First night back at circus training.
This is where I've been experiencing most frustration, disappointment and anxiety, ie "an ideal setting for working on shit" as Buddha says.
Screwing up and failing at stuff is something I criticise myself for to varying degrees depending a number of factors (well rested, fatigue, hydrated, what my expectation is; my ability relative to others, and how i feel about that). Some days it's an infinitesimal mote that I easily huff away with chortle. Other days it cloys, clots and clings like honey in my hair (... I imagine honey is like that in hair).
At the circus training there are a couple of different disciplines I see around me, floor acrobats, handbalancers, aerialists and jugglers.
I marvel at jugglers when they're training; if they drop a ball they are as cool as cucumber, they'll keep juggling. Flow and continuity is they're bag. They take dropping balls in their stride. It genuinely amazes me everyone every time I see it; usually freeze or collapse when things go awry.
Today I was in the "Dude zone" (hatch tag big Lebowski). I was working on pirouettes transitioning to knee switches. Since the beginning knee switches have been a sticking point for me. I took these recordings:
I love how casually I'm moving. I think starting away from the poke helped that a great deal, it built up psychological momentum because walking is easy and the pole was an small in my field of vision. I slip the pirouette a couple of times, but I stay reasonably unperturbed. And I managed to make headway in knee switches, despite frustration and tunnel vision in previous sessions, largely because I had a different set up/context with a taste of ease or flow.
As it happens I was sharing the room with jugglers this evening, I feel like some of their attitude rubbed off on me, like lipstick on a shirt, which naturally makes any person cooler and more capable because it implies they are getting some action.
So, some summarising:
- all I need is a bathrobe and milk in my beard, and I could do a big Lebowski themed piece
- it's useful to change the context of something, particularly of it feels like something is stuck
- this video would be much prettier of I pointed my toes and looked at the "public"
- look at how other people do stuff
