25 April, 2007
On Moving (this probably sounds way too precocious but whatever)
It seems cruel doesn't it to continually uproot ourselves? To create home after home only to knowingly abandon the people and places that have come to mean so much to us? Of course the majority of those people and places would have never had the chance to mean anything to us had we just stayed put and established roots and nurtured them till our dying day. All the same, is a transient life full of short-term acquintances and broad but shallow roots necessarily a richer one? If our ancestors spent decades perfecting the rituals of daily life are we now permanent amateurs? We are gifted with the ability to eclectically stitch the seams of our lives together as we choose, we can recount tales of one life to friends in another, and insightfully remark on the striking similarities and dissimilarities between this place and that. This surely renders us more interesting and more alone. What are the odds that anyone else has led the same mix-and-match life as you? At a certain point most of us make a pact with someone else to stick together. Finally your life is not yours alone. Yet aside from this travelling partner (and 50% of the time your lives will turn out to diverge after all...) constancy is elusive and fleeting. As I prepare to yet again tear myself out of one life, briefly catch up with the scattered pieces of previous lives and then begin yet another life anew I cannot compain. However I can easily marvel at the unremarked violence of each transition, the plans left unrealized, the familiarities abandoned, the pictures torn from being hung and rehung on so many walls.
14 April, 2007
The Dead Center
DISCLAIMER: As I am about to embark on my April vacation (the fourth of four generous two week breaks) I feel I should finally get around to posting how I spent the last break back in February. This is long, and it is still a work in progress. Critical comments would be much appreciated.
Saul must be back in Paris by now, re-inhabiting his 9m2 flat in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a far cry from this circus wagon (except the size). I was supposed be back in Paris by now. My rent’s due Thursday, I had plans to visit the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Yet here I am, at the circus, in the dead center of France. And is the center ever dead. The nearest population hub is a village comprising perhaps 15 houses about 5 miles down the road. Farm animals outnumber people. French cows still “moo,” French sheep still “baa.” Rachel and I verified this on our walk into “town” earlier today. Any slight difference of accent was lost on our human ears. Just past town we happened upon a small brook. “It’s been too long since I’ve heard the sound of babbling,” Rach said.
We both paused at the side of the road and soaked in the babble. I stepped over the muddy tire tracks and found a dry spot on which to perch for a moment…
The previous Tuesday Saul and I had missed our train to Tours. We had been doing yoga at my flat and lost track of time, which I guess is sort of the point of yoga, but in this case it caused more stress than zen. We effectively sprinted from my flat to the gare, forgoing any attempt to not look like tourists, but got there just as the train was pulling out of the station. We caught the next train two hours later. Then we missed our connecting train in Tours.
Eight hours after we had left my flat in the 15eme we finally made it to Loches, a sleepy town 35 kilometers southeast of Tours. More than ever I craved a week without timetables.
Saul’s grandmother picked us up at the bus station. If I were to draw a cartoon of a grandmother it would closely resemble Marie-Madeleine—clear plastic protecting her off-white granny-fro from the drizzle, well-worn wool cardigan on top, grey and beige on the bottom, and barely 5 feet in stature. At the time I knew only that she was Saul’s mother’s mother and that her rates for a week at Chez Granny were in line with my shoestring budget. By the end of the week I knew all about her childhood during World War II, her life in Algeria during the 60s, the raising of her four children—Christine, Bruno, Elizabeth (a.k.a. Babette,) and Fabienne—and her opinion of what has become of them since they left her watchful eye. All of this was accompanied by album upon album of pictures, dating from the turn of the century up to this past summer.
Marie-Madeleine was not about to divulge her past without asking a few questions of her own. In fact, she was quite the conversationalist, exuding both the confidence of age and the eager verging on naïve curiosity of youth.
Once over a casual dinner the conversation drifted towards matters of faith. “So tell me Céline,” Marie-Madeleine ventured (she could never remember my tongue-twister of an Irish-American name). “What do they call a communion in Judaism?”
“Well, we don’t exactly have a communion,” I replied.
She chuckled incredulously, “You mean you don’t believe Jesus Christ died?”
I looked down at my plate of beets, searching for an appropriate response to such a sensitive question. Then I looked up and met her wide, grinning eyes. Her frankness was infectious. “No, we believe he died,” I countered. “We just don’t believe he was the Son of God.”
Between chats Saul and I took advantage of the two old but functional bikes in the garage to explore the countryside. We biked past field upon field, charting a grand loop away from town and then back. We biked to the château where Joan of Arc talked Charles V into reclaiming the French throne from the English. We biked to the local bar and split a litre of Affligem. We biked to the Croix Rouge, where Saul’s aunt Babette volunteers while she looks for more gainful employment. “It passes the time, keeps me busy,” she said, embodying the plight of France’s large unemployed population.
One morning we sat on the porch in the sunlight and enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt sweetened with homemade strawberry preserves and local honey. It was incredibly simple and preposterously good. We knew if grandma returned from the market and caught us leaving the porch doors open she’d begin her predictable rant:
“I don’t know how it is in New York, but here, in my house, we keep the doors shut so the heat stays inside.”
“Yes grandma,” we’d obediently reply.
“Are the shutters in your rooms closed?” This question was asked at least three times per day. She suspected we took advantage of her every absence to flout the strict closed-shutter policy. The thick wooden shutters not only saved on heating bills but also blocked every possible speck of light from entering our bedrooms. Every morning I would wake up in pitch black. Was it 5am or 11? I neither knew nor cared.
Our last morning in Loches I woke up and found a note on the dining room table: “Saul, I went to the market. Please set the table. Grandma.”
I looked around at the photographs lining the dining room walls, documenting every life Marie-Madeleine had nurtured into being. A week ago these lives had been only names, if that. Now I could rattle off where each one was born, how far they had made it in school, when they had married, why they had divorced. I remembered weddings I had never been to. I missed people I had never known.
Back in my bedroom I packed my bags and donned a pair of new silver shoes I had bought at the Red Cross.
I opened the forbidden shutters and breathed in the backyard one last time. I smiled again at the incongruous presence of solar-powered garden lights, a gift from Christine, Saul’s Oregon granola mom.
I returned to the dining room for lunch. On my plate had been placed a hexagonal box of Lindt chocolates, a parting gift from grandma. After lunch she drove us to the bus station, kissed us on both cheeks, and waved as the bus pulled away.
