Spikes and screams.

June 26, Vacaville.

The lot is full of tiny razor-sharp spikes, so taking Dylan out to walk around is not possible. Just stepping out of the trailer is out of the question. One feels like a fakir walking on a bed of nails. This is one of those lots that makes you rejoice over the circus closing.
Dylan is going to miss the last couple of days, when Peanut, he and I were spending time by the performers' entrance at the back of the circus, during the last shows, when the heat has waned and it's nice being out, and there Dylan ran and danced and played, with Jose Ivan and the performers, and it was a joy watching him, his boundless energy, his glee, the expressions on his face.
No such thing here, the poor kid's been cooped up all day and by early evening the wailing and the screaming was reaching burn-out levels, for both of us.
Two more days of this.

Chinese performer, "Rawhide" lasso act, June 25.

A trailer with a view.

June 26, Vacaville, California.

The circus.

June 25, Pleasant Hill.

A week to go and circus life is over.
Some of the Mexican laborers are going to work for carnivals. Some are going back to Mexico. Another circus may open, no details, no set date, no more than conjectures and rumors.
I've often wondered why the modern circus is confused with carnivals. I found the answer in the Encyclopaedia Britannica, which, under "carnival" states: "A traveling entertainment combining the features of both circus and amusement park (...) developing out of the same roots as the early 19th-century circus - the 'mud shows'."
No confusion then, circus and carnival are in a sense the same thing. But the modern circus has evolved so much since its mud show ancestor that the two can barely be compared today. The ongoing similarities: they are both traveling entertainment. One day here, the next gone, although circuses in the United States nowadays tend to stay in one place for much less time than the carnivals do, and some, like the Carson and Barnes circus, travel from town to town each and every day.
And here the similitude ends. For a circus is an artistic creation, not just an entertainment business. At its best it is acrobatics, dance and visual art combined - and sometimes, in the elegance of a gesture, the confluence of inspiration and the perfection of a routine's execution, in a fleeting moment, an etat de grace*. The circus is a performer's creation, a creation born of the body enabled, in sweat and repetition, in someone's perseverance and sore muscles and blisters, and as such it is like all performing arts.
Like all other performing arts it is ephemeral and transient. Only it takes this fugacious state and makes it its essence. The circus performance is there for you to see today, the circus tent is there, imposing, yet in a few hours it is gone, like a figure drawn in the sand, impermanent, passing, like a Buddhist's trick.
Tomorrow we'll be gone, and gone for good. Circus Chimera, "A Creation of the Imagination," is shutting down, not just passing on.
But it is, too.

*A state of grace.

You said what?

June 23, Pleasant Hill.

Last year's chicken.

June 22, Pleasant Hill.

Last year here morning sickness kicked in; Nicolas was on his way. I remember eating a rotisserie chicken bought at the Safeway down the street, my usual pregnancy sure thing symptom.
He's asleep in his rocker now.
(Here was where we did the Crazy Show last year too.)

Roadside religion.

June 22, Pleasant Hill.

On Route 4 near Brentwood, a church sign: "Let us pray for you, submit your request at www.deltachurch.org."

A trailer with a view (next to last one.)

June 22, Pleasant Hill, California.

A trailer with a view.

June 19, Brentwood, California.

This is the kind of landscape I had in mind when I started the Trailer with a View shots, the kind of landscape I was looking at in town after town last year, especially before we hit California, suburbia spreading, towns expanding into the seemingly endless land, a new mall, dirt fields turning into more shopping opportunities, open country about to be covered by more new homes, next year this lot will not be available anymore and somebody will be living in my trailer's backyard.
Except of course now there will be no next year.

Uncertainties.

June 18, Antioch.

No more Circus Chimera. Everybody in the circus was flabbergasted, we're all a little dazed now. More than ten years wiped off with a few words, in a few minutes.
The future, which lay for months ahead in innumerable drives and towns and states, California for a while more, then Oregon and Washington, New Mexico and back to Texas, in show after show, in good weather and bad, in good lots and terrible ones, the shifting and routine future of the traveling circus, the future is now looming wide and uncertain, a vague threat.
For us there is nothing solid, just a void to be filled, quickly. The days are counted.
I wanted to postpone going back to work full-time until Nicolas was a year old and breastfeed him all the while, as happened for Dylan, but that may not be possible now, and I feel immensely sad. But things can turn out for the best; the only certainty is that everything can change at the drop of a (circus) hat.

My husband, the clown.

June 17, Antioch.

Fridman Torales Rios, acrobat, clown, assistant show manager and then some, truck driver. Going to work, Circus Chimera, 1:30 PM show.

And again.

June 17, Antioch.

Again.

June 17, Antioch.

Dylan.

June 17, Antioch.

Here, along with Peanut bien sur, is the most important thing among all the turmoil.

Peanut talks.

June 17, Antioch.

Speaking of families, we have lengthy talks, two-month-old Peanut and I, and laughs too. In the quiet morning hours before Dylan wakes up, we talk and talk. He's a talker, my Peanut, and such a flirt. I can't believe he's so beautiful.
After a period of restlessness that unfortunately coincided with our road trip, he's also turned into a wonderfully "good" baby, sage comme une image, "How do you keep him so quiet?" asked Richard the other day when we visited and Peanut was in the car seat being shuffled around without so much as uttering a peep; he nurses and kicks and talks awhile and then falls asleep, and if he fusses at all, a swaddle, a gentle rocking and maybe a totote to the rescue will do the trick in no time.
Thus the days fly by.

Late breaking news.

June 16, Antioch.

The circus is closing in two weeks.
Not a word of explanation, nothing, just Roy going from performer to performer during the last show. Looks like we're all going to have to scramble and find other plans to feed our families.

Bundles.

June 16, Antioch.

Looking for examples of Navajo cradle carrying online.
In a Walmart store in Gallup, New Mexico, during a mid-day stop on our road trip to California my mother spotted a woman carrying her baby all bundled up and ran to me: "Not only was the baby swaddled, he was all laced up!" I've wanted to look it up ever since.
Most if not all the people I know think it's vaguely barbarous to swaddle your baby like this, although they also remember how their grandparents used to do it. The combination of swaddling and/or carrying in a sling close to the body can be found in cultures all around the world since times immemorial, and for obvious reasons: the baby is reminded of the womb and thus soothed and calmed, the mother can carry him/her easier and go on with her tasks. Dona Maigo's mother in Brazil; Alexela's mother in Mexico, the old Albanian aunt in the Ismail Kadare novel I'm reading, what was surely a Navajo Indian woman at Walmart in New Mexico, those of us sharing in what appears to be the latest hip-Mom fad are only going back full circle, following the trail she in the wisdom of her people never left.

