Many moons back, a decade and a half ago in fact, I got into the circus.
Not into as in I joined it, or anything like that. I mean into in a kind of into way.
I became taken by it in a way that was surreal and beautiful and that felt kind of like a turning point in my life.
At that time I was living on the meadows in Edinburgh; a vast green communal space that housed huge circus tents every summer. Any time I looked out my huge, drafty tenement window I could see the big tops.
This was long before I had really allowed myself to step towards my creativity; before I had taken any concrete steps towards the life I live now and am so incredibly grateful for. It was a stage where I was making decisions based on fear.
Trauma responses.
I’m not entirely sure what it was about the circus back then that obsessed me so much. I was also teaching in a Steiner school, and circus school was a big part of that environment. My friendship group both at the school and outwith was also one that was into the circus.
We dressed in bright colours and patterns, we danced around fires, we put on our own festivals, attended loads of others, we moved through life in a way that was both fully in the moment but also never really there at all, somehow.
All in all, we were in that cusp phase of life that is so in and of itself. Adulthood feeling like it had been ongoing for so long but not feeling like it had really landed at all, at the same time.
I’ve not beaten about the bush about the fact that I’m right in the middle of what feels like a huge life change.
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