Elise, the daughter of one of Christine’s best friends picked us up at the Chateauroux station. She had babysitted Saul as a child during his family’s summer trips to France. We stopped at her parents’ house where she lent me a pair of old boots to better navigate the country mud.
“Better than those white shoes, eh?” she remarked. “They’re silver,” I thought to myself, but conceded the point. I decided to save the silver for Paris.
Along the drive to La Châtre Elise volunteered her take on the geographic and social history of the area. “This land is really at a crossroads in many ways. The Parisian basin ends here and the foothills of the Massif Central begin. Also this is where the old linguistic division between the Lange d’Oc of the south and the Langue d’Oil of the north was. You can still occasionally hear older people speaking in a patois, but honestly you’re more likely to hear people chatting in Dutch.” Why Dutch? we asked. “Foreigners have been moving in in droves from Holland, Germany, England, Northern Europe in general. They like that the property is relatively cheap and the lifestyle is more laidback, more rural. Locals have been almost completely priced out of the real estate market. It was really difficult when I was looking for a house a few years ago.
“I met an English guy at a campsite a few years back. He was sick of his life in London; all work, no spirit. He had seen something on TV about this part of France being unspoiled and rugged so he hopped on a train and then walked for four days from the train station to the campsite. When he met me he asked which streams he could drink fresh water from. I laughed and offered him some wine. You know, I had traveled all the way to French Guyana to live off of the jungle and here this guy was coming here to France looking for the same kind of lifestyle. He still lives here. He moved in with this Dutch woman. She and I don’t really get along unfortunately. We don’t see eye-to-eye you know? She’s in real estate. She sells property exclusively to foreigners. She doesn’t get the value of a tree you know? She complains about how locals will spend hours, weeks even debating whether certain trees can be felled. For her it’s just a matter of business. For the locals each tree is important. They made the land what it is today and they resent all these foreigners coming in and changing it. I think in the next election a lot of people from this area might lean towards LePen, not because of anti-Arab sentiment like in Paris, but to vote against the influx of all these Northern Europeans.”
Elise had the stature and long braided pigtails of a 12-year-old offset by a deep throaty voice and softy rounded facial features. She reminded me of Grandmother Willow who counseled Disney’s Pocahontas to, “Paint with all the colors of the wind.” She paused her monologue to navigate an intersection and perhaps commune with the gnarled trees lining the highway.
Gradually the fields gave way to the narrow cobble stone streets of La Châtre. We pulled up to 41 rue Venose, the childhood home of Luigi, one of Saul’s other family-friends who was having a party that night. Elise left us with an intriguing proposition, “Listen, tomorrow I’ll be at the circus with François and Fidji. If you wanna come by give my mom a call. I’m sure you could stay as long as you’re willing to help out with the farm a bit. Anyways, have fun and give my love to everyone.”
I tried really hard to get into party mode but I just couldn’t. The shift from grandma-land to techno-rave had been too abrupt, too jarring. I drank a beer or two, smoked a few joints. All the chemicals just seemed to aggravate a giant knot growing in my chest, a hole, an emptiness, a lack. I missed the false nostalgia I had inhabited for the past week. I had allowed myself to become far too attached, to Saul, to Grandma, to the house, the town. I had pretended that I possessed some enduring bond with all these lives and places. In retrospect, the poverty of this claim was now all too evident.
Of course I had known this would happen. I had almost refused Saul’s invitation because I knew. I knew I was too permeable to other people’s stories. I soaked them up and could recite them as if they were my own. Whenever I allowed myself too big a taste of another life I would write myself into it. I had been so deluded as to say to Babette before we left, “I’m sure I’ll be back soon.”
I wandered into a small courtyard off the back of the house and breathed in the rain-soaked air. I felt the fictions inside me imploding. My heartbeat raced, propelled by some sort of psychosomatic anxiety attack. Frightened, I decided to neatly extricate myself from the socializing at hand and try to sleep it off.
A couple hours later Rachel, who had come down from Paris for the weekend, appeared at my bedside. “Hey man, you alright? You gonna come out with us? We’re leaving in a little bit.”
I grunted an unconvincing “yes,” still unsure whether I was capable of enjoying anything. However, I was determined to snap out of it, whatever “it” was, so in spite of my persistent melancholic stupor I pulled myself out of bed and into Benoit’s car. Practically speaking, I might as well have stayed in bed. About 40km into the unexpectedly long 80km schlep to the party hall Benoit’s car got a flat tire, and not one of the five passengers, myself included, had brought their cell phones. Our friends in the car we had been following merely left a few concerned and futile voicemail messages, never thinking to come back to look for us. We spent hours driving around the French countryside in the dark searching for a party we knew we had the slimmest chance of stumbling upon. All of the sudden out of the dark emerged a field full of parked cars, Eureka! This must be the place! We pulled up closer, squinting through the rain at the rows of decrepit cars. Either this party had been going on for decades, or this was a junkyard… I leaned my head against the cold glass window, closed my eyes and imagined I was still sleeping in grandma’s guest bedroom in the pitch black with the shutters closed tight.
We finally gave up the search and returned to Luigi’s around 4am. I tried to lose myself for a bit in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and eventually fell into a restless sleep, waking every few hours until I relented at 10am and waited for the rest of the house to awake.
By 1pm everyone was up and milling about the house. Exasperated cries of “I left you a message!” “I didn’t have my phone!” were briefly batted back and forth but quickly dropped as entirely moot points. Rachel and I, co-passengers of the ill-fated car, recounted the mirage of the junkyard rave. Saul, who had made it to the party, complained about the persistent drum and bass echoing in his head. He then turned to more pressing matters. “Elise’s mom will be by in about an hour if we still want to go to the circus.”
“The circus? What circus?” Rachel eagerly inquired.
“Oh, you know Elise? She sort of lives at this circus with her sort of boyfriend Fidji and she invited us to visit if you’re interested.” Saul explained.
Rachel’s jaw dropped just a little. “No shit, seriously? That is my dream, man. You guys going? You’re going, right? Can I really come?”
Thus it was quickly decided that we would leave behind sour memories of a failed Saturday night and join the circus.
The Cirque Bidon was founded in the early 1970s by François Rauline, a native Parisian who grew disillusioned with the city after the ‘68 riots. In founding the Cirque Bidon, an old-fashioned horse drawn circus caravan, he envisioned and realized a more down-to-earth, self-sustaining life for himself and his family. The circus initially set out for Romania but stopped in northern Italy on the way and was so successful it never left. After touring the Italian countryside for two decades, François has since returned to establish a more sedentary life in his native France, where his grown son, Fidji, has joined him. Together the two run a small farm and are preparing for a revival of the Cirque Bidon this summer in the local French countryside.
