Injured BMX acrobat Photo: Ileana Johnson |
We were so dazzled by the lights, the bright and happy colors,
the clowns, the caged tigers and the lumbering giant elephants, the glittering costumes,
the trapeze artists, and the magical sights and sounds of the circus, that we
were hooked for life.
We wanted to run away with the circus not because of the
Bohemian , thrilling, and fascinating travel life in cramped trailers, but
because we wanted to see the world like them, beyond the heavily guarded and
barb-wired borders where we could get shot even daring to approach it. We
imagined beautiful and indescribable freedom beyond the frowning and heavily
armed soldiers who were told to shoot on sight and ask questions later.
As soon as the big tent went up, all the kids in the
neighborhood started hanging around the circus site, leaving home early each
day and returning late at night. Then one morning, we would wake up and the
circus would be gone – a few holes left in the ground were the only markers
that they were ever there. A sense of sadness and loss overcame the kids in the
neighborhood and nobody came out to play for a while. It was as if we were
mourning the lost opportunity for freedom. It was a fascinating ephemeral world
that now lived just in our memories. The joy could have lasted longer on
celluloid but nobody had cameras or the means to develop photos.
One beautiful blond girl from our building ran away with the
circus several times but she never made it very far. The police would find her,
take her into custody, lock her up for a few hours to scare her, and return her
later to parents who were fined for being so “bad and neglectful,” and did not
follow the parental rules and dictates of the communist regime. To this day, I
marvel that they never took her away from her parents to send her to a juvenile
reform school. She probably would have found a way to escape; she was a dreamy Bohemian
who liked to stretch the limits.
My fascination with the circus never died because it gave me
so much joy and wonder as a child. I took my young children to see a Three Ring
performance here in the United States and visited recently and wrote about the
Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey winter quarters and museum in Sarasota,
Florida. http://canadafreepress.com/article/a-visit-to-cadzan-and-to-the-ringling-brothers-museum
Last night my husband surprised me with tickets to the
Extreme Ringling Brothers Barnum and Bailey show in Fairfax, Virginia. We went
early and mingled with some of the performers, the acrobats, the clowns, the
BMX bike acrobats, and the most docile elephant in the menagerie, Mabel.
We learned that the circus has teamed up with a doctor in
Utah who does research on pediatric cancer. The announcer said that elephants
very seldom get cancer and doctors are studying their herd to find out why and
perhaps find a cure.
We were dazzled by the acts, the strobe lights, the sixteen
tigers, the six camels, the Arabian horse, the trapeze acts, the five
elephants, the lady who was shot from a cannon, defying extra G-force on her
body, the wire acts, the jugglers, and by all the modern pizazz augmenting an
old art.
Near the end, the BMX performance was sadly cut short when
one of the seasoned bikers flew in the air and, upon landing, his tire blew
out, bringing him to a sudden stop that threw him airborne, and, continuing the
momentum, landed him at the bottom, on his neck, face down. He did not move
again. To my horror, the show continued for a few more minutes. It was finally
stopped but nobody left the arena, everyone was concerned for his safety and
wanted to make sure he was alive. I was so close that I could see he was still breathing
but unresponsive. Shocked spectators, who were so happy moments earlier,
started to file out of the arena, silently and in tears.
The show must go on but the glitz, glamor, and fantastic
skill of the performers were shadowed by the severe injury of this young man.
The reality of human frailty in the face of such daring acts of impossible
athleticism sunk in hard. We hope and pray that he makes a full recovery.
From a reader, Carmel, in Mississippi:
ReplyDelete...you take a ticket upon your first breath and bravely go forth as innocents to acquire the faith, hope and charity to face another day.
We were inner city BUT so was the area set aside for the circus train to arrive and set up. It was amazing at night to hear tigers, and lions roar and elephants making trumpet noises.
We didn't have to sneak in to see the 3 ring performance because as inner city poor children we often received free tickets from successful well to do relatives.
Here where we live with no Walmart in south MS for 27 miles around...a small traveling "circus" of a sort comes to town and the businesses place "free" tickets on their counters. Entry is free the tickets are quite ornate as well as the posters they put up all over town.
Ten years ago I started collecting some of those Circus posters. I framed 6 of them to hang in our den. Circus posters have a way to elicit endless cheer and this is ageless, and timeless exciting challenging fun.