A trailer with a view.

June 16, Antioch.

(Not posted yesterday - see previous post.)

Pains and saints.

June 15, Antioch, California.

It wasn't a bad cold, it was an acutely severe case of either strep throat or tonsil inflammation, we're not quite sure; what is sure is that I've never seen Fridman like this, never seen him sick like this, he's rarely sick at all as it is, never seen him not work, never seen him double over and cry in pain. He didn't work yesterday, except for helping with the parking, although he did try to get up for the show.
Again Norma saved me. She'd offered to help- her husband is a cardiologist, they know their way around the medical world, - if we ever needed to find a doctor in the area; as Fridman grew worse by the hour yesterday I decided to call her. It is the big throwback of life on the road, not knowing where to go when one of us is ill, especially the children; it is hard enough to find a good physician anywhere, much more at the drop of a hat not knowing anybody or anything in town. We went up to Napa, and hour drive from Antioch, and ended up having her husband himself see Fridman.
A heavy does of penicilin and narcotic pain killers later he's at long last feeling a little better. So he went back to work; not to the doors, he's too contagious, not doing the upside down walk, for that would most probably leave me with two orphan boys to raise, but the clown acts.
And that's the beauty of life on the road with the circus, the friends you make, and sometimes when you need them most.

An end note: I thought my father, who died of cancer in November 2002, was difficult when he was sick, which was often in the last years of his life; nothing like Fridman, who acted as if I bore the responsibility of the pain he was in. I though my Mom was a saint for taking care of my father all these years; I didn't know how much it took to be a saint (as if on cue Nicolas was fussy all day and Dylan the toddler from hell; it's a long, hard way to sainthood.)

Three acts.

June 14, Pittsburg.

Act One -12:30 PM.
It was already hot at six thirty, when Nicolas woke me up; by eight it was 91 degrees Fahrenheit (33 degrees Celsius) in the trailer. They didn't turn on the generator until nine thirty. The temperature got down to 82 (28 Celsius) after an hour of air-conditionned on low, to spare the network.
It's too hot to take Dylan outside so he's been cooped up in the 150-and-some square feet of space that make up our home all morning, and he's getting wilder by the minute, running up and down the length of the main room - 15 feet, tops - and still he's been up since seven and doesn't look like he's going to take a nap any time soon.
Act Two - 3 PM.
Dylan climbed up next to his Dad, looked at me and pointed at his diaper, I changed him, he climbed right back up there and crashed within seconds.
Act Three - 3:30 PM.
We just learnt there will be only one show today, at 7:30, no doubt because of the heat, which has reached unbearable highs. It's 85 degrees Fahrenheit (29 degrees Celsius) in the trailer, and we now have the air on high. Not the day to be sick. Fridman's been down all day with what appears to be a severe cold and sore throat. It started yesterday and with pain killers he felt a little better; today he's been so sick he can't swallow even water and winces in pain. When he tried to eat soup earlier he started crying.
I'm taking care of three men today.

More on water.

June 13, Pittsburg.

This is what I like about living on the road, living in a circus: the necessary thrift, everything is counted thus everything becomes precious - but it was always precious, somewhere down the road to modernity we just forgot it. Water is but one thing that you learn to use wisely. Water tanks, both clean and used, are small and emptying them is always costly; you have to find a dumping place and then find the time to dump on the way to the next destination, and there isn't always a site close by. Wasting water is not an option. You close the tab when you brush your teeth (I never understood why it was needed to have the water running while you do that; the energy to turn it off too much to ask?) but also when you wash your hands, between soaping up and rinsing, or the dishes; toilets don't use much water as they don't have a fresh-water tank attached. We still use a lot of water compared to a family in Africa, but a hell of a lot less than your average North American household.
Electricity is just as precious. The generator is shut off at night , and most people do not have their own private one to turn on. It's usually back on around nine, and because the heating system doesn't work in my old trailer, on a cold morning the temperature is the same inside as it is outside, and this morning it was hot. You learn to cope, and to view electric light as what it is, miraculous, and costly, just like pretty much everything else in our sophisticated, technology-driven world this side of the North/South divide.

An old generator.

June 13, Pittsburg.

It's close to a hundred degrees here today, simply miserable.
Roy being away, Fridman took it upon himself as assistant manager to shorten the show. There was about 25 people in the audience. I'm surprised that many came out to seat in a sweltering tent for tan hour and a half.
The break our trailer is connected to keeps shutting off because with every trailer using air-conditionning at full balst there's a surcharge in the circus network. The circus generator is not the best either; it used to be at the Carson and Barnes Circus, they sold it to Jim because it was old; that was ten years ago. That Jay and the electric crew keep it going is a tribute to their ingenuity.

No water - much like the rest of the world.

June 12, Pittsburg.

Water access was restricted in Martinez because of an incident in the past when runoff water was spilled into the lot by one of the trailer and the circus was fined; by the time we thought of filling the water tank there was no water, and the tank was good and empty. Chance has it, of course, that here in Pittsburg there is so far no water either, this time because of problems with the city pipes into the lot. So it's now 5:30 in the afternoon and we haven't had water all day, no showers, no dishwashing, no water to clean the babies or to wash one's hands, not a drop.
Just like 40 percent of the world population, actually, people who have to walk miles to get water, and pay a high cost for it, who carry it back in a bucket, as Fridman's family did when he was growing up in Peru, people who have to wash in the river, hot or cold, who spare each drop of what they have. We have grown so spoiled, turning on the magical faucet, and in so many other ways. Water is precious, and it's running out.
I thought living on the road was going to be a grinding ordeal and it turned out to be nothing of the kind, water or no water. There are difficulties, but they are laughable compared to what goes on for those millions of women in the rest of the world scraping a living and trying to raise their family in unsanitary and unsafe conditions.
Life on the road is a breeze.

More on the Crazy Show.

June 12, Pittsburg, California.