It was raining when we drove up to Les Brandes Mouligoux, the property occupied by François, Fidji and their circus. We scraped the mud off our boots and entered a cozy stone building with a curvilinear wooden loft suspended above. Elise greeted us and introduced us to Fidji, in whose house we were apparently standing, and Alex, a friend, who when asked where she was from replied, “I can’t answer that. I’m a nomad.”
Elise told us to take our shoes off and announced that it was time for “games.” This morning’s “game” was a series of exercises Elise had learned at her somatopsychic therapy course in Paris. We swayed from left to right, coordinating the motion of our feet, knees, legs and arms, centering ourselves over a spot midway between the navel and pubis, which Elise referred to in a breathy voice as the “ha.”
Game time quickly flowed into work time. Three chickens were caught, slaughtered and plucked. Then a small feast was prepared out of both store-bought and farm grown ingredients, the latter mostly root vegetables: onions, carrots, and potatoes. We cooked and dined in François’ house, a larger facing Fidji’s. Rita, an old retired circus monkey watched us with rancorous eyes from her assigned seat, chained to an imposing stone fireplace.
After dinner Rach, Saul and I were given a tour of our lodgings for the night, the largest of the circus wagons—the kitchen/bathroom wagon—, which could fit the three of us on a mattress on the floor as long as we assumed the fetal position. We smoked the last of Rachel’s weed by candlelight and waxed poetic on the whimsical paths our lives had taken to converge in a circus wagon in middle-of-nowhere France. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world right now,” Rachel gushed.
“I bet that at any given moment there aren’t too many people who can honestly say that,” I ventured.
“No, I don’t think there are,” she agreed.
The following day was occupied mostly by the painting of red signs with the banner “PROCHAIN SPECTACLE,” which will announce the circus performance times to the public this summer.
“This might be the most productive thing we’ve done since we came to France,” I joked to Rachel, only half-kidding.
“I don’t want to go back to Paris this afternoon,” she began, “This place is amazing…I can’t leave this place.”
I thought about the stories François and Fidji could tell us, and I thought about how soothing it could be to live on a farm for a few days before returning to Paris. Mostly I couldn’t think of a good reason not to stay. After all, this is why I was spending a year doing basically nothing in Paris; so I could pick-up and join the circus on a whim. To leave would be to violate the spirit of my aloofness.
“If they invite us to stay, I’ll stay too,” I said.
Thus we commenced our self-imposed exile, helping to cook and clean, and periodically painting more signs in exchange for our wagon and board.
Fidji’s rustic lodge, which he had completely renovated himself (it used to be a garage), was full of bottles of various sizes with ageing labels identifying a year and perhaps the contents. He called them elixirs, and one might call him an amateur botanist/herbologist/aromatherapist. Lining a long shelf above the kitchen counter were jars and jars of herbs and spices, both store-bought and from the garden. One night, as Rachel and I cooked up a simple pasta dinner for ourselves (Fidji was at a play rehearsal, an anti-corporate update of Molière) we played “Name that Scent.” The lack of legible or English labels on the bulk of the jars—most had been recycled from other purposes—vastly facilitated the mystery of the game. Often there was no way to ever check if we were right, for though Fidji could rattle off each plant’s French and often Latin names plus their various medicinal properties, without Wikipedia we were incapable of translating most of it into practical English usage. We tentatively identified fennel, coriander, chamomile, and what I concluded must be the secret ingredient that makes all fish food smell like fish food.
When Fidji returned from his rehearsal the first words out of his mouth were, “Ahhshgurrpburlguhmda!” Either he was drunk, or I had sniffed one too many unnamed substances. I smiled back, but my eyes must have betrayed my absolute perplexity. He grinned sheepishly, “That’s American no? I saw Brokeback Mountain; that’s how the cowboys talk.”
On the whole François and Fidji weren’t big talkers. Most meals progressed in relative silence. It was often so quiet you could hear Rachel and I trying to formulate sophisticated-sounding conversation starters in our heads. (What in the hell is the formal imperfect form of “to juggle?”…) Finally I decided the future regret of having let these meals pass by in silence was more than I could bear.
“So, François, were you raised on a farm?”
“No, in Paris.”
“Ah, Paris, so then how did you learn how to run this farm?”
“Oh, just here and there as I traveled with the circus.”
“Do you miss Paris?”
“No.”
Here I was hoping he would expand profoundly on the ennui of urban life and the yearning he felt for the countryside. Perhaps he would even launch into a scathing critique of consumer capitalism and the disastrous effects it had wrought on the human spirit. He would say all of this with such honestly and charisma that I would remember it all my life and quote him for years to come as a primary source: Rauline, François. 2007. Personal Communication.
I am neither proud nor ashamed of the fact that I perceive most everything and everyone around me as potential material for the canon of books, op-ed pieces and guest lectures that will one day form my intellectual legacy. However, if I can’t get a clown to tell me why he loves the circus I might have to tone down my visions of academic glory.
The following dinner conversation was somewhat more fruitful:
“So where in Italy did you take the circus?” I asked.
“Only in the North really,” Fidji replied.
“We went to the South a bit just as tourists,” François clarified, “but not with the circus. The South and the North are completely different. We were extremely successful in the North so we stayed there.” He shrugged, indicating the obviousness of this plan.
Fidji chimed in, “I couldn’t tell you about the South at all, but the North we know by heart. I couldn’t tell you the name of every town, but the moment I go back I’d know I’d been there before. It would be like recovering a little piece of my soul.” Fidji had a habit of speaking frankly and unexpectedly about things like his soul.
“Did you go to cities, or just rural areas?” I asked.
“Mostly small towns,” Fidji replied. “Italy’s not settled the same way France is. The population is almost the same but the land area is much less and there are mountains in the middle. That means the countryside is much more densely settled than it is here. We could travel a dozen kilometers and hit a town of a few thousand people where we could perform for maybe a week or two at a time. A huge proportion of the Italian population lives in mid-sized towns like that. In France it’s either urban or rural. You have a few large cities and the rest is extremely spread out. This year we’ll have to move a lot more or count on people coming in from further distances to see us.”
“Hopefully after this summer word will spread and we’ll get more permanent financial support.” added François.
“And if not you’ll go back to Italy?” I asked. I think I only added this note of pessimism into the conversation because it was easy to say quickly in French, and I was eager to keep things rolling.
