Dear Circus World,
There are so many beautiful, and some hilarious, stories for this blog this summer still to catch up here: the most inspiring sharings of circus shows in development at Jacksons Lane, a surprise outing to Barnum in Richmond, a secret date with Take That’s Circus Tour concert, a cabaret at a new (for me) circus venue opposite the home to immersive theatre Punchdrunk and Acosta Danza (click here)... There has been a flow of adventures, and then, out of the blue, my back went into spasms a couple of weeks ago. I'd been overdoing it. Looking for sympathy, I was met with the teasing response, “Well, I’m glad to hear you climaxed at Woolwich Works!” That dark humour, entirely inappropriate, kept me going. That, and a series of funny coincidences.
“Lucy, there are no such things as coincidences,” Adrian said as he removed the last pin, working his acupuncture magic as ever.
A couple of days later I was on my second walk on the Common, taking it gingerly. I was a bit fed up because I’d had to miss a few circus events (Hikapee at Jacksons Lane, Daughters of the Wire at Greenwich and Docklands International Festival, and the Circus Boat over in Daubeney), as well as catching up with a friend over from Spain. But the sunshine was glorious and I stopped halfway round to bask in it on a bench, rest up and watch the world go by. A couple of women in my line of sight were having a good old chinwag. They had a light about them. It made me smile. As they continued their walk they passed by, paused, and came over to me.
“Excuse me,” said one, “I don’t know why, but I think you need to know there is Hope.”
She drew out of her cream crocheted bag with leather strap, which I had clocked, a small Gospel booklet, with Hope set against a background of blue sky and birds in flight. The photo reminded me of our sailing trip, anchoring off a motu of Raroia, an atoll in the Tuamotus in French Polynesia. It was a small islet of pink coral sand where Thor Heyerdahl had crash landed after setting adrift on a raft from Peru in the 1940s with a group of Norwegian friends. As we set foot on land, a flock of white doves, which I later discovered were called angel terns, took to the skies. A few weeks later, accessing Wi-Fi on the steps of Papeete Town Hall, we uploaded our photos. What are the odds that our bridesmaid, looking round Beatrix Potter’s house in the Lake District, should cross paths with a group of Norwegian tourists, one of whom, Øystein Kock Johansen, was a close friend and biographer of Thor Heyerdahl? She showed him the pictures.
“Ah yes,” he replied. “Raroia. Very boring place!”
The next question brought me back to the present:
“Do you mind if we talk to you a moment about God?”
I felt my hackles go up immediately, but I was also curious, because they had asked with a gentle hesitancy rather than an evangelical insistence. So I played the Catholic card, open to conversation but already covered on the conversion front, thanks. It’s a tactic my postman uses too, we swapped notes later. I asked them about their own journey, found out about their lives, their families, their faith. They could tell that my back was causing discomfort and asked if they could pray over me. Sure, I replied. Would they mind if they placed their hands on me? I thought back to the moment in the crowd of audience participation in Domte (click here) where I had tickled the chin of the stranger in the wheelchair next to me. No, I had no problem with that either. It did occur to me that the probability of someone passing by who knew me was very high. Dear Lord, that would be embarrassing. So I just shut my eyes.
They prayed, in English at first, but then underneath I had one of them murmur in tongues. I’ve never heard that before. My linguist brain went into overdrive, but I only caught one sound, repeatedly, “samsara”. They thanked me for being open. They weren’t sure what reaction they would get. I get that. And then they were on their way.
I was really touched by their act of witnessing what they believe in and the reaching out to move someone in response. Isn’t that what performers do again and again, especially clowns and street performers in terms of audience interaction? Maybe it was all these years in circus and feeling for those putting themselves out there, being inspired by them, which had prompted me to hear them out. And in the process, I received a real blessing.
Later, after recounting the episode to a friend, I googled the word I thought I’d heard chanted and found saṃsāra was Sanskrit for wandering or flowing through, and refers to the continuous cycle of birth, life, death, rebirth. That’s curious, I thought, not something I’d have associated with Pentecostal lingo. Maybe I misheard, but I liked the idea and this sense of energy flowing through from these two strangers, as they laid hands on my shoulders in a very maternal gesture. Then, editing my post on Songs of Bulbul (click here) and just doing a little more research into Odedra’s catalogue of shows, I found that he had done a show called Samsara, and that connection helped me explore further thoughts and connections to Garbh (click here) in the previous post.
Is my back healed? Well, a week on I am pain free. Over the past week, I have been able to take on freelance work teaching and, this morning, have my first swim in the Lido in a fortnight. I even managed to get to Jacksons Lane on Friday, if not GDIF or Notting Hill Carnival this weekend. And, managing a balancing act aside, I guess that is the message. The wheel of life keeps turning, people cross our paths, experiences are shared and we pass things between us, picking up connections and meanings along the way. And sometimes, when we least expect it, there is hope.
Faithfully,
Yours
Sailing La Cigale. Raroia, May 2018.
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