gabriele > Recent Status Updates

The step through the gates that takes from painted ground to bare grass feels heavy.
You think, as you walk away from Le Cirque des Rêves and into the creeping dawn, that you felt more awake within the confines of the circus.
You are no longer quite certain which side of the fence is the dream.

"The circus arrives without warning."

You may tell a tale that takes up residence in someone's soul, becomes their blood and self and purpose.

I find myself not a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish. Transporting them at will.

We lead strange lives, chasing our dreams around from place to place.

We are headed to New York, my friends.

There is a society of sorts that keeps track of the movement of the circus, notifying other rêveurs so they might travel from destination to destination. There is an informal club of rêveurs based in the city that holds gatherings from time to time, to keep in touch while the circus is away.

They are on an extended circus holiday, following Le Cirque des Rêves around as many locations as they can manage.

They normally do this only within Europe, but for this particular holiday they have decided to chase it around the other side of the Atlantic.

They are on an extended circus holiday, following Le Cirque des Rêves around as many locations as they can manage.

They are on an extended circus holiday.

escapement.

do you adore le cirque des rêves? more than anything in the world?

then you are a rêveur, no matter what you wear.

because you can't. don't try. it is tiring. it is useless. it is no way to live.

that's exactly what you have to do. after all there is always – somewhere out there – a winking light in the darkness.

the only way to gain some semblance control is to relinquish it – to feel every wave, let them each pass through you as you pass through them in return, allowing the salt to get in your eyes and in your ears, asking the rushing darkness to envelop you – rather than pretending for a single second that you can jump above their peak for any real amount of time.

i am older than i was then, now i allow myself to bury grief and for it in turn to bury me.

Grief, after all, is the biggest myth of all: not in a sense that it is a falsehood – sadly it is not – but in the sense that it is necessary; as a way to work through the brutality of loss, and in the sense that it runs parallel to life as we know it. one does not stop happening while the other takes hold – they are entangled, for better or for worse.

There is hope, though. the irony is that we – each of us – has had it all along. sometimes buried deep, almost inaccesible, but there nonetheless. it isn't easy to reach, especially when our hands are slapped away for even the beginning of that motion, but to endure the sting of those raps is to find something well worth the pain. Over time it is a pain which disappears – leaving only the raw nerve of joy.

we do not fight quite hard enough to protect, at least, not until it is too late.

Grief – for a life that was or a life that could have been – is a powerful motivator.

and that scorn is not just a benigh clucking of the tongue. it is white-hot and razor sharp. it is painful and precise enough to leave not just a lasting sting but also, if not properly treated, a permanent scar of self-doubt: a reminder to think again before exposing yourself to a world in which the done thing is to simply bury the light of those feelings until they are extinguised by lack of air.

the world works hard to beat out of us the things about which we care the most – to dilute our passions and temper our reactions. The world at large, to its great shame, is scornful of people who live deeply.

but grief is real; it is physical – it doesn't just happen, or even happen to you. it is there. right there. next to you, always.

only when you have sat together long enough, had enough altercattions and conversations, left open enough doors and walked through them together can you decide that you'd like some time alone.

only then, so close and so intimate, can you feel free to ask for reprieve. to say "now go".

but grief is real; it is physical – it doesn't just happen, or even happen to you. it is there. right there. next to you, always.

death, as much as a contradiction as it seems, isn't an event; it isn't something that just happens: it is something you have to learn to live with. not just once, an eternal phantom – neither benevolent nor benign, but not inherently evil either.

that immediate association – of death with darkness; of grief with despair and the void.

you cannot, as it turns out, outrun grief or loss. a decade later, even when you don't feel it breathing down your neck, it is there – in the shadows.

They are enthusiasts, devotees. Addicts. Something about the circus stirs their souls, and they ache for it when it is absent.

"opens at nightfall, closes at dawn"

elle pense à la puissance de la solitude comme l'antithèse à l'isolement, comme coeur inévitable et secret de l'interdépendance, puisqu'on ne peut pratiquer la solitude que collectivement, puisqu'on ne peut s'y donner accès qu'ensemble, par le milieu.