“If not,” Fidji paused. “If not then no, I dunno exactly what we’ll do. I don’t want to repeat what we’ve done already. Maybe I’d go study botany or something like that more seriously. Ideally, if I could do anything I think I’d want to be an actor. But I don’t think I’m particularly good. I keep with it because I think it’s one of the most difficult and rewarding pursuits. You need to truly know yourself to set that aside and take on another persona. Especially as a clown, to be a really good clown you have to know yourself so completely in order to create an alternate personality and continue shaping it over the course of your career. A truly great clown can make children laugh, but he can make also make adults cry. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that, but that would be my ideal.”
By Thursday I was beginning to tire of the circus. Straight rain for over 24 hours had limited our range of movement to a circus wagon and two large rooms separated by an increasing quantity of mud. The “bathroom” was equally muddy. It became a constant renal and intestinal effort to go outside to relieve oneself as infrequently as possible. Bodily functions aside, I felt more and more like I was trespassing on François and Fidji’s lives and furthermore, that I had my own life elsewhere that it was time to take up again. I suppose that’s the sign of a successful vacation.
Rachel, on the other hand, was ready to give up her life in Paris and move to the circus full-time. The farm life reminded her of her grandmother’s farm back in Louisiana. She had plucked her chicken better and faster than either Saul or I. She had chicken-plucking experience. The rain reminded her of storms back in Texas. She craved real lightning and thunder painted across an inky blue sky. The notion that the wagon we were living in had been pulled by horses across northern Italy sparked simultaneously her wanderlust and her yearning for the slower pace of rural life. Once Fidji asked if there were gypsies in America. “No,” she had replied. “But I always wanted to be a gypsy.” The only thing Rachel lacked at the Cirque Bidon was weed. I began to fear I might have to trick her into leaving by scattering a Hansel and Gretel trail of nugs all the way back to Paris.
Friday was far livelier and action-packed than the preceding lazy rainy days. A cement floor was being poured in a room adjoining François’ house, destined to be a training and rehearsal space. Elise was back, as was her stepfather Philippe. Elise’s birth-father, Michel, was also on site to lend a hand. Five months ago I would have been shocked to see birthdad and stepdad working side by side, especially with mom nowhere in sight. However, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I’ve come to surmise that the French take divorce rather lightly.
So Elise and her two chummy dads were present as was a family from down the road. The final helping hand was Thierry, a 30-year-old long-haired elementary school teacher and amateur wood sculptor who talks much more than either François or Fidji. Incidentally, he’s been to Iceland. That is just plain cool. In all there were twelve hands on deck for the big cement pour. More importantly, we need to cook lunch for twelve. Somewhere along the way three lunch menus were proposed and I suppose no one had the heart to choose, so lunch multiplied by three consisted of six home-made pizzas, a gigot d’agneau, and a massive pot of Rachel’s Texan chili. Thankfully, desert was a simple and singular matter of fromage blanc with honey. “Honey with a high wax content,” offered Fidji knowingly, “It’s good for the intestinal tract.” This was welcome news, as my intestines were feeling quite sore after three days of furtive quick-it-stopped-pouring dashes to the bushes.
Later that evening Rach and I sat sprawled on the floor of Fidji’s place, putting a second coat of white paint on the signs. Meanwhile Fidji was weaving a basket in the corner by the fireplace. The work progressed in relative silence, broken only by periodic changes of CD—first classical piano, then African drumming, followed by jazz guitar and Indian chants.
Suddenly Fidji asked what my birthday was. I told him and he grabbed a thin paperback, opening it to a well-worn page. He squinted, rotating the book in front of him as if driving a car. “Aha,” he exclaimed finally. “You are a poplar tree.”
“It’s a sort of Celtic astrology,” explained Elise, “except with trees. I’ve only met one person who didn’t like her tree, and honestly, I think if she could come to terms with her true self, she would embrace her tree.”
Fidji then rose from his seated basket-weaving position and walked over to the windows. “Do you know the sun salutation?” he asked, extending his arms above his head and then folding over to touch his toes.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “We were actually just doing yoga before we left Paris.” I like to think this response raised his estimation of us just a bit, perhaps up from philosophically bankrupt Americans to merely philosophically poor.
“Have you traveled much?” I asked him once.
He grinned bashfully, “No, I’ve barely traveled at all. I don’t even know Paris that well.” This struck me at first, the same way I am consistently struck when I meet Americans who have never been to New York. Then again, life here in rural France reminded me more of rural India or New Mexico than Paris. And Paris reminded me more of New York than of here. Difference seemed to be a matter of lifestyle rather than nationality, and one might just as well find kindred spirits across the world as strangers next door.
I awoke Saturday morning to the unfamiliar warmth of sunlight on my face. For a moment I stared at the sky in disbelief, marveling at the difference between a blue sky and a grey one. For the first time all week I eagerly threw on my muddy boots and headed out for my morning pee. Salsa, Thierry’s adorable dog with age-defying puppy looks (she is in fact five years old and twice a mother) greeted me outside and decided to come along for a stroll. We followed muddy tractor tracks down to an abandoned stone building, its roof having long ago collapsed in on itself. Nearby a rusty old curvaceous car frame had been largely engulfed by a bramble bush. I had hurriedly noticed these ruins earlier in the week through a curtain of rain. Now I scrambled to the top of the precarious crumbling walls and surveyed the surrounding countryside. The endless green grass, saturated with days of rain, looked and smelled like spring, yet the naked trees still evoked winter.
I turned to face the farm and the circus, and the matching father and son dwellings. Surrounded by the vastness of nature behind me and the products of François’ and Fidji’s handiwork in front, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to create something—to paint, to build, to write. To reclaim that basic human ability and desire to put something new into the world—to master the art of living by living in and through art.
It is common to find kids such as Saul, Rachel and myself drawn to a Cirque Bidonesque lifestyle, which embodies the “Think Globally/Act Locally” mantra. It is rarer to find Elise’s and Fidji’s who maintain that spirit into their early adulthood. It is extraordinary to find adults such as François, or Saul’s mother Christine, who have lived out their dreams of self-creation to the best of their ability. This is not at all meant to diminish the lives of those who have not chosen such an unconventional path. It is easy to glorify the lives of others from a distance and devalue those closest to you because they are marred by unappealing intimate details. It is possible to drown in the lives of others, to lose one’s sense of self in the pursuit of external validation. It is equally possible to dismiss the lives of others as foreign, meaningless or even worse, irrational.
