Equilibrio

(eh-kwe-lee-bri-oh)

I didn’t take enough time to write this week to touch on all the things I have to write about, but don’t worry dear reader, I have plenty of ideas to tell you about in due time! 

I was feeling under the weather earlier in the week, and the last few days I’ve been really tired and opting to study Italian instead of write. Long term, studying is probably a good decision, though I do love the feeling of putting pen to paper. Or fingers to keys… either way. This week it has been difficult to find the balance between school, studying (and attempting to study), writing, and everyday household things like cooking and cleaning, which brings me to today’s word: equilibrio. Cheers for cognates!

This week we started equilibrismo classes at school, meaning the disciplines we’ve been working on  are balance related. We were introduced to apparatuses such as tight wire, slack line, Chinese pole, Roue Cyr, ladder, and straps.

It may be surprising, but my sense of physical balance is not great. And I don’t just mean when I’m upside down. In everyday life, I am quite clumsy. This is improving with practice, but I have a long way to go. As someone with balance that is less than fantastic, I was not expecting to be particularly decent at any of the new disciplines we were working on this week, but I would actually consider working more seriously on Roue Cyr, tight wire, and Chinese pole. I especially love Roue Cyr. There is something very primal about the spinning of the wheel and the way the artist maintains balance within the ring. It gives the impression of chaos and order existing simultaneously. To see what I mean, check out this Roue Cyr performance.

As I’m sure you know, one of the most difficult things about finding and maintaining balance is coping with instability. If you try too hard to fight the wobble and overcompensate, you will fail. If you are too still you will not progress, and therefore fail (unless of course the goal is to be a human statue, in which case – kudos!). But in order to create something that doesn’t become stagnant (Sorry, statues) there must be some room to evolve. In order to improve at anything, you must learn to make adjustments instead of abandoning the challenge at hand. Maintaining equilibrio is all a matter of embracing the wobble, working with it, and making minor adjustments to cope with the instability of the situation. Yet another example of how circus translates to everyday life.

Thanks for reading, and I hope you find your own equilibrio!

Cinque, Cinque, Cinque

(chEEn-kway, chEEn-kway, chEEn-kway)

In an earlier post, I promised to discuss the physical aspect of my new life as a full-time student of circus arts. Today I’ll scratch the surface on that topic.

At Cirko Vertigo, we cover a range of circus disciplines. Our classes currently include contemporary dance, theater, rigging & safety, acrobatics (tumbling as well as stunting), aerial conditioning, physical preparation (another conditioning class), and handstands.

At this point, handstand class is definitely the most difficult. All of our classes are physically challenging, but none of them hurt quite like verticali class with Fatos. This is due in large part to the title of today’s post, “Cinque, Cinque, Cinque”. It’s quite a simple translation: five, five, five. What cinque, cinque, cinque entails is far more challenging than the translation.

Half of class with Fatos is focused on handstands – in my case, contortion handstands – and the other half is focused on improving flexibility. Let me tell you, there is nothing quite like having a 140+ pound man stand and bounce on you while you stretch in order to make you go further. All the while, he shouts things like, “Cosi, maimun! Cosi!” – which means “Like this, monkey! Like this!” in a combination of Italian and Albanian. It’s the kind of moment where you don’t know if you should laugh at how ridiculous the situation seems, or cry because it feels like your body is breaking into pieces.

            After a warm up, we start stretching our spacatta (splits). We do a one-minute warm up split on each side, some high kicks, and then start cinque, cinque, cinque – five minutes of holding the splits on the right side, left side, and center, followed by more high kicks. For many in the class, cinque, cinque, cinque means fifteen minutes of Fatos prodding, pushing, and bouncing their splits towards the ground as they cry for mercy. And yes, people do cry. Circus hurts.

Four of us receive a different kind of treatment. Because our splits are flat on the ground, we get sent over to the spalierna ­– a series of wooden bars going up the wall at equal distances. At the spalierna we work on negative stretching. Front leg held 30 centimeters above the ground by a wooden bar, backs arched in preparation for contortion, we wait. For a grand total of fifteen minutes, gravity pulls (and Fatos pushes) us ever closer to the floor. We hold, praying for time to pass quickly, counting the colored light panels on the ceiling, and trying to breathe through the pain of our fascia stretching. Our ankles bruise, our hips cramp, our knees ache from the strain. But as uncomfortable as these fifteen minutes are, we all stay with the pain instead of surrendering. We know that with any great undertaking, the feeling of success upon reaching a goal outweighs the pain of the journey, and fifteen minutes of pain a few times a week is worth the perfect spaccata. 

Sick Kid Soup

Today I am starting to feel a bit malata, most likely due to a lack of sleep and poor dietary choices over the last few days. So when I got home, I decided to head to my tiny, oddly equipped kitchen and make one thing that always helps me feel better: delicious homemade soup – chock full of vegetables. It’s a great way to get a lot of vitamin-packed veggies into your system without feeling like a rabbit, with the added benefit of being a comfort food. And this in particular is a great type of soup to make because you don’t have to buy anything special - just use whatever you have on hand. It’s so easy! The most challenging aspects of creating this delicious and nutritious meal were chopping vegetables with a butter knife, and not burning the garlic in our unpredictable pans.