Yesterday afternoon I lay down opposite Dylan on the couch to get him to nap but fell asleep before he did; too many nights staying up too late on top of too many short nights and my body simply refused to go on and shut off like an engine out of gas. We slept all afternoon. It was but an extreme version of a typical morning; getting up when Peanut wakes me, usually around seven thirty, I struggle to open my eyes and gather the strength to move.
No time to write more than a cursory word on the Crazy Show then, so here are the crunchy details.
Goyo, Ivan, Pancho, Calimba, el Chupadito, Marcos, Rafa, Chavo et les autres did the dancers, and Goyo most of the performers' sidekick, Saul did Raul's juggling act, one of the dancers' rope acts and the Andrea part of the roller-skate act, Raul did the cowboy whip act (the act was added to the show over the week end; it is performed by one of the Chinese boys and Vanessa, the Chinese boy as cowboy a quixotic and rather hilarious sight,) and dances, and Fridman another of the dancers' rope act and the other Gino part of the roller-skate act. Rafa's aide, I have to ask him how to spell his name, I'd rather not botch it, did a hulla hoop act and the balancing act one of the Chinese girls did last week to replace the roller-skating act after Andrea fell and couldn't perform for a few days; he was supposed to try some contortions but fell flat on his face off the table before he could even move, one of the best laughs of the night, if unintentional. Chavo did the main part of the malambo, El Chupadito did Raul's contortion, climbing into a cardboard box, dressed in a leotard with muscle outlines. The calendar "girls" wore diapers and various versions of beer boxes art on their heads.
One of Richard's friend told Fridman that Angelo, who worked with Chimera when the circus was first started, made a beautiful woman impersonator, but that he was a strong runner-up. He did look great with make-up and wig, I think he'd make a dazzling transvestite. Some of the crew guys that performed in the show are gay (Goyo, Rafa.) That they be willing to brave the cliches of gay men who like to wear dresses and come up to perform in the Crazy Show, living in an intensely homophobic world as they do - as can be expected in a Latin American blue-collar men's world, - is as remarkable as it is laudable.
Hats off to Goyo and Rafa then, it was a riot of a show.

Calendar Girls: (from left) Fridman, Raul, Goyo, Calimba, Pancho, Ivan and Marcos.

A trailer with (not much of) a view.

June 12, Pittsburg, California.

Crazy Show, 2007.

June 11, Martinez.

Crazy show last night, the annual Circus Chimera spoof (see the August 13th post of last year.)
I'll have to check how it got started, who's behind it, the what, where, why of it, because I don't know of any other circuses in this country that do it. Several guys from the crew, Ivan, Rafa, the cook, Goyo, Pancho, Calimba, el Chupadito and others, impersonating the performers, performers impersonating other performers, Saul, Raul and Fridman, nobody was spared.
Goyo was everywhere as one of the dancers and he was great, a natural; Calimba, as a clown, wasn't bad either.
Those are not their real names but the nickname they go by; I doubt anybody knows their real names except maybe Armando because he handles the pay and this gets to see the official side of things.

Candyman dance: (from left) Rafa, Fridman, Marcos and Goyo.
Finale.

I'm not a monster.

Thank you, Norma.
Norma Quintana is a photographer, like me, although these days I mostly tend to forget I was ever a photojournalist, ever somebody else than a walking milk supply, happy meal cook, all-purpose maid, small event organizer, truck driver and toddler theatrics and song master, ever somewhere other than in a 29-foot trailer parked at the back of a circus in a lot after another that look like the last one, ever feeling other than exhausted and under-appreciated, unworthy and misunderstood, ever feeling other than ignorant of the rest of the world stretching with the sweet glowing aura of the unattainable outside the confines of my 18-month-old's round eyes and two-month-old toothless smile, ever somebody else than a full-time Mom with a double stroller and a minivan, ever someone other than a sometimes totally desperate trailer wife.
Norma came by yesterday and we talked. I love visits, they're like a window into the world of normal people living normal lives out there. They also provide entertainment, like going to the movies, which is one of the things I never can do anymore.
Norma and I talked about the circus, of course, she's been photographing Circus Chimera for a long time and we toy with joint projects, and then about motherhood too - she just adopted a three-year-old girl from China after raising her own two children, now grown, - and that's when she made me sane again. What she told me about taking care of her two babies back then made me breathe a deep, long-held sigh of relief. All this time I thought I was a monster for wanting kids and then sometimes resenting this strange new sidelined life, resenting the fact that I couldn't do much anymore while my husband went on having a good time as usual, for wanting kids and then crying with frustration over them and my freedom past, for missing my work so much, for feeling guilty over not feeling happy, ecstatic and oh so wonderful about being a mother, as everybody kept saying I should, and they grow up so fast, enjoy it!, and here I was and time seemed to have ground down to an agonizingly slow succession of endless housebound days.
Turns out I wasn't entirely alone.

And again.

June 8, Martinez.

Again.

June 8, Martinez.

Beau comme Apollon.

June 8, Martinez.

That's what it says on his shirt, "As beautiful as Apollo."

A trailer with a view.

June 8, Martinez.

Late nights.

June 8, Martinez, California.

I did it again. I arranged for a surprise birthday dinner for Fridman at Angelo's sister's house on Wednesday night after the show and the sky was getting light by the time I drove into the lot; I didn't look at the clock but it must have been close to five in the morning.
Two days later I am still paying.

Investor's little fixer!

Investor's little fixer!
June 6, Benicia.

Today is Fridman's birthday; he turns 29. The dancers gave him a shirt; we went out for brunch.
It's been warm but not too much in the day and cool at night, the perfect mall-temperature type weather. The location is near perfect too. The circus has never been in this town and I hope they like us ok so we can come back. We couldn't ask for a better lot, although bigger would be better; not only is it one of these above-mentioned flat grass lots, the grass is so lush it feels as if you were walking on carpet. The lot is surrounded by trees, pine trees and palm trees and redwoods and many others I don't know the name of along the streets; we are in the middle of town, within walkable distance of shops, and a nice little town it is, too (I took up a real estate brochure on a stroll with the kids yesterday; an ugly house the size of my trailer, "Investor's little fixer!" sets you back "just $315,000.")

Away from the circus.

June 5, Benicia.

