Wise Fools, Tricksters, Black-Eyed Peas
Why circus? Because it is irresistible; it speaks to the senses and becomes the substance of dreams.
~ Wise Fool New Mexico
In the same sense that Jesus Christ stands at the very, very centre of Christian mythology, we have a character in our mythological universe, in our dreamlife as a people, who stands at the very centre of that universe, and that character is the Trickster.
~ Cree playwright Tomson Highway, quoted in The Trickster Shift
6PM Friday Evening ― You help to paint the faces of thirty-two little Wise Fool Circus Camp performers in preparation for the big show. Boys and girls eye you solemnly as you slather and daub greasepaint flowers, sunbursts, shooting stars, flames, and waves, on their foreheads, noses, cheeks. Your nine-year-old daughter, who eschews all female frippery and is the original, militant, anti-pink girl, refuses to let you decorate her face with even one silver and black lightening bolt, which you insist will be way cool and not at all prissy. During the performance, you yell and whoop with the mom sitting next to you in the crowded bleachers as your kids dance in circles on impossibly tall stilts to the Black-Eyed Peas’ Where is the Love?
4AM Saturday Morning ― A band of howling coyotes wakes Matilda-the-Tenacious-Heeler way up. You are jarred back to this plane of existence by a cold nose and freckled paws poking your arms, your face, anywhere they can reach. After she flashes by you in a speckled streak, you find yourself standing groggy-eyed at the front door in your old pajamas, peering hard into the darkness and listening to their shrill, keening song, wondering if the yellow-eyed tricksters are going to eat up your geese or bring you fire.
7AM Saturday Morning ― You curse the snoring blue heeler, damn you pain-in-the-ass Matilda dog, because you’ve been up since her pre-sunrise wakeup call, unable to drift back off to sleep. Your husband has already left for Southern Colorado to pick up a manure spreader. The kids are with their dad. And you are left entirely up to your own devices. So you tromp down to the barn and feed the horses. Emancipate the geese from the confines of the hen house. Watch them march out of the gate single file on their floppy, webbed feet like a troup of circus clowns with oversized orange shoes. Feed the kittens. Importune the crazy gray one who is pussyfooting across a narrow barn beam like a tightrope walker to come down. Now. But she's having way too much fun tempting fate to listen to you.
10AM Saturday Morning ― Toby the Percheron horse dangles his much loved and very beat-up bird seed bucket by the handle from his mouth while you groom him, rolling an eye back at you every now and then to see if you are paying attention to his neat trick. You spend approximately half an hour stupidly grinning.
11AM Saturday Morning ― A good friend, the one who helped you find your wings, gives you a call. She may start up equestrian vaulting again in September. Excitement rising, you don't care if you are almost 43. You are going to be there, and you are going to stand again on that cantering horse's back. How many sit ups and pushups will you need to do between now and then, you wonder? The geese sit beneath your bedroom window like five gray teapots, listening in on your conversation, muttering to themselves and preening their feathers.
11:30 AM Saturday Morning ― You are scrubbing the kitchen sink, singing in your empty house along with the Black Eyed Peas at the top of your lungs about Where is the Love? You sound just like one of those back-and-forth-swaying, maroon-robed, hand-clapping, gospel choir singers from the heart of the south, albeit a little off key―
Whatever happened to the values of humanity? Whatever happened to the fairness and equality? Instead of spreadin' love, we spreadin' animosity. Lack of understanding leading lives away from unity. Can you practice what you preach? And would you turn the other cheek? Father, Father, Father help us. Send us some guidance from above. 'Cause people got me, got me questioning.' Where is the love?
You're pretty sure she's right here, Wise Fools and all.
Flickr photos: boccacinofoto; boccacinofoto
Lyrics to Where is the Love?