As I sit here in this circus wagon, surrounded by warm knotty wood and feathers tucked in between the joints here and there by some past resident, I know that the only thing that makes me truly unique in this world is the particular array of lives that have intersected with mine over the past 22 years. And the only thing that will make me truly successful in this world is to take stock of the myriad facets of all the lives I have had the gift of knowing and cull from them a best self, best equipped to the tasks of personal, social, and metaphysical survival. I can only end with a quotation I return to on a daily basis:
We begin with the capacity to live a thousand kinds of life, but end in the end having lived only one.
–Clifford Geertz
The Dead Center
Erin R. Silverstein
Erin R. Silverstein
Saul must be back in Paris by now, re-inhabiting his 9m2 flat in Neuilly-sur-Seine, a far cry from this circus wagon (except the size). I was supposed be back in Paris by now. My rent’s due Thursday, I had plans to visit the Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Yet here I am, at the circus, in the dead center of France. And is the center ever dead. The nearest population hub is a village comprising perhaps 15 houses about 5 miles down the road. Farm animals outnumber people. French cows still “moo,” French sheep still “baa.” Rachel and I verified this on our walk into “town” earlier today. Any slight difference of accent was lost on our human ears. Just past town we happened upon a small brook. “It’s been too long since I’ve heard the sound of babbling,” Rach said.
We both paused at the side of the road and soaked in the babble. I stepped over the muddy tire tracks and found a dry spot on which to perch for a moment…
* * *
The previous Tuesday Saul and I had missed our train to Tours. We had been doing yoga at my flat and lost track of time, which I guess is sort of the point of yoga, but in this case it caused more stress than zen. We effectively sprinted from my flat to the gare, forgoing any attempt to not look like tourists, but got there just as the train was pulling out of the station. We caught the next train two hours later. Then we missed our connecting train in Tours.
Eight hours after we had left my flat in the 15eme we finally made it to Loches, a sleepy town 35 kilometers southeast of Tours. More than ever I craved a week without timetables.
Saul’s grandmother picked us up at the bus station. If I were to draw a cartoon of a grandmother it would closely resemble Marie-Madeleine—clear plastic protecting her off-white granny-fro from the drizzle, well-worn wool cardigan on top, grey and beige on the bottom, and barely 5 feet in stature. At the time I knew only that she was Saul’s mother’s mother and that her rates for a week at Chez Granny were in line with my shoestring budget. By the end of the week I knew all about her childhood during World War II, her life in Algeria during the 60s, the raising of her four children—Christine, Bruno, Elizabeth (a.k.a. Babette,) and Fabienne—and her opinion of what has become of them since they left her watchful eye. All of this was accompanied by album upon album of pictures, dating from the turn of the century up to this past summer.
Marie-Madeleine was not about to divulge her past without asking a few questions of her own. In fact, she was quite the conversationalist, exuding both the confidence of age and the eager verging on naïve curiosity of youth.
Once over a casual dinner the conversation drifted towards matters of faith. “So tell me Céline,” Marie-Madeleine ventured (she could never remember my tongue-twister of an Irish-American name). “What do they call a communion in Judaism?”
“Well, we don’t exactly have a communion,” I replied.
She chuckled incredulously, “You mean you don’t believe Jesus Christ died?”
I looked down at my plate of beets, searching for an appropriate response to such a sensitive question. Then I looked up and met her wide, grinning eyes. Her frankness was infectious. “No, we believe he died,” I countered. “We just don’t believe he was the Son of God.”
Between chats Saul and I took advantage of the two old but functional bikes in the garage to explore the countryside. We biked past field upon field, charting a grand loop away from town and then back. We biked to the château where Joan of Arc talked Charles V into reclaiming the French throne from the English. We biked to the local bar and split a litre of Affligem. We biked to the Croix Rouge, where Saul’s aunt Babette volunteers while she looks for more gainful employment. “It passes the time, keeps me busy,” she said, embodying the plight of France’s large unemployed population.
One morning we sat on the porch in the sunlight and enjoyed a breakfast of yogurt sweetened with homemade strawberry preserves and local honey. It was incredibly simple and preposterously good. We knew if grandma returned from the market and caught us leaving the porch doors open she’d begin her predictable rant:
“I don’t know how it is in New York, but here, in my house, we keep the doors shut so the heat stays inside.”
“Yes grandma,” we’d obediently reply.
“Are the shutters in your rooms closed?” This question was asked at least three times per day. She suspected we took advantage of her every absence to flout the strict closed-shutter policy. The thick wooden shutters not only saved on heating bills but also blocked every possible speck of light from entering our bedrooms. Every morning I would wake up in pitch black. Was it 5am or 11? I neither knew nor cared.
Our last morning in Loches I woke up and found a note on the dining room table: “Saul, I went to the market. Please set the table. Grandma.”
I looked around at the photographs lining the dining room walls, documenting every life Marie-Madeleine had nurtured into being. A week ago these lives had been only names, if that. Now I could rattle off where each one was born, how far they had made it in school, when they had married, why they had divorced. I remembered weddings I had never been to. I missed people I had never known.
Back in my bedroom I packed my bags and donned a pair of new silver shoes I had bought at the Red Cross.
I opened the forbidden shutters and breathed in the backyard one last time. I smiled again at the incongruous presence of solar-powered garden lights, a gift from Christine, Saul’s Oregon granola mom.
I returned to the dining room for lunch. On my plate had been placed a hexagonal box of Lindt chocolates, a parting gift from grandma. After lunch she drove us to the bus station, kissed us on both cheeks, and waved as the bus pulled away.
* * *
Elise, the daughter of one of Christine’s best friends picked us up at the Chateauroux station. She had babysitted Saul as a child during his family’s summer trips to France. We stopped at her parents’ house where she lent me a pair of old boots to better navigate the country mud.
“Better than those white shoes, eh?” she remarked. “They’re silver,” I thought to myself, but conceded the point. I decided to save the silver for Paris.
Along the drive to La Châtre Elise volunteered her take on the geographic and social history of the area. “This land is really at a crossroads in many ways. The Parisian basin ends here and the foothills of the Massif Central begin. Also this is where the old linguistic division between the Lange d’Oc of the south and the Langue d’Oil of the north was. You can still occasionally hear older people speaking in a patois, but honestly you’re more likely to hear people chatting in Dutch.” Why Dutch? we asked. “Foreigners have been moving in in droves from Holland, Germany, England, Northern Europe in general. They like that the property is relatively cheap and the lifestyle is more laidback, more rural. Locals have been almost completely priced out of the real estate market. It was really difficult when I was looking for a house a few years ago.