I stayed in Dallas from the end of February to early May, when my mother and I made the road trip to California with the two babies. I stayed with Sheyla, Fridman's sister, and her in-laws, a circus family from Brazil who settled in Dallas four years ago.
Sheyla's boyfriend, Alain - a French name they pronounce the English way, Alan, - is their youngest son, a quiet lanky boy of eighteen, with long, jet-black hair he wears loose, an aquiline nose, and a soft smile that came out often when he held his then four-month-old baby son, Fridman (Sheyla named him after her brother, not out of tradition or respect but because she just liked the name; it's a stranger name yet on a baby.) Alain has an adult's eagerness and seems mature beyond his adolescent's years; his patience with his baby is endearing. Fridman's cries coming from the house soon became familiar but they would be less frequent once Alain would come back from school; Sheyla, at her wits' end, would hand him the baby as soon as he got out of the car and he wouldn't put Fridman down for much time after that, rocking him, talking to him, letting go only for him to nurse.
Sheyla met Alain by accident, as these things happen, as she was looking for a place to stay after deciding to leave the circus in order to study and try and get ahead. Alain's parents, Sandro and Margarida Ordoniz, we call don Sandro and dona Maigo in the Latino custom of addressing people who are older than you in a respectful way. They are both circus performers, but whereas dona Maigo (her real name is Margarida) comes from a circus family, don Sandro became a circus artist after his mother, unwed, abandoned him as a young child, leaving him with relatives, who didn't take care of him. He was rescued by a dwarf who worked in a circus; the man raised him and taught him what would become his livelihood: don Sandro did a hand balancing act and was once famous for it in Brazil. Later, when he worked in her family's circus, he met dona Maigo; they had two sons, Narley and Alain.
Don Sandro is in his fifties and on his way to lose the body of a life-long performer for the beginning of a beer belly. Like his youngest son, his smile is gentle and he has an easy way about him that makes you instantly like him, an inviting nonchalance and generosity.
People tend to take advantage of him time and time again but he doesn't toughen up. Yet luck is often on his side too, and he has a way to get out of a bad step by sheer chance. He now earns a living buying and selling used cars although his honesty, bordering on naivete, makes him an unlikely candidate for that occupation. Once when I was there a man who had bought him a car with a forged check returned two weeks week later to buy another car, just as don Sandro was about to give up on getting the police's fraud department to help him. The man had left the stolen car parked a few blocks away so don Sandro got it back and recouped his loss, minus the hundred bucks he spent when he couldn't find the keys anywhere and had them made (only to have dona Maigo find them under the driver's seat the next day.) He likes to recall the time at the border with Paraguay in Brazil when he and dona Maigo went swimming in a river, leaving the car parked nearby, and dona Maigo kept telling him the area was full of thieves but he kept saying she was too distrustful, their usual quarrel; they left the water to find the car gone. The next day as don Sandro was waiting to cross the street in town he spotted the car at the light, shouted at its occupants that this was his car they'd stolen, getting them to run and leave the car behind, keys still in the ignition.
Now that she's living with the family, Sheyla acts as kind of a guard dog between don Sandro and the endless cohorts of people, mostly from the circus, where his reputation for being soft-hearted is widely known and sometimes derided, who stand ready to take advantage of him in every way, from leaving their cars or trailers parked in the yard for months on end to coming to live with the family rent-free with three meals a day in one of the other trailers that dot the landscape around the house awaiting repair.
Sheyla is the kind of girl that people say doesn't take any rap from anybody. She has big, long-lashed hazel eyes and very full curves. She laughs often and heartily. She is very short and always wears impossibly tall platform shoes so that you'd miss that about her entirely, which is her intention. She used to do contortion in the circus but her figure doesn't allow that anymore. She misses the circus intensely, as dona Maigo does, as most people raised in the circus do, and is busy making plans to return with Alain once the baby is older.
Even though he grew up in the circus, Alain, like his brother, was not taught a circus act; his father likes to tell him that the circus left him with nothing, not even a pension, and that he should study and find another way to earn a living. Fridman keeps saying the same thing to his sister; it is the reason she stayed behind in Dallas, to study and get herself a good-paying job, to take advantage of this country's possibilities and secure a better future for herself than working in the circus could ever give her.
But it seems it is hard to escape the circus: both Alain and Sheyla are well on their way to ignoring that advice.

Sheyla, Alain and their four-month-old son, Fridman in the Ordoniz' home, Dallas, May 8.
Don Sandro Ordoniz, Dallas, May 8.

A trailer with a view - close quarters.

June 5, Benicia, California.

The trailer is again parked in reverse mode, this time because the lot is so small the trailers had to be packed like sardines in a can and our front door would have hit the next trailer over had we stayed that way.
Parking was delayed last night as it took Fridman a while to figure out how to accommodate all trailers, and now with two extra ones. We are all not more than five feet apart from each other.
The circus tent was still being raised when I took the picture this morning.

Quiet time.

June 4, Santa Rosa.

There are now five children in the circus, up from two last year. They are Jose Ivan, 17 months old, the son of Edith (office) and Chivito (set up crew,) Allyson, 2 years old, the daughter of Raul (juggling, contortion and chiffon) and Gabriela (chiffon,) Svetla, four years old, Gino (roller-skating and globe of death)'s daughter, and then my two monsters.
I can't wait for Jose and Dylan to be a little older so they can play soccer together. It might be a way for my tornado to blow off some steam. They say in book after book on toddlers that you should have quiet times with them, say, before a nap during the day or before bed at night. It has been a puzzle to me, this quiet time business. Forget quiet time, the kid never slows down, he wakes up running; the only time he's quiet he's asleep.
Quiet time with Dylan? I might as well wish for eternal youth.

Sweet cookies.

June 3, Santa Rosa.

The bustle of the circus on week ends; the cookhouse opens at eight with coffee and pastries and a few people trickle in, then by nine o'clock the traffic increases under the cookhouse tent and by ten thirty everybody is up and getting ready for the long day of three shows, starting around noon as most of the performers double up as greeters and have to be at the doors by 12:30PM. The trailer is facing the tent, a front row view of the activity throughout the day, the little girl Svetla, Gino's daughter, back with her Dad with her mother now too, running to the door of the motor home next to us, her face painted, Andrea calling her to dinner but she runs off following Jose Ivan, Edith's baby a month and a half younger than Dylan, Gino and Lyubo warming up the motorcycles for what seems like an eternity before the globe of death act, the last one in the show, the noise drawing Dylan to the window to watch time and time again, finger duly pointing, the women in their successive costumes, clad in a robe against the cold, dashing to and from the tent; by the end of the day Richard, a circus fan who lives in the Bay Area and a once financial backer of Circus Chimera, guiding a group of people on a backstage tour of the circus, as he does every year, the group standing near the artists' entrance, "What you hear now inside the tent is the crew vacuuming the stage to get it ready for the next show," he is saying as I make my way past them to the car carrying Nicolas on my way to run errands, and by the end of the day Gino, and I know it's him because he likes to whistle loudly and shout "Hey chamaco!" whenever he sees the kids, is starting a barbecue now in front of the motor home next to us, and the smell of meat being grilled soon drifts over, as others stop by the cookhouse to unwind, watching the inevitable TV, and today munching on the home-made cookies Richard always brings over, a sweet end note.

Travels with Dylan.

June 2, Santa Rosa.

It's now been two weeks since I joined the circus, again, armed with two babies. I wanted to put the road trip into words so that I would remember it in all its glory, I wanted to talk about Sheyla and her in-laws, don Sandro, dona Maigo, the house in Dallas, the wait for Nicolas to be born there, Nicolas' birth, my mother's visit. Instead I traveled down memory lane and wrote about Dylan being born.


Travels with Dylan.

