(the Circus never leaves.)
What is the Circus, if not those who make it be?
Attendee, performer, nail-biting manager,
Uncomplaining tentpole-hammerer,
Exacting make-up artist,
Slapdash but effective electricity-stealing rewirer,
Moon-painter,
Cannon-maintainer,
Leftover-fire-eater (waste note, want not) –
You, of course,
Me,
All of us;
Every eager audient,
Every doubting sport-spoiler,
The grumbling manager,
The worried lass whose job it is to fill in
All those holes in the concrete
Left by illicit tent-poles-hammering;
The Elephants, who no longer perform,
But, instead, keep the books, and rarely
(but sometimes)
Forget.
There is a Bridge
Which is inconveniently not anywhere near as metaphorical as one might prefer,
Between You at the Circus and You the rest of the time.
At the Circus, you can be more alive than Frankenstein’s thunderstruck experimental doom,
More yourself than you could explain to any carping Zen master interrogating you about your True Nature, but
That doesn’t mean you need the Circus, must literally follow it from town to town and wormhole to wormhole.
No: The Circus is a place which has far too much wanderlust not to be, a little bit,
In your pocket, in your commute, in your left ventricle,
And that Bridge between the time you’ve spent here
And the time where (according to Responsible Authorities) you are somewhere else,
That Bridge is more solid, more reified, than anything.
The Bridge persists; on one side is whatever you are feeling now,
And on the other side is the Circus,
And even when you can’t find the Circus,
It’s there,
And sometimes it’s on both sides,
The bandleader-high-stepping across the center of the Bridge, this way and that,
and
The Bridge persists.
The Circus persists.
It is only the mundane,
Too dull to exist without its anti-glamour of cement and pessimism,
Which doesn’t really exist.
Nothing is normal;
Everything is the Show of Shows.
You don’t have to run away to join the Circus;
You join the Circus,
And it will run next to you,
Offering kaleidoscope lights
On even the dullest roads.
Everything is lit by Faerielight;
And Faerielight changes everything.
This is your home;
Prestidigitate on in
anytime you want.