“I met an English guy at a campsite a few years back. He was sick of his life in London; all work, no spirit. He had seen something on TV about this part of France being unspoiled and rugged so he hopped on a train and then walked for four days from the train station to the campsite. When he met me he asked which streams he could drink fresh water from. I laughed and offered him some wine. You know, I had traveled all the way to French Guyana to live off of the jungle and here this guy was coming here to France looking for the same kind of lifestyle. He still lives here. He moved in with this Dutch woman. She and I don’t really get along unfortunately. We don’t see eye-to-eye you know? She’s in real estate. She sells property exclusively to foreigners. She doesn’t get the value of a tree you know? She complains about how locals will spend hours, weeks even debating whether certain trees can be felled. For her it’s just a matter of business. For the locals each tree is important. They made the land what it is today and they resent all these foreigners coming in and changing it. I think in the next election a lot of people from this area might lean towards LePen, not because of anti-Arab sentiment like in Paris, but to vote against the influx of all these Northern Europeans.”
Elise had the stature and long braided pigtails of a 12-year-old offset by a deep throaty voice and softy rounded facial features. She reminded me of Grandmother Willow who counseled Disney’s Pocahontas to, “Paint with all the colors of the wind.” She paused her monologue to navigate an intersection and perhaps commune with the gnarled trees lining the highway.
Gradually the fields gave way to the narrow cobble stone streets of La Châtre. We pulled up to 41 rue Venose, the childhood home of Luigi, one of Saul’s other family-friends who was having a party that night. Elise left us with an intriguing proposition, “Listen, tomorrow I’ll be at the circus with François and Fidji. If you wanna come by give my mom a call. I’m sure you could stay as long as you’re willing to help out with the farm a bit. Anyways, have fun and give my love to everyone.”
* * *
I tried really hard to get into party mode but I just couldn’t. The shift from grandma-land to techno-rave had been too abrupt, too jarring. I drank a beer or two, smoked a few joints. All the chemicals just seemed to aggravate a giant knot growing in my chest, a hole, an emptiness, a lack. I missed the false nostalgia I had inhabited for the past week. I had allowed myself to become far too attached, to Saul, to Grandma, to the house, the town. I had pretended that I possessed some enduring bond with all these lives and places. In retrospect, the poverty of this claim was now all too evident.
Of course I had known this would happen. I had almost refused Saul’s invitation because I knew. I knew I was too permeable to other people’s stories. I soaked them up and could recite them as if they were my own. Whenever I allowed myself too big a taste of another life I would write myself into it. I had been so deluded as to say to Babette before we left, “I’m sure I’ll be back soon.”
I wandered into a small courtyard off the back of the house and breathed in the rain-soaked air. I felt the fictions inside me imploding. My heartbeat raced, propelled by some sort of psychosomatic anxiety attack. Frightened, I decided to neatly extricate myself from the socializing at hand and try to sleep it off.
A couple hours later Rachel, who had come down from Paris for the weekend, appeared at my bedside. “Hey man, you alright? You gonna come out with us? We’re leaving in a little bit.”
I grunted an unconvincing “yes,” still unsure whether I was capable of enjoying anything. However, I was determined to snap out of it, whatever “it” was, so in spite of my persistent melancholic stupor I pulled myself out of bed and into Benoit’s car. Practically speaking, I might as well have stayed in bed. About 40km into the unexpectedly long 80km schlep to the party hall Benoit’s car got a flat tire, and not one of the five passengers, myself included, had brought their cell phones. Our friends in the car we had been following merely left a few concerned and futile voicemail messages, never thinking to come back to look for us. We spent hours driving around the French countryside in the dark searching for a party we knew we had the slimmest chance of stumbling upon. All of the sudden out of the dark emerged a field full of parked cars, Eureka! This must be the place! We pulled up closer, squinting through the rain at the rows of decrepit cars. Either this party had been going on for decades, or this was a junkyard… I leaned my head against the cold glass window, closed my eyes and imagined I was still sleeping in grandma’s guest bedroom in the pitch black with the shutters closed tight.
We finally gave up the search and returned to Luigi’s around 4am. I tried to lose myself for a bit in Orhan Pamuk’s Snow, and eventually fell into a restless sleep, waking every few hours until I relented at 10am and waited for the rest of the house to awake.
By 1pm everyone was up and milling about the house. Exasperated cries of “I left you a message!” “I didn’t have my phone!” were briefly batted back and forth but quickly dropped as entirely moot points. Rachel and I, co-passengers of the ill-fated car, recounted the mirage of the junkyard rave. Saul, who had made it to the party, complained about the persistent drum and bass echoing in his head. He then turned to more pressing matters. “Elise’s mom will be by in about an hour if we still want to go to the circus.”
“The circus? What circus?” Rachel eagerly inquired.
“Oh, you know Elise? She sort of lives at this circus with her sort of boyfriend Fidji and she invited us to visit if you’re interested.” Saul explained.
Rachel’s jaw dropped just a little. “No shit, seriously? That is my dream, man. You guys going? You’re going, right? Can I really come?”
Thus it was quickly decided that we would leave behind sour memories of a failed Saturday night and join the circus.
* * *
The Cirque Bidon was founded in the early 1970s by François Rauline, a native Parisian who grew disillusioned with the city after the ‘68 riots. In founding the Cirque Bidon, an old-fashioned horse drawn circus caravan, he envisioned and realized a more down-to-earth, self-sustaining life for himself and his family. The circus initially set out for Romania but stopped in northern Italy on the way and was so successful it never left. After touring the Italian countryside for two decades, François has since returned to establish a more sedentary life in his native France, where his grown son, Fidji, has joined him. Together the two run a small farm and are preparing for a revival of the Cirque Bidon this summer in the local French countryside.
It was raining when we drove up to Les Brandes Mouligoux, the property occupied by François, Fidji and their circus. We scraped the mud off our boots and entered a cozy stone building with a curvilinear wooden loft suspended above. Elise greeted us and introduced us to Fidji, in whose house we were apparently standing, and Alex, a friend, who when asked where she was from replied, “I can’t answer that. I’m a nomad.”
Elise told us to take our shoes off and announced that it was time for “games.” This morning’s “game” was a series of exercises Elise had learned at her somatopsychic therapy course in Paris. We swayed from left to right, coordinating the motion of our feet, knees, legs and arms, centering ourselves over a spot midway between the navel and pubis, which Elise referred to in a breathy voice as the “ha.”