Dylan was born naturally and when the midwives put him on my chest I didn't feel anything at all except relief that the unbearable pain was finally over.
Much later Dylan, softly, came into my life.
Women are not born women, much less mothers, they grow into it, wrote French writer Simone de Beauvoir in her groundbreaking essay, The Second Sex. Motherhood was anything if not elusive for me until much later, when he'd started to walk and I saw in him a little man, until it finally, imperceptibly came upon me that this was my son, this unfathomable little person, unlike me (Dylan is the portrait of his father,) a world of his own I can never hope to break in, unlike me, I the vessel of his passage to life, the provider, not owned any love except that which he chooses to endow me, so unlike me, not my own but his own, now and forever, until after I'm gone and he's gone and we are both returned to the great mystery, life bursting in, life continuing and then out like a candle, Dylan an old man one day and then gone, much later, after I'm gone too, if I'm lucky and he is, Dylan and his big baby eyes still, looking at me from that faraway world none of us can hope to claim.
It was raining when Dylan came into my life, early in the evening on a winter day in Savannah, Georgia. November 14, 2005, a Monday. I kept the To-Do list I had made that day, as on every day, a necessary attempt at keeping my messy life from verging out of control. It ran, in order: "scan film; finish portfolio; eBay auction; call dealer; oil for car; cook/rest."
I've long since forgotten what the first four items were about.
I was a photography student in a graduate program at the Savannah School of Arts and Design, a short-lived attempt at reinventing my life once again. The To-Do list for that Monday went undone. I woke up early as usual but feeling odd; I was two weeks from my due date and as I drove my boyfriend to the airport we decided to go on instead to the birthing center I had chosen to have the baby at; it was down the road and if he was going to be away for a few days, better to check that that odd feeling in my gut was not what I both wanted and dreaded it to be.
The midwives sent us home to wait it out; it could be it or it could be a false alarm. I called my Mom; she was staying at a motel in town with a girlfriend of mine, the both of them visiting from France, where I'm from. Within four hours my waters broke and we rushed to the birthing center, my boyfriend speeding on the highway, sliding in and out of lanes at eighty-five miles an hour and I in the passenger seat writhing in pain, unable to speak already for the pain, moaning, a scene from a bad TV show.
Labor was two hours long - very short, agonizingly long. Dylan met us at 6:22 that night. I remember they told me it was raining outside.
It would months before I realized my life had irrevocably turned a corner, and yet it remained much the same.
I still live in a travel trailer, only I hit the road with it to go work with my boyfriend in the circus where he performs as an acrobat. I still make To-Do lists every day and they still go mostly unchecked. My boyfriend and I got married, and that didn't change anything either. I still love to read alone in the quiet of the advancing night after the day is done, only now that means after Dylan is finally asleep.
And now six-week-old Nicolas, too.

Balancing acts.

June 2, Santa Rosa.

There were trailers parked in the wrong place near the tent when I woke up this morning. I knew the new group of performers Roy had mentioned had arrived. Not sure what they do, it seems there are the trappings of a pendulum act packed on a trailer behind one of the motor homes. The pendulum act consists of someone trying to maintain his or her balance on a gigantic wheel as it turns and there perched executing an array of additional acrobatic figures ranging from rope jumping with a blind on to juggling, with or without the blind, depending on the performer's number of hours practicing.
More additions to the circus then, after the Fusco family from Argentina came over two weeks ago. The Fuscos are the family of Gabriela Cubillos, the acrobat who works with her husband in the chiffon act (he does contortion and juggling as well.) They perform an act called malambo, which involves much loud beating of drums and a sort of rope handling that reminds me of the cowboys I used to see covering rodeos for small town newspapers.
I'm hoping some day I'll have the time get the two monsters somehow fit and ready at the same time, and then I'll get out of the trailer, balance one on my back and the other on my belly and go try and see the show.

A trailer with a view.

June 1, Santa Rosa, California.

(The trailer is parked in reverse so that it could be level.)

Two months old.

May 31, Petaluma.

Nicolas, my Peanut, turned two months old today.
Just that.

Nicolas, May 29.

A dogged party.

May 31, Petaluma.

My back's been hurting more than usual and it's painful even to pick up Peanut and rock him. Staying up until the middle of the night on Sunday night at Mike and Michelle's party probably didn't help.
Mike and Michelle, and that's as much as we know about them, are devoted circus fans, at least Circus Chimera fans, in addition to pinball machine fans - they line the wall in their living room, all lit up, the only time I could play and consistently lose without losing all my change either.
Every year when the circus is in Novato, near their San Anselmo home, they come to the show and invite the artists to a party afterwards, and it usually runs through the night. This year it was different, there was none of the performers they've come to know throughout the years, the Chimals especially, and the party was reduced to Saul, Alexela and Vanessa and the two of us plus assorted kids, and the inevitable Angelo (can't miss a party) and his girlfriend du jour. It was only three o'clock in the morning when I started keeling over from fatigue and asked for the keys to drive home with the babies, and as the dancers followed there went the party. No group plunge into the jacuzzi out on the deck under the midnight star, no dancing til the morning light comes up, the odd sleeper out on the couch, next to the cat, who'll be avoiding the neighborhood of their new bull mastiff, 130-poud puppy.
The "puppy," the true star of the party, surely looked more like an elephant to 24-pound Dylan, who unfortunately for him kept running for his life the minute he saw him, thereby triggering a mad dash from the dog, in turn triggering more desperate running from Dylan, who'd soon fall and be overcome by the dog, its face bigger than that of the baby, its body the size of an overfed pony. Much licking and crying would ensue, until one of us would come to Dylan's rescue - the whole thing enfolding again within minutes as it is as hard to prevent a toddler from running than it is a dog.
Dylan was asleep before his head hit the car seat, and I wish I could do the same.

A trailer with a view.

May 29, Petaluma, California.

Sometimes the view doesn't reflect the location. Here we are, in Petaluma, again in the same lot as last year, the fairgrounds, and it's a flat, immaculate grassy lot - flat a godsend, a nice clean lawn the Hilton of circus lots - one of those you dream about in circus traveling life and all that can be seen from the trailer are ugly fences and electric poles. Life isn't fair, even to perfect circus lots.

Good moves.

May 27, Novato.

The circus is moving early today because of Memorial Day, same as last year. The shows will be at 1:30 and 4:30PM and we'll leave after that. It felt like a party when we arrived on the lot early evening last year, like a school kid out on a snow day. Hurray!
What's changed from last year is that we now usually move on Monday nights instead of Sunday, and that makes a world of difference: there are only two shows on Mondays, not three, the performers are not exhausted from the week end's marathon schedule. Hurray!

A year later.

May 27, Novato.

