So, the eye doctor saga ended happily, if somewhat expensively (cheaper than in America, though.) Henrique made me an appointment for the very next day, and I had new contact lenses one day later, and new glasses the day after that. A big relief. I hadn't been to the eye doctor in four and a half years... my prescription didn't change, save for a slight increase in astigmatism in my left eye. I've been using contacts a lot on this trip for performances. I carry them around in my prosthetics bag, with my red noses and false teeth, because that's what they are to me: a neutral alternative to the mask of my glasses, and a prosthetic of sorts. They allow me to access the space of the stage visually, and when I'm wearing a mask (like during the carnaval parades in Recife) they're essential. I also like wearing them when I'm drawing or focussed specifically on photography, because they give me a full, focussed, undistorted field of view that doesn't change when I rotate my head. Glasses, in general, are easier because my sight is not so bad that I need them all the time, and I like being able to take the glasses off and put them on quickly and at will. Contacts tire my eyes quickly, and they're really uncomfortable for reading or working on the computer... I also have to confess that I like how glasses make me look, which is more to the point of why I'm boring you with this stuff here: I have to contend with the fact that my glasses are a mask, a contemporary sort of Dottore that has a social significance — they confer a certain intellectual status by symbolizing knowledge and wisdom, like Piggy's glasses in Lord of the Flies. And I have to admit I'm attached to that image of myself. Call it vanity or insecurity (the beast that lurks behind the mask of vanity) or what you will. For a long time I wore a goatee for the same reason. It's not that there's anything inherently wrong with people adopting these kinds of masks in daily life, but an actor has to at least be aware of them. And like any mask that confers status, they can be used to abuse others, which is something that I personally have to wrestle with: I can be a real asshole when I feel like I have to prove how smart I am. So taking off the glasses, at times, makes me confront the silly fear I have of other people by removing the weapon I guard myself with.

Then, the problem is that I can't see very well!

A zen problem that will be a physical component of the rest of my life...

If you think this was a pointless digression, let me propose that it's exactly the kind of digression that I wanted to be able to write, that made me name this blog Circo de Nada. It's relevant also because getting new glasses and contacts was something that I should have taken care of before I came on this trip--last year, even, or even the year before that. But I'm not very good, a lot of the time, at taking care of myself, and my procrastination habit has gotten me into a lot of trouble over the years. So the drama of getting new lenses was an unnecessary drama, entirely of my own making.... a circus of nothing. Maybe you don't want to read this kind of confession. But I hope that publicizing these personal problems, the way the clown has to expose what he's most embarrassed about, will help me transcend them.

An illustrative digression:

In 1996, when I was 24, just out of college and drifting around Denver trying to find meaning and purpose in my life, I dug out the unicycle that my mother gave me for Christmas in 1982 but which I had never learned how to ride. I was determined to conquer it. I started on my mother's front patio, a concrete surface that featured two wooden pillars about ten feet apart, holding up the roof. It also had a fence and some bushes which mostly hid what I was doing. I wrapped my arms around one of the pillars and tried to find a way to just keep the unicycle underneath me. As I pedaled, of course, I had to move away form the pillars, and usually only made the wheel turn 180° before my legs locked and I had to step off (wipe-out falls on unicycles are rare.) But a few times I'd get a whole 360° of movement, and after an hour or so, I had actually managed to pedal from one pillar to the other a few times, and was left with the undeniable knowledge that my mother's patio was suddenly too small a course to learn on.

There was a park across the street, with a fenced-in tennis court and a long circuit of asphalt paths, but not many places where I'd be able to hang onto something while I mounted and tried to ride. Worse, it was public. If I practiced out there, people would see me fail. But something — desperation, I suppose — in my desire to ride the @#%*ing thing made me decide that public failure didn't matter. So I went out there, and found a small restroom pavilion next to the playground with some pillars, like Mom's patio, but with more distance between them, and I discovered that the ten-foot trips became more and more frequent. One day I'd go fifteen feet. The next day, I'd go fifteen feet three times and never less than five feet anymore. The next day I'd do twenty feet... and pretty soon the pavilion was too small for me too.

In the meantime, I discovered that most of the other people in the park weren't much of a distraction. Kids would be startled at first, but get bored quickly as they saw I was only practicing and didn't really do anything spectacular. Adults usually tried to ignore me, like they were embarrassed. Not by what I was doing, but by something else, which took me a long time to recognize.