Game time quickly flowed into work time. Three chickens were caught, slaughtered and plucked. Then a small feast was prepared out of both store-bought and farm grown ingredients, the latter mostly root vegetables: onions, carrots, and potatoes. We cooked and dined in François’ house, a larger facing Fidji’s. Rita, an old retired circus monkey watched us with rancorous eyes from her assigned seat, chained to an imposing stone fireplace.
After dinner Rach, Saul and I were given a tour of our lodgings for the night, the largest of the circus wagons—the kitchen/bathroom wagon—, which could fit the three of us on a mattress on the floor as long as we assumed the fetal position. We smoked the last of Rachel’s weed by candlelight and waxed poetic on the whimsical paths our lives had taken to converge in a circus wagon in middle-of-nowhere France. “I wouldn’t rather be anywhere else in the world right now,” Rachel gushed.
“I bet that at any given moment there aren’t too many people who can honestly say that,” I ventured.
“No, I don’t think there are,” she agreed.
The following day was occupied mostly by the painting of red signs with the banner “PROCHAIN SPECTACLE,” which will announce the circus performance times to the public this summer.
“This might be the most productive thing we’ve done since we came to France,” I joked to Rachel, only half-kidding.
“I don’t want to go back to Paris this afternoon,” she began, “This place is amazing…I can’t leave this place.”
I thought about the stories François and Fidji could tell us, and I thought about how soothing it could be to live on a farm for a few days before returning to Paris. Mostly I couldn’t think of a good reason not to stay. After all, this is why I was spending a year doing basically nothing in Paris; so I could pick-up and join the circus on a whim. To leave would be to violate the spirit of my aloofness.
“If they invite us to stay, I’ll stay too,” I said.
Thus we commenced our self-imposed exile, helping to cook and clean, and periodically painting more signs in exchange for our wagon and board.
Fidji’s rustic lodge, which he had completely renovated himself (it used to be a garage), was full of bottles of various sizes with ageing labels identifying a year and perhaps the contents. He called them elixirs, and one might call him an amateur botanist/herbologist/aromatherapist. Lining a long shelf above the kitchen counter were jars and jars of herbs and spices, both store-bought and from the garden. One night, as Rachel and I cooked up a simple pasta dinner for ourselves (Fidji was at a play rehearsal, an anti-corporate update of Molière) we played “Name that Scent.” The lack of legible or English labels on the bulk of the jars—most had been recycled from other purposes—vastly facilitated the mystery of the game. Often there was no way to ever check if we were right, for though Fidji could rattle off each plant’s French and often Latin names plus their various medicinal properties, without Wikipedia we were incapable of translating most of it into practical English usage. We tentatively identified fennel, coriander, chamomile, and what I concluded must be the secret ingredient that makes all fish food smell like fish food.
When Fidji returned from his rehearsal the first words out of his mouth were, “Ahhshgurrpburlguhmda!” Either he was drunk, or I had sniffed one too many unnamed substances. I smiled back, but my eyes must have betrayed my absolute perplexity. He grinned sheepishly, “That’s American no? I saw Brokeback Mountain; that’s how the cowboys talk.”
On the whole François and Fidji weren’t big talkers. Most meals progressed in relative silence. It was often so quiet you could hear Rachel and I trying to formulate sophisticated-sounding conversation starters in our heads. (What in the hell is the formal imperfect form of “to juggle?”…) Finally I decided the future regret of having let these meals pass by in silence was more than I could bear.
“So, François, were you raised on a farm?”
“No, in Paris.”
“Ah, Paris, so then how did you learn how to run this farm?”
“Oh, just here and there as I traveled with the circus.”
“Do you miss Paris?”
“No.”
Here I was hoping he would expand profoundly on the ennui of urban life and the yearning he felt for the countryside. Perhaps he would even launch into a scathing critique of consumer capitalism and the disastrous effects it had wrought on the human spirit. He would say all of this with such honestly and charisma that I would remember it all my life and quote him for years to come as a primary source: Rauline, François. 2007. Personal Communication.
I am neither proud nor ashamed of the fact that I perceive most everything and everyone around me as potential material for the canon of books, op-ed pieces and guest lectures that will one day form my intellectual legacy. However, if I can’t get a clown to tell me why he loves the circus I might have to tone down my visions of academic glory.
The following dinner conversation was somewhat more fruitful:
“So where in Italy did you take the circus?” I asked.
“Only in the North really,” Fidji replied.
“We went to the South a bit just as tourists,” François clarified, “but not with the circus. The South and the North are completely different. We were extremely successful in the North so we stayed there.” He shrugged, indicating the obviousness of this plan.
Fidji chimed in, “I couldn’t tell you about the South at all, but the North we know by heart. I couldn’t tell you the name of every town, but the moment I go back I’d know I’d been there before. It would be like recovering a little piece of my soul.” Fidji had a habit of speaking frankly and unexpectedly about things like his soul.
“Did you go to cities, or just rural areas?” I asked.
“Mostly small towns,” Fidji replied. “Italy’s not settled the same way France is. The population is almost the same but the land area is much less and there are mountains in the middle. That means the countryside is much more densely settled than it is here. We could travel a dozen kilometers and hit a town of a few thousand people where we could perform for maybe a week or two at a time. A huge proportion of the Italian population lives in mid-sized towns like that. In France it’s either urban or rural. You have a few large cities and the rest is extremely spread out. This year we’ll have to move a lot more or count on people coming in from further distances to see us.”
“Hopefully after this summer word will spread and we’ll get more permanent financial support.” added François.
“And if not you’ll go back to Italy?” I asked. I think I only added this note of pessimism into the conversation because it was easy to say quickly in French, and I was eager to keep things rolling.
“If not,” Fidji paused. “If not then no, I dunno exactly what we’ll do. I don’t want to repeat what we’ve done already. Maybe I’d go study botany or something like that more seriously. Ideally, if I could do anything I think I’d want to be an actor. But I don’t think I’m particularly good. I keep with it because I think it’s one of the most difficult and rewarding pursuits. You need to truly know yourself to set that aside and take on another persona. Especially as a clown, to be a really good clown you have to know yourself so completely in order to create an alternate personality and continue shaping it over the course of your career. A truly great clown can make children laugh, but he can make also make adults cry. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to do that, but that would be my ideal.”