A year later we're again on the grounds of the Saint Vincent School for Boys, a tall mission-style church towering over the tent and trailers. Last year it was a beautiful lot with lush grass; I remember arriving in the field, there was nobody ahead of us, the moon was almost full and it was peaceful and quiet as it can only be in the dead of the night, and the scent of the grass when I stepped out of the truck, it was thick and green, and there was a minty fragrance in the air.
This year it's dry as a tinderbox, the hay stalks to thick they make you stumble. Dylan cannot walk in this field, so he's been cooped up in the trailer most days, pobrecito.
What a difference a year makes.

A trailer with a view.

May 25, Novato.

Dark fog.

May 25, Novato, California..

I'd forgotten how it feels to travel for several hours at night with the circus. Or maybe I'd never done it while caring for two babies.
Last night the circus moved from Scotts Valley, near Santa Cruz, to Novato, a town some 20 miles north of San Francisco. We drove right through the city; tractor-trailers careening along the up-and-downhill streets of San Francisco, mercifully late enough that traffic was not a problem, on to the star of bridges. The Golden Gate bridge was enshrouded in fog, not unusual but very beautiful.
We arrived short of three in the morning and Nicolas woke up on cue. The trailer was a mess after its maiden trip, a teapot and mugs broken after a rotten highway, too many a pothole taken at 65 miles an hour.
Today my back aches and I have trouble keeping my eyes open. So what else is new?

Mad maneuvers (continued.)

May 24, Scotts Valley.

Here's some of the less good part. We left in a 36-feet trailer with two slide-outs, came back in a ten years older, 6 feet shorter one with no slides, total square footage around 150. It's nice and cozy.
It was my home in southern California, a few years back when I was working as a newspaper photojournalist there. I just loved living in it, went crazy decorating it, painstakingly planted a garden in the pocket-size patch of solid-packed dirt in front (neighbors told me the last renter was a car mechanic who used it as a shop.) Coach RV and Mobile Home Park in Rubidoux (gotta love the name) became my little piece of paradise, a unique community of odd people bound by a common worry (the cost of rent in the area) that went from a Vietnam vet and his disabled son to a retired country singer. I only regret not having taken the time to do a story about them while I was there.
It was my little paradise and mine only then; there's four of us living in the trailer now. Most days it looks more like hell than paradise.
In the evenings Duracell-Dylan often starts running the length of the trailer's "living-room," about 15 feet, back and forth, back and forth, banging against the cabinet door at one end and me at the other, and it's rather obvious he'd be happy with a lot more space, although I'm not sure it would make any difference in his behavior an hour later.

(From left) Vanessa, Alexela, Yvonne and Pablo on the boardwalk in Santa Cruz this morning (mimicking Dylan.)

Staying zen.

May 23, Scotts Valley.

Whoever said being zen was the answer never had to take care of Dylan today.

Mad maneuvers.

May 22, Scotts Valley.

The circus, once again, is set up here exactly where it was last year, smack in the middle of the small town north of Santa Cruz up in the hills on highway 17. We can walk everywhere, which I did yesterday to go grocery shopping with the two monsters while Fridman was working.
It was the first time I attempted such an outing; as I walked the aisles of the store with a squirmy Nicolas in my arms (he'd started crying the minute I got there,) with the other pushing the double stroller, enormous, where Dylan sat asleep, hoping to stave off the screams until we got safely back home so Dylan wouldn't later on be a screaming feast himself from lack of sleep, and incidentally hoping to shop, three people in a row commented upon passing me by: "You've got your hands full!" displaying a look that went from frankly amused (it must have been my hat) to slightly preoccupied (was I going to veer off and come crashing into their caddie?)
It sinks in on me a little more with every day that passes (I'm a slow learner) that I'm back traveling with the circus, which as I remember I vowed not to do again as I left last year, with now not one but two kids under two. I'm not sure what I was thinking when I decided to do this. Not of maneuvering a Humer-stroller among the aisles of a grocery store with one hand, I wasn't. And that's the good part.

A trailer with a view.

May 21, Scotts Valley, California.

The view from my trailer's back window.
I've thought for a while of photographing it in each new location the circus parks; here's the first installment.
Better late than never.

One day at a time.

May 20, San Jose.

I left the circus late in February, in the McAllen area of the Texas-Mexican border. Almost three months missing and a 800-mile road trip from there to New Mexico, countless other, shorter but no less exhausting trips between towns across New Mexico, Arizona and Southern California, miles and miles of highway barreling through towns and country in the dead of the night, ghost towns, imagined country seeming to stretch forever beyond the glass panes of the truck, the children sleeping behind me, the noise and rattle of the diesel engine lulling me, sleepiness creeping in, a long day awaiting still, the night much too brief to rest.
All this lies ahead of me now, with two babies instead of one, nights a brief moment between feedings, days long with nursing, playing and cajoling, the day's labor done if I've bathed them and cooked a decent meal, one day at a time, a woman said at a deli counter in Dallas when I asked her how she had coped with raising three kids much closer in age than Dylan and Nicolas, one day at a time.

One of these days.

May 19, San Jose.

Four shows today. Three tomorrow, two on Monday, and on to the next town that night.
Anybody wanna join the circus?
The smiles will be on all day but the costumes might be a little rumpled by the third show, and the muscles sore. Tired feet will ache, backs will hurt, each step taken infinitely slower, before laying down to rest, to rest for tomorrow's smiles.
That might have been the real reason behind the otherwise rather titillating sortie of the two clowns from San Francisco.
The story goes that they were caught in an embarrassing position by pretty much the whole Mexican crew having a beer late at night at the cookhouse, and came by the office the next day a letter in hand from a freshly-hired lawyer requesting a break of their contract and subsequent departure.
I think they just couldn't take the seven days a week routine, the traveling late after a day's work deal, the portable toilets out in the boondocks treats, the cookhouse regimen of S and F (salt and fat galore,) circus life on a daily grind basis in all its delicacy on both body and soul. So they bolted at the first scandal, albeit an admittedly saucy one.
That they couldn't stand the heat is obvious. Which heat is the question.

The pursuit of happiness.

May 19, San Jose.

A few moments ago I was looking at Nicolas; he was looking back at me and suddenly he broke into a big wide smile.
Nothing simpler yet nothing better.

Dylanese.

May 17, San Jose.

I'm back with the circus and it feels as if I'd never left. We are at the Children's Museum in downtown San Jose, same as last year. Dylan was too small then to enjoy the museum; now he'll run wild.
He does that, he turned 18 months just three days ago. He's doing as good as an 18-month-old who's just been uprooted once again in a long list of once-agains, gone through a marathon five days road trip across the country and is having to deal with the arrival of a baby brother could possibly do. He's running wild, he's my love.
He's talking his own talk, lalala, la di da, and we're waiting to see what it turns out to be: French, Spanish, Dylanese sprinkled with English?

Dylan, May 2, Dallas, Texas.

Peanut.

