Circulation

Last weekend I went with my friends Rachel, Angela, and Miriam for
Circulation, a big ol’ circus festival down in freezing cold yet oddly sunny Dunedin. I have been super extra busy for the past…well, for the past forever, I guess, and since I haven’t been doing circus for months I just forgot about it until about last Tuesday when all of a sudden the last-minute pre-trip emails started going out reminding me to bring muesli bars and gumboots and a sleeping bag and as many pairs of leggings as would fit in my bag. I’d remembered to get the time off work but it had been yet another fun but tiring week and there was such a huge big boring part of me that just wanted to stay home and sleep until Monday night.

I don’t know what I was expecting from the weekend. I don’t think I was expecting anything, really—I knew there would be circus workshops and shows at night, and I knew that all the food was going to be vegan and catered by the Krishnas (really) and that the four of us were staying in a little bunk room and not, thank heaven, in a tent. I brought four books with me and told myself that even if I didn’t do any tissu workshops I would sit around quietly and just relax.

We all got to Dunedin just fine, and after some adventures in upside-down map reading finally rolled up to Whare Flats, where it was pouring down rain and the central area was filling up with jugglers and unicyclists waiting for their delicious vegetarian curry.

I was naïve, I now know, in expecting that at a circus festival in a university town the majority of attendees wouldn’t be wearing elf costumes and dreadlocks, but man did I feel out of place. I mean, I went to college in the 90s and am perfectly familiar with jester hats and overalls with fuzzy tails attached to them, it’s no problem, people can do what they want. It’s just been so long since I had that I’m-the-dorkiest-kid-in-the-cafeteria feeling, just because I was wearing straight-leg jeans and not carrying fire poi in my leather hip pouch.

And I admit there was a part of me that got, like, mad. I handled my rising discomfort at feeling so out of place by being very internally snarky for probably the first twenty-four hours I was there, raising my eyebrows and rolling my eyes a lot and saying things like “Ah, there goes the Merriest Prankster of them all.” I thought a lot about my nice cosy little flat here in Wellington, where I am almost equally out of place amongst the skateboarding skinny jeans and floaty floral dressed side-braiders and where I don’t have to knock the mud off my gumboots before entering the house. I could have just stayed home, I kept thinking to myself as the hippies stood in line for porridge in their bindis and pajamas. It kept raining on down.

And then there was also the small fact that many many of the people there were awesome circus folk who were very bendy and strong and could do all sorts of cool tricks, which, like, obviously I can’t do, and of course I felt really shy and nervous about being old and fat and creaky and weak. An early morning yoga class on the first day helped, though, and then right after that the gorgeous Twisty Twinz were doing a beginners adagio class, which I used to sort of do, and I was right there, so I was like oh fine, I’ll give it a go, and I did.

Things started looking up from there, I guess. Yoga was nice. My misplaced hippie rage eventually died down when the sun came out and everyone spread out on the lawn to take their shoes off and practice juggling and poi—once I had another couple of huge plates of delicious vegan Krishna food in me I was all “Oh, that’s just their way!” whenever a kid with a pet rat in a cracker box or someone in a fairy dress wandered by.

Rachel and I painted our toenails in what we felt was a circus-appropriate manner.

I enjoyed these EXTREMELY EXPENSIVE (as in, eighteen dollars EnZed) yogurt-covered dried cranberries that I stupidly bought when I was left hungry and unsupervised by the bulk bins at the Mosgiel New World.

Miriam took a break from pole workshops to relax with her book, while Angela and Carla prepared another cup of mate.

I tried some mate too. At first it tasted like lawn clippings to me but I ended up getting into it, and very much enjoyed learning Angela’s Ten Commandments of Mate (“Don’t touch the straw!!!”) and the ensuing the religious war that erupted between her and an Argentinian guy.

I preferred talking to the Flying Yoga people, eating snacks, sunning myself on a picnic blanket, and sleeping off the effects of getting home at eight in the morning from an all-night dance party (true story!) to doing anything very hardcore circus-wise, but Rachel definitely got amongst it.

There’s no real end to this story: it was just a little weekend away, doing something I would ordinarily never do, if some friends hadn’t invited me. I did honestly struggle with several aspects of the trip, and did roll my eyes a lot at certain stages, and did wish I could be home having band practice once or twice. I felt like an imposter for pretty much the whole time I was there.

And maybe that’s a sign of how something has changed in me, even in the past couple of years. Maybe even in the past year. I think I used to be a lot more open to new things—like, I was more adventuresome. I was maybe a bit less set in my ways. Like even the other say, someone invited me to a barbecue, and I was like, “Oh man, interacting with PEOPLE I DON’T KNOW?” like it was some sort of punishment instead of a cool fun thing to do.

So I am glad, after all, even though I was uncomfortable for quite a lot of the weekend, that I decorated my gumboots with multicoloured electrical tape and danced around in a muddy paddock to dub music at four in the morning. I am glad I tried flying yoga. I am glad I shyly asked another bellydancer if she wanted to duet on the hill to the drum circle beats. I am glad I got to spend some time in a different context, and to think some different thoughts, for a little while.