The Moral of the Story

I went to bed last night already dreaming of the circus. They, whomever they are when we speak of them, say that most of your dreams--the ones you dream at the beginning of your cycles--are mainly the kind where you replay the day from back to front. The idea is that whatever you, or your subconscious wants to keep, files speedily away, and the rest of it gets tossed out--or filed deeper, in locked, hard-to-access areas.

The dream was a series of quick costume changes that happen at one point of the show, when I help four of the ring performers out of their clothes basically all at once. I'll leave it at that--no body really wants to hear anyone else's dream. The details are too staggeringly real to be meaningful to anyone else. And once you've told the dream, then that person has to walk around in your dream for the rest of the day. Unless they unload it on someone else. And what's worse than listening to someone's dream? Listening to someone tell you about someone else's dream, that's what.

The reactions to this year's show were very different. There was a much clearer narrative structure than in year's past. Backstage, we looked through the curtains, wondering why they seemed to be watching so intently--"like they're watching a play," Jennifer said. Perhaps that's because they were. Since the set became smaller, people said, the performances seemed larger. Our bodies in the space felt larger, more raucous, more AMOK. I think the show was also, at it's most basic level, more hilarious, more detailed by the actors than by the stuff, with the right combination of "content jokes" and sight gags.

So, the circus has ended for 2007. I'm glad. I don't like that it's over, or that it ends, although there is a relief. What would it be like to have something so hard and intense go on forever? It would be a different animal. So I'm glad to have the impossible-to-quick-change dresses in their bags, the foam duck feet repaired for the last time, the fucking GWB puppet tied up once and for all, and I'm glad to have the sweat and grime and filth scrubbed off my body for a while. But--some part of me still wishes that in the morning, I'll find some glitter on my pillow.

When someone says to you, like they did to me ten seasons ago, that there's this queer circus you should run away with: Do It.