May 15, San Jose.

My mother left today for France, she went back home and left me missing another set of precious arms, a soothing voice for Nicolas, she would hold him for hours at a time, talking to him, laughing, and I miss her so.
Nicolas is a more difficult baby than Dylan, sometimes hardly sleeping during the day, needing to be held and soothed long after he's nursed. He does that with gusto, he weighed 9'5 already at his last pediatrician visit before we hit the road. I wrap him in a burrito-style swaddle, rock him and sing, use a tototte (my Mom's lingo for a pacifier,) whatever it takes to calm him down. He's an adorable burrito.
My mother stayed with me a month and a half, planning her trip for Nicolas' birth. He was born in a birthing center in Dallas similar to the one where Dylan was born in Savannah. Labor was half the time it took for Dylan, only an hour - "only" for all those who have never been through labor pains.
Still. An hour labor, a natural birth without a hitch and a healthy baby, miraculous all.
Nicolas opened his eyes the moment he was born and sometimes it seems he's not shut them since. Always his eyes wide open, dark blue still, taking the world in. The other thing that struck us the moment he arrived were his fingers, incredibly long and fine, like a pianist in the womb.
He was tiny, and seemed tinier. I named him my Peanut, although when he was born I thought he rather looked like E.T., the friendly little alien; his face had that long, triangular shape, all bones and big eyes. Just a couple of weeks later my mother thought he looked more like a Buddha, double chin and all.
My Peanut, my little Buddha, Nicolas, welcome to the world.

Nicolas, 6 weeks old.

We're back.

May 14, San Jose, California.

We're back, plus one.
Nicolas was born on March 31 in Dallas.
He weighed just 6 pounds 2, a tiny creature I was afraid to handle, another miracle of life continued, life unfolding, where there was nothing, only there was, and he's here now, my Peanut, my love.

Nicolas Hadrien Torales Berta, April 12, 2007.

La piste aux etoiles.

Feb. 21, Weslaco, Texas.

Shot this year's Chimera program photos tonight between the two shows - and Dylan running around in his brand-new outfit.
I l-ike it!
As someone told me back in the spring (seems like twenty years ago) upon seeing Dylan in a rather funny hat, you gotta have some payback. There's a great children's clothing store in town, they even carry the French brand Petit Bateau, and one after another drop-dead outfits, if you like bright colors and not-nursery-blue styles (beats Wal-mart anyhow.) Who would have thought, way out in the Texas boondocks?

Feb. 17, McAllen.

The Argentinians' daughter, Allyson, turned two today, and they threw her a birthday party in the tent. All the performers were invited, so the lineup was as cosmopolitan as you'd expect maybe a gallery opening in New York City to be.

Suburbia, U.S.A.

Feb. 16, McAllen.

The lot we're in will be the McAllen Convention Center some time in the future, or so say the billboard. Now it's just a large building the ocre color of the earth surrounding it, cement sidewalks and paved entryways leading nowhere, newly-planted trees and shrubs, chunks of lawn grass neatly packed along them like so many carpet samples, big tractors and trucks endlessly going to and fro, spurning clouds of dust, more palm trees going up every day but the dirt still winning.
Walking with Dylan on my back I wanted to go to the park across the street but gave up; the six-lane avenue light ran about 30 seconds, or just the time needed for a couple of cars to go, barely enough for a pedestrian to reach the center divider. Nothing new here.

Showers (not that kind.)

Feb. 15, McAllen.

This afternoon I was getting to go out when Fridman told me they needed me in the tent for pictures. So out I went, the whole lengthy routine of dressing Dylan up, putting his shoes on, putting him in the backpack carrier, struggling to my feet and into my own shoes with 22 pounds on my back and some ten pulling me down on the other side (I'm eight-month pregnant today,) I stepped into the tent and... "felicidades!" they all chanted, all the women of Circus Chimera, gathered to surprise me with a baby shower.
They'd planned it all, brought in a table to put all the gifts on, bags and bags full of presents, they'd bought a cake, they'd enlisted Fridman's help, they'd planned it all, and they gave me my first baby shower, a baby shower I'd never even thought of getting as it's only a tradition in this country, as far as I know (the rest of us are really missing out, here, I've realized today.)
When I got back to the trailer it took me almost an hour to unpack, unhook, untape all the baby clothes and accessories.

Dylan, tout simplement.

Heroics.

Feb. 13, McAllen, Texas.

The daily heroics of circus life are often played out in the dead of night.
The idyllic country-feeling field we were in when we arrived in Harlingen having been turned into a giant sponge by last Saturday's deluge, and two days of somewhat drier weather having done little to restore normalcy, leaving the lot proved to be an epic battle, fought with semi tractor-trailers and two-inch chains.
I was dozing off on the sofa after putting Dylan to sleep sometime after the show ended last night, waiting for Fridman to come back and hitch the trailer, when the persistent, whiny roar of a truck engine revving up in vain woke me up and got me outside. Gustavo's truck was stuck in the mud. Another truck pulled up, Jose the mechanic at the wheel, a simple metal chain was hooked up between them, one try, two, the third one did it, the clowns cheered.
One after another each of the circus trucks got stuck, and the struggle went on all night. To make things worse, the weight of the trucks broke a water pipe, causing more flooding, if that could be possible. The last truck made it out of the lot around five in the morning, the field a lake of a mess, the drivers exhausted.
Meanwhile we drove onto the lot in McAllen and discovered another dirt field, ripe for mud contests should one drop of rain fall onto it.

To the laundry.

Feb. 10, Harlingen.

A deluge brought by a huge storm overnight left us immersed in water. Soon enough came the mud (hello again,) the grass torn up by the weight of the trucks (again) going out, or trying to.
So Fridman and I decided to walk to the laundromat, a few blocks away, instead taking the truck out, Dylan up on his Dad's shoulders in the backpack carrier and loving it, safe above Dad's fisherman's plastic boots, loving the splash of water, I trying to stay dry around them.
Behind the park where the circus stands the landscape turns industrial, a train depot, abandoned rusting metal sheds, closed-up stores and still-open ones that have seen better days. We crossed the railroad tracks and followed them to the laundry, past a restaurant called the Texas Cafe, bright red in the surrounding engulfing grey.
The laundromat too seemed out of a forgotten decade, worn machines falling apart, folding tables oddly put together, mishappen objects, in a corner a small room, the tired hues of the bric-a-brac and religious icons, an ageless lady in faded clothes lost in her chair.

Jessie Alvarez, Alvarez Laundramat (sic.)

Texas Cafe.

Feb. 10, Harlingen.

Square house.

Feb. 10, Harlingen.

Depot.

Feb. 10, Harlingen.

Landscape.

Feb. 10, Harlingen.