By Thursday I was beginning to tire of the circus. Straight rain for over 24 hours had limited our range of movement to a circus wagon and two large rooms separated by an increasing quantity of mud. The “bathroom” was equally muddy. It became a constant renal and intestinal effort to go outside to relieve oneself as infrequently as possible. Bodily functions aside, I felt more and more like I was trespassing on François and Fidji’s lives and furthermore, that I had my own life elsewhere that it was time to take up again. I suppose that’s the sign of a successful vacation.
Rachel, on the other hand, was ready to give up her life in Paris and move to the circus full-time. The farm life reminded her of her grandmother’s farm back in Louisiana. She had plucked her chicken better and faster than either Saul or I. She had chicken-plucking experience. The rain reminded her of storms back in Texas. She craved real lightning and thunder painted across an inky blue sky. The notion that the wagon we were living in had been pulled by horses across northern Italy sparked simultaneously her wanderlust and her yearning for the slower pace of rural life. Once Fidji asked if there were gypsies in America. “No,” she had replied. “But I always wanted to be a gypsy.” The only thing Rachel lacked at the Cirque Bidon was weed. I began to fear I might have to trick her into leaving by scattering a Hansel and Gretel trail of nugs all the way back to Paris.
Friday was far livelier and action-packed than the preceding lazy rainy days. A cement floor was being poured in a room adjoining François’ house, destined to be a training and rehearsal space. Elise was back, as was her stepfather Philippe. Elise’s birth-father, Michel, was also on site to lend a hand. Five months ago I would have been shocked to see birthdad and stepdad working side by side, especially with mom nowhere in sight. However, this seems to be the rule rather than the exception. I’ve come to surmise that the French take divorce rather lightly.
So Elise and her two chummy dads were present as was a family from down the road. The final helping hand was Thierry, a 30-year-old long-haired elementary school teacher and amateur wood sculptor who talks much more than either François or Fidji. Incidentally, he’s been to Iceland. That is just plain cool. In all there were twelve hands on deck for the big cement pour. More importantly, we need to cook lunch for twelve. Somewhere along the way three lunch menus were proposed and I suppose no one had the heart to choose, so lunch multiplied by three consisted of six home-made pizzas, a gigot d’agneau, and a massive pot of Rachel’s Texan chili. Thankfully, desert was a simple and singular matter of fromage blanc with honey. “Honey with a high wax content,” offered Fidji knowingly, “It’s good for the intestinal tract.” This was welcome news, as my intestines were feeling quite sore after three days of furtive quick-it-stopped-pouring dashes to the bushes.
Later that evening Rach and I sat sprawled on the floor of Fidji’s place, putting a second coat of white paint on the signs. Meanwhile Fidji was weaving a basket in the corner by the fireplace. The work progressed in relative silence, broken only by periodic changes of CD—first classical piano, then African drumming, followed by jazz guitar and Indian chants.
Suddenly Fidji asked what my birthday was. I told him and he grabbed a thin paperback, opening it to a well-worn page. He squinted, rotating the book in front of him as if driving a car. “Aha,” he exclaimed finally. “You are a poplar tree.”
“It’s a sort of Celtic astrology,” explained Elise, “except with trees. I’ve only met one person who didn’t like her tree, and honestly, I think if she could come to terms with her true self, she would embrace her tree.”
Fidji then rose from his seated basket-weaving position and walked over to the windows. “Do you know the sun salutation?” he asked, extending his arms above his head and then folding over to touch his toes.
“Yeah,” I said, smiling, “We were actually just doing yoga before we left Paris.” I like to think this response raised his estimation of us just a bit, perhaps up from philosophically bankrupt Americans to merely philosophically poor.
“Have you traveled much?” I asked him once.
He grinned bashfully, “No, I’ve barely traveled at all. I don’t even know Paris that well.” This struck me at first, the same way I am consistently struck when I meet Americans who have never been to New York. Then again, life here in rural France reminded me more of rural India or New Mexico than Paris. And Paris reminded me more of New York than of here. Difference seemed to be a matter of lifestyle rather than nationality, and one might just as well find kindred spirits across the world as strangers next door.
I awoke Saturday morning to the unfamiliar warmth of sunlight on my face. For a moment I stared at the sky in disbelief, marveling at the difference between a blue sky and a grey one. For the first time all week I eagerly threw on my muddy boots and headed out for my morning pee. Salsa, Thierry’s adorable dog with age-defying puppy looks (she is in fact five years old and twice a mother) greeted me outside and decided to come along for a stroll. We followed muddy tractor tracks down to an abandoned stone building, its roof having long ago collapsed in on itself. Nearby a rusty old curvaceous car frame had been largely engulfed by a bramble bush. I had hurriedly noticed these ruins earlier in the week through a curtain of rain. Now I scrambled to the top of the precarious crumbling walls and surveyed the surrounding countryside. The endless green grass, saturated with days of rain, looked and smelled like spring, yet the naked trees still evoked winter.
I turned to face the farm and the circus, and the matching father and son dwellings. Surrounded by the vastness of nature behind me and the products of François’ and Fidji’s handiwork in front, I couldn’t help but feel compelled to create something—to paint, to build, to write. To reclaim that basic human ability and desire to put something new into the world—to master the art of living by living in and through art.
* * *
It is common to find kids such as Saul, Rachel and myself drawn to a Cirque Bidonesque lifestyle, which embodies the “Think Globally/Act Locally” mantra. It is rarer to find Elise’s and Fidji’s who maintain that spirit into their early adulthood. It is extraordinary to find adults such as François, or Saul’s mother Christine, who have lived out their dreams of self-creation to the best of their ability. This is not at all meant to diminish the lives of those who have not chosen such an unconventional path. It is easy to glorify the lives of others from a distance and devalue those closest to you because they are marred by unappealing intimate details. It is possible to drown in the lives of others, to lose one’s sense of self in the pursuit of external validation. It is equally possible to dismiss the lives of others as foreign, meaningless or even worse, irrational.
As I sit here in this circus wagon, surrounded by warm knotty wood and feathers tucked in between the joints here and there by some past resident, I know that the only thing that makes me truly unique in this world is the particular array of lives that have intersected with mine over the past 22 years. And the only thing that will make me truly successful in this world is to take stock of the myriad facets of all the lives I have had the gift of knowing and cull from them a best self, best equipped to the tasks of personal, social, and metaphysical survival. I can only end with a quotation I return to on a daily basis:
We begin with the capacity to live a thousand kinds of life, but end in the end having lived only one.
–Clifford Geertz
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