexplicably furious/irritated at the blow of a random breeze and I'm not technically making money at the moment, and I still don't have a pony or know how to make fondu, but yeah...I'm pretty fucking happy. It is an odd sensation, but not at all an unpleasant one, to look around your reality and realize that so many of the things that make it up are things you have ached to have, and are yours.

The first time it happened to me it was terrifying. I had just moved to San Francisco, and was living in an absolutely beautiful room with an expansive view of downtown. I had the job I wanted and the relationship I wanted, and I was going to learn how to do aerial, dammit. I used to sit in that beautiful room and almost shake because it seemed too good to be true...surely there was no way I deserved such elegant fulfillment.

I suffer under no such delusion at this time in my life. I am good and ready for my elegant fulfillment, and welcome it comfortably as a natural course; no fear. And that is very tasty. I feast on it daily, this life I have waited for and built. Good friends I have missed for years, and Shaun like a torch, beating across the water-
That means he lives across the Puget Sound from me and Seattle. Pervs.

That fills my gush quota for the day. In case you need to hear something snarky to be sure it is still me writing, I will tell you that I hate the busses here and they are stupid. Time to buy a car. All Mini Coopers, BMWs and Hondas that wish to be sold for $2,000.oo please apply via comments.

LaLa Land=Los Angeles. Not a state of perpetual ignorance.

Just to clear up the meaning of my facebook status.

Things I love:

Hotel rooms, which are sexy and fun.
Dark eyelash glue
Webcams
Eric and Charla coming to the show last night
Coffee, eternally
Making money on my own terms

Things I hate:

The bouncer with the beard that looks like poo from Boulevard 3
Automatic toilets
The effects of day 12, post-wax

I will now take this time to expound upon the glory of New York in pictures.

Imported novelty of delight:


Ladies in Times Square:

Miguel likes his job.
This thing I hold, it is the statue of liberty. I promise.
Self explanatory:
Shredder in her element:
Becca. Eat it!
Underground. Maria and Lee.


In three days I'll be home, after a two month absence. Relief and despair. Time to go.

Failure and Success

The failure being my complete inability to have updated on this tour. I wanted everything documented, I wanted a repeat of Europe with 2+ pages per day. Turns out the difference between a national tour with a circus company and me shlupping around Europe is: everything. Any free time I've had has been spent sleeping, eating, or rehearsing, or realizing I've never been in *insert city here* and want to walk and look at it. I've been impossible to reach. I put a temporary moratorium on phone calls.
In short, that is the failure part. The success part is everything else.

I was going to go back city by city and tell the story of that tour, but I fear that would just be the worst thing ever. So I'll start from here, because that's the only place to start from, and try and tell the truth as usual.

I'm sitting in the Miami airport surrounded by beloved colleagues, most of whom are wearing some remnant smears of eyeliner and glitter. A faded brand of "Stoli" painted on my left arm in smudged into what now looks like "Stou." Dwoira is writing in her flaming red halo. Miguel sitting upside down in a chair.l TT in an effortless pike on the carpet. Our crippled hero, Miriam, who broke her heel in the last week of rehearsal, joined us in New York wearing that big black boot they shove on you. She walks on crutches but she still tears the shit out of a trapeze.
Now that is fucking cool, in case you're not paying attention.

We're boarding now, Miami to LA. By the way, Miami is more LA than LA is. LA looks quaint after having been in the plastic paradise of Miami. On the way down from NYC, the drivers have to sleep for eight hours every so often, so we stopped in Daytona Beach for a gorgeous, rainy, hot stormy swim in the ocean day. If you're never swam in shark infested ocean water during a heavy downpour, I highly recommend it. Of course we didn't find out about the shark thing until afterwards, but the only thing anyone lost in the water was Angelo's necklace. And probably many ounces of pee.

The thing is, the very best moments I do not have pictures of, because I would have had to remove myself from the moment to capture it. Unlike Coop, I haven't acquired the skill of mastering a moment while photographing it. So the camera often stayed in the bag and I stayed in the thick of it. But I do have these:

Dwoira


Morning, Dallas.

Dwoira

Fancy.

Chicago

Me and Pamela, aesthetic mistress extraordinaire:

Nymphs:

Crew. I adore you, Chuck and Genevieve.
Me and Becca. Niagara Falls rock.
Must board. More later.