Tickling the ball.

Feb. 9, Harlingen.

Circus Chimera played Circus Vasquez at soccer today. We lost, 3 to 2, a charge de revanche, down the road. It was awful hot out on the field, as it's been for a couple of days, hot and humid, like a New England summer almost. It's strange, to say the least, after the kind of weather we've been having. On both sides there was a little circus troupe of supporters cheering on, and Dylan too.
Another day on the circus trail.

Fresh air.

Feb. 7, Harlingen.

What a change. Forgotten the muddy, ugly, desperatingly grey lot we were stuck in for two weeks, yesterday morning when we woke up, Dylan and I, the sun shone on a dewy field of grass at the fair park, the air quiet and country-like, and life seemed to smile at us again.
And we're parked right by the cookhouse, at the center of all the trailers, the center of the social life of the circus, for the area directly in front of the cookhouse is a little like the town green, the knot of things.

First-class traveler.

Feb. 6, Harlingen, Texas.

I'd forgotten about that - the fun of the drive late at night, driving the truck, pulling the trailer, "with all my belongings," as Fridman would say, on the mostly empty highway. I'd briefly worried about the new logistics, with now-toddler Dylan in tow, but he was what is commonly referred to as a trooper this side of the Atlantic; he fell asleep in my arms around ten as we were waiting for Fridman to come back from taking the props down, woke up when I took him out to the truck around midnight, fell asleep again on the short trip to Harlingen from Brownsville, some twenty miles, woke up again as I put him to sleep in the trailer upon arriving, close to one o'clock in the morning, and then woke up briefly once more by Fridman unhitching the trailer later on in the night. At eight this morning he was up as if nothing was out of the ordinary, his old smiling self.
But then again this is a kid who never even seemed to register an eight-hour jet lag, who took the complete and rather abrupt change of scenery he went through when I took him from his wandering Circus Chimera life in a travel trailer directly to France and an apartment for the first time in his -admittedly - short life, without showing any sign of it. We went from Colorado to Paris, then a few hours after landing took a train down to the Alps, where my mother lives, and in less than a week were in the south of France, on the Riviera, where I grew up and had accepted a job as a visiting lecturer in photojournalism for the fall semester. Travels (in planes, trains and cars, only a boat was missing, or a hot-air balloon) and upheavals, total change of scenery, food, climate and language, all new faces and habits: I can't think of many people, much less small babies, who could go through the same with such brio.
Not to mention we packed up and went through the same odyssey in reverse less than four months later.
I had dreaded the flights with Dylan like the plague, and at some point considered turning down the job on account of the prospect of going through a two-part, more than 16-hour-long plane trip alone with a 10-month-old. He slept most of the way, and was a darling the rest, the trip went so smoothly it was hard to believe. On the way back it was less restful; Dylan was walking by then and a one year old, so I had to entertain him for most of the way.
Still, he's my first-class traveler.

Reading Foucault.

Feb. 2, Brownsville.

I read Le Magazine Literaire's special edition on Michel Foucault I picked up in one of the bookstores on Anne's street, going through it bit by bit so as to not to be over with it too soon (taking care of Dylan helps the slowness of the process,) and I wish I had taken along the two volumes of Dits et Ecrits that are back at my mother's house in France, two thick books of notes, interviews, essays, courses and other material produced over the length of Foucault's career, a luxury I had indulged in after devouring Surveiller et Punir, days of frantic readings in Paris on cloudy afternoons off, I remember this café on the rue des Ecoles just off the boulevard Saint-Michel, reading Surveiller et Punir there for hours, enthralled, hooked for life on the writing, sometimes difficult but also impossibly, simply beautiful, and then a passage in particular - in Dits et Ecrits, an as-yet unpublished preface to his Histoire de la Folie, - so beautiful that for me it's just a pleasure to read and re-read it, like that, for the heck of it.
But who could I speak to here about being in love with Foucault's prose?
I miss France, although there too the candidates might be harder to find than I think.

Hats and feathers - opening day.

Hats and feathers.
Feb. 1, Brownsville.

General rehearsal with costumes this morning. The costumes were not ready until now, so here we are, having a general rehearsal on the very day the show begins. There is an effervescence all about the circus, a constant ballet of people frantically going one way and the other. It's over by one o'clock, there are three hours left til the opening.
The costumes are an orgy of feathers and polyester fabric, topped by a shocking multitude of garish hats figuring seasons and holidays, if you can figure a season or a holiday in a hat. It's all very Texas-trash couture. But I haven't quite grasped yet what seasons and holidays have to do with Happy Days. The costume designers are the same guys as last year, very gay and without an once of a sense of style. The shortest one wears a big cross on his sweater.

Starting over.

Jan. 31, Brownsville.

The show starts tomorrow - Happy Dayz! -, and so does the season.
For seven days a week it will not stop until mid-November, unless some major accident happens, presumably. The rest of the crew arrived during the night, familiar faces everywhere, Chago, Araceli, Jose the mechanic, el Chivito and Edith and Jose Ivan, "the other baby," whom we didn't get to see yet, he was sleeping, and suddenly it feels like I've never left. I'm beginning to wonder if I'll come back after the birth of Fridmanito Junior II or just stay put. Missing the circus from the visiting lecturer in photojournalism position on the sunny Riviera was easy; daily life at Circus Chimera on the road is not, much less with a toddler and a newborn in tow, and a husband who's going to be working some 12 hours a day.
Fridman will only do one act in the show this year but he will also go on with the plateful of multifaceted tasks he shouldered last year, and then some - driving one of the circus' trucks, setting up the deployment and parking of circus vehicles upon arrival onto a new lot, managing the doors crew, overseeing program sellers, plus, la cerise on the cake this year, he might also act as prop guy during the show (someone who takes care of all technical aspects of the acts) and help in taking down and setting up the props as well, thus basically having to work during the whole show every day plus the setting up and taking down and up times. Long, very long days.
Fridman: "It's still less than when I was at Carson and Barnes and the pay is better." The way I see it, it's like extolling the merits of slavery versus indentured labor. If I'm lucky I'll get to see him around three o'clock in the morning when he crashes into bed. Until now the agreement was he would be getting paid the same as last year, $ 500 a week before taxes (a shocking 30 percent in this country - for a salary that low it would only be about 10 percent in France, that high taxes socialist heaven), plus a fraction more, to be negotiated, for the prop business. Winning the lottery sounds really good.

Smile.

Jan. 30, Brownsville.

Going from a $150-a-night hotel in the heart of Paris, buttery croissants and café au lait with white cloth napkins in the morning to a cheap trailer in the muddy depths of Texas makes me smile, the Buddhist in me reaffirmed, one more (necessarily) humbling time.