To see what my Sick Kid Soup consisted of this evening, check out my Culinary Concoctions page!

Fiducia

(fi-doo-chya)

Today this word seems especially poignant. It came up a lot during contemporary dance class this morning, during an exercise in relinquishing control. It was an experiment in becoming somebody else’s puppet. Partner A closes their eyes, and is guided by Partner 2 making subtle movements on A’s back. The two move together through the room at varied speeds, dependent on the amount of pressure provided by Partner 2. It’s really quite a neat experiment (grab a friend and try it!), with the assumption being that they don’t crash each other into things or other people. Hence fiducia: trust.

As usual, it was oddly liberating to let somebody else be concerned about how I was moving through space. In Portland, much of my professional circus career consisted of playing the puppet in a human marionette duo called Dreame Scape Theater, in which my partner and I trade control over my movement, giving the audience the impression that I am a living doll and he is my puppet master. This morning’s dance class exercise was similar in some ways, but different because for once there were no strings attached and I was handing over even more of my control. Instead of putting on a performance, I was focused on trusting the feeling of somebody with my best interest in mind guiding me through a particular moment of my life. It had a surprising spiritual aspect, and was a good reminder to relax and trust this process. And my, what a process!

The last two weeks have been some of the most emotionally and physically challenging days of my life. I expected the physical challenges, for the most part (more on that later). But when I initially thought of the emotional effects of moving across the world to follow my folly, I had no idea the first week would leave me wanting to do nothing more than to run away to something familiar instead of enjoying this new adventure. I was homesick, skeptical, linguistically shocked, and scared. I wanted a jar of the right kind of peanut butter and my island paradise. Instead, I found refuge a few blocks from the Paradiso stop on the metro line in the two-bedroom apartment I share with 3 boys. It may not have black sand beaches, tropical forests, an ocean, or the right kind of peanut butter… but it does have a view of the Alps from my balcony and family dinners, so I can’t complain too much. As I get into more of a rhythm in this new life, I have had a chance to breathe and see that my process really is worth trusting. I'm still very homesick, skeptical, linguistically challenged, and kind of scared, but now I see that it will all be all right. It’s normal to feel homesick and scared, and skepticism can be healthy. I don’t think things would be working out quite this well in so many aspects if choosing Italy had been the wrong choice.

I feel like fiducia is also important today of all days, because it is the day the US chooses who will be Commander in Chief and the face of our nation for the next few years. Who do we as a collective trust enough to give that role and the associated power? Who do we see as having our best interest in mind? More importantly, will we trust ourselves enough to stand up and evoke social change when leaders fail us? Or will we remain as sheep, lost in a pasture of false advertising, commercial gain, and popular culture? Time will tell. We can trust that.

"If you take the leap, what is the worst that could happen?"

This is the question I asked myself last month as I debated whether or not to pack up my life and move to the side of the world opposite everything and everyone I have ever known in order to do the most difficult thing I have ever done. I had been accepted in to circus school in Turin, Italy, and at that point was simultaneously talking myself into and out of going for it.

As with any life altering decision, there were arguments for and against Cirko Vertigo. In the Pro-corner I had things like: 

“This is a once in a lifetime opportunity!”

“You’ve been working towards this since before you knew circus was an option…”

“Sure, you can learn Italian!"

“Free is the best tuition price for higher education…”

"What doors will this open for you as a person as well as a performer?"

And in the opposing corner: 

“What if the training causes irreparable damage to your body?”

“What if this isn’t what you really want for your life?”

“Portland is safe – you have a strong circus community, loads of friends, steady income, and family.”

“Can you really learn Italian, Meg?”

“What doors close if you step through this one?”

These and many more thoughts and questions - along with an overwhelming desire to run off to a tropical island and find myself – were almost enough to talk myself out of moving to Italy. Almost.

Fortunately, I’m a lucky person with an incredibly supportive social circle who assured me that maybe I’ll find a different dream to follow someday – but that doesn’t mean I can’t follow this one now. Portland will be there later, as will my tropical paradise. 

(2012 theories notwithstanding.)

With an incredible amount of love from my friends and family in mind, on October 23^rd I took the greatest leap of my life. I said goodbye to my beloved Portland, and 20 hours of travel time later, I started my first day of circus school. I only made it to the last class of the day, arriving straight from the airport, vintage suitcase in hand. It was a class on safety and rigging, taught entirely in Italian, of course. Needless to say, it had some very confusing moments as my Italian vocabulary is limited. And by “limited” I mean that the only Italian I had ever made note of hearing prior to a month ago was on The Godfather. Capisce?

It seems to me like this fresh chapter needs to be documented, so this shiny new site of mine will be an eclectic log all about my new life and adventures in Italy. Maybe it will be a guiding light to others out there questioning whether they should follow their own dreams, or maybe it will just be a fun way to pass some time. Either way, here's what I'll do on Trajectory of a Firefly: I’ll cover the basics - circus stories, crafty experiments, and culinary concoctions... but as a bonus you lovely readers get the added pleasure of learning a little Italian along the way (this girl needs all the practice she can get). Thanks for reading and benvenuto!

The view just prior to landing in Turin