After a while I had to stop aiming for the pillars and had to venture out onto the paths and circle the pavilion. When I fell, I'd head back to the pillar I started at and try again. And after many days even that course was too small for me, so I had to face a new fact: it was time to head out onto the path that circled the whole park, because that's where I'd get the distance I needed to practice. But there were no pillars out there — so I'd now have an additional challenge: mounting the cycle without holding onto anything. Because falling off out in the middle of nowhere was now inevitable.

I learned. I struggled, sometimes beyond the point of tears, with mounting the unicycle and immediately riding away. When I succeeded, it would take all my concentration to not be distracted by the joy of this momentary success and move my focus to the still-difficult task of simply riding forward. I contended with hills, which raised the stakes — you try mounting a unicycle that immediately wants to go backward and to the left! I learned to juggle while riding, using clubs instead of balls, because the clubs gave a greater margin of error in giving me something to grab onto; oddly, riding itself was easier when the juggling took my focus. After months and months, I could go around the park twice — about eight tenths of a mile — in just under twenty minutes, without falling off, and without dropping a club. But it involved many, many falls, many drops, and many failures to mount the unicycle. All in public.

As I said, most people tried to ignore me, and seemed nervous about it. My assumption at the time is that they were nervous because I was being a freak, but what I failed to apprehend until much later was that there was in fact a deep respect they were giving me. They were embarrassed because I was doing something cooler than they were. There was one guy I got to know a little over the months; an older man, a recent immigrant from Russia named Mike. He was out power-walking, on the orders of a physician, I suppose, and we'd holler hello when we passed each other. But one day, he shouted as I passed, "Someday, I'm going to be doing that!"

Another day, a woman that I couldn't recall ever seeing before, strode past me and said, "We're all so proud of you!"

I had struggled for years to understand what circus really was; what it meant. What it did. I had tried to make juggling into acting and found that unless you're just going to make it into a metaphor, it's hard to make juggling be anything other than juggling. For example, unless you're an incredibly skilled mime, it's nearly impossible to use juggling as, say, a sword fight--because it requires so much overt cooperation between the two "fighters" that it can't usually look like a fight. The circus skills are just themselves; skills that most people won't attempt but love watching other people do. But they don't accomplish anything. They can't tell a story, other than "person X executes this trick," which is not drama. It's spectacle.

But it was the experience of learning to ride the unicycle — and failing often — in public that gave me an understanding of how circus performance functions: by displaying a transcendent skill, risking failure (and often death), circus performers provide inspiration for the audience, by transcending what is normally assumed to be human nature. By transcending their apparent humanity. And people usually just chalk it up to talent: the circus performer has some intangible gift (an inborn transcendence) that makes them special. One other person who did talk to me was a man who coached a girls' tennis team on the park's courts; he told me, "my girls sure think you're talented." I was flattered, but somehow upset; later I wished I had had the presence to tell him, "Tell them that it's not talent. It's skill, that anyone can learn. The important thing is to do what you love and work hard at it." That would have been good coaching.

I do think that there are some circus performers who may have, say, more inborn flexibility that allows them to become contortionists. But I suspect that anyone who starts stretching young enough and strenuously enough — and is willing to injure themselves in the way contortionists do — could be that kind of performer. It's their intention and their ability to work and learn that separates them from the pack. And it is this sacrifice that circus performers make which unites them with the tragic actor, in the way Nietzsche views tragic actors: as people who perform a self-sacrifice, in a public forum or liturgy, in order to recharge the life-force of the audience.

This was a long and unintended digression away from what I wanted to write about today, but since it cuts to the heart of what I'm really trying to do with my life out here, and why I called this blog Circo de Nada, I ran with it. I don't know why this powerful lesson that I learned in 1996 is something that I have failed to use, over and over again, in the years since. I don't know why the spirit of risk and discovery, and the day-by-day struggle for incremental improvement that I felt so powerfully back then was so lacking, say, in my thesis project. And I don't know why I always just assume everyone is going to scorn me when I display my humanity, instead of recognizing and respecting it.

I suppose we all had enough humiliation in Middle School to explain that. And some of the public does want performers to fail, so they can laugh with scorn — from a safe distance. But the majority of the public wants to see wonderful things, which most of them won't do for themselves. And the job I've declared for myself is to do those wonderful things.

I'm going to write more about challenge and risk, and the events of this trip, very soon.