Kitty Center

Bennie invited me to have lunch with a friend of his. Her name is Alisa and he says that she is a good “junker”, meaning she scores great stuff thrift store shopping and knows all the good shops. We had a delightful lunch. Alisa is vibrant, hilarious, adorable, and just plain good people. She gave us a verbal list of places to junk.  I sorta got a little crush on her as I do with most amazing people I meet. I am the girl with gazillion crushes. I think that my tendency to crush out and celebrate the unique in people is what keeps my hope for humanity alive. In general I have a hard time dealing with other humans. I find them self serving which is the ultimate bore. Some people are iridescent stars that shine light wherever they go and leave a bit of stardust on those they touch. Alisa is one of those people. I was very fortunate that she invited us over to see her and her husbands house. Alisa greeted us with her magnetic smile and showed us around the yard. She loves clovers and collects four leaf clovers. The yard is huge and sparsely treed so there is a view.

Alisa said that she and her husband immediately knew that the house was their “home” as soon as they stepped inside. It is beautiful. Front and back porch, lots of ceiling to floor windows, an entire apartment in the basement, and a huge yard. The year the house was built is something I forgot to ask. The interior is designed with beautiful vintage and mid-century pieces that fit right into the house. Alisa does have junkin’ ju-ju.

So here is this amazing lady with this amazing house. It took me a while to connect that Alisa is a burlesque performer. I do not know why I did not make that connection as Bennie told me her name and I had seen pictures of  “Monique Honeybush”. I knew about the burlesque group “Panty Raid”.  Sometimes I can be a dullard but all too often ignorance has saved me from acting like a starstruck idiot around famous and/or fantastic people I have met. So bless my heart, right?

Alisa showed us her gorgeous house, her funeral fan collection, and her collection of hilarious and bad paintings. We even got to peek into her costume closet. Alisa’s two dogs and her elderly cat were so sweet. I wish I could have met her husband but he was at work.

Unfortunately the rest of my photos of Alisa’s place are too large of files to post here. I need to find out how to compress them for posting. Anyone else have to do this? Help please? BTW if you Google Image Monique Honeybush you will find fantastic pictures of Alisa performing!

Alisa showing Bennie, Janene, and me her yard.

Funeral fans

Weekend before last I met two people and their chairs.

I answered an ad on Craigslist for an Italian leather chair for sale. I like the way it looked in the picture so I called to arrange to look at it.  I drove to a duplex in Lacey and knocked on the door. Deborah was very energetic, loud, small, and powerful. I entered her home and immediately fell in love with the chair. It is big and soft and comfy. Deborah being a small woman appeared tiny in this huge Italian leather chair. It seemed like an unlikely chair for her. I would look at her and imagine something smaller and daintier. Deborah told me about how she just bought a $48,000.00 RV and is selling everything in her home and will be living in the RV. Her husband is in the military and they have to move to Virginia soon. She explained that every time they have to move they have to pay first/last/deposit for wherever they live and it makes more sense to have an RV. She showed me the brochure for it. Let me tell you, she bought a HOME.

Deborah told me that she is really attached to the chair. It is her “Zen” chair. She is a nanny by profession and she used the chair as her sanctuary, curling up in it with her kindle book and her electric fireplace glowing at her feet. She expressed happiness knowing that the chair was going to a good home where it will be loved.

As we talked she shared with me how she had been hit by a car a few years ago and badly injured. She spent two years in therapy. She said she had to learn to walk. She shared how she grew up hunting and that she is still an avid hunter. She said that if you can’t skin a deer yourself you have no business hunting. I love her zest. Sitting on her bed (she toured me around the duplex too) listening to how excited she was to get out of Olympia and be on the road made me little envious. However, I am not sure I would have the moxie or gas money to drag an entire house with me across the US.

So here is this woman embarking on a major geographical and lifestyle change. She is letting go of dear material possessions so that she can travel less burdened. Dear Deborah, you tackle big things and I respect you for it. I bet you could take down a Grisly with a “Boo!”.

Yes, I bought the chair. It is lovely.

The next day I took my dogs to a field by some new construction near Capitol Medical Center. There was a man sitting in a wheelchair talking on a cell phone on the side of the dead end road. I parked and asked him quietly if it was okay to run my dogs in the field. He said “Yeah! Go ahead!”.

So ran out into the field with Gus and Larry and played for awhile. Gus was intrigued with the guy in the wheelchair as we came back to the car. He started yowling in a high pitch and wagging his tail. I asked the guy if he could say hi to him and the guy welcomed us over.

His name is Richard. He is a resident of an assisted living facility across the street and was diagnosed with lung cancer three months ago.  I sat down on the pavement and talked with him for a while. I wanted to know what the assisted living facility is like because my brother may eventually need assisted living. According to Richard, who had come from a big house with his wife and two of his grown children living there, the one room space isn’t bad. He told me that he isn’t here for long so why complain. Richard said that he gets out and about and his wife visits him and brings his dog to see him.  I asked him “Are you doing stuff?” and he knew exactly what I meant. He replied “Some people have a bucket list. I don’t. I’ve done it. I have had three lives.” He then told me about his early years as a basketball hopeful until his thumbs were crushed. He did not tell me how they were crushed. But looking at his thumbs I noticed they were unusually large and guessed that they had once been his or someones toes. Maybe it was big scar tissue from grafting. I didn’t stare or ask. I felt fortunate that he was sharing with me at all. He described his years following the Grateful Dead. Later he got a degree and worked as a computer programmer for years. I suspected there was more and asked him if he rode bikes. Yes indeed he did. He was a biker too. He also said he did some logging. Richard is 55 years old and I totally believe him. Sometimes I look back on all the amazing things I have experienced and marvel at how it all got crammed into so few years. He told me that he is looking forward to seeing what death is like. Richard said he thought about suicide and that he just can’t do it. I shared with him about how my uncle, who was dying of lung cancer, had driven himself to his favorite fishing hole with his rifle and drank a bottle of whiskey on the shore and couldn’t do it. He was found passed out with his rifle.

I asked Richard  about the wheelchair. He said that because he is on oxygen he needs it to roll the tank around outside. He also added that it provides a seat anywhere he walks. He wasn’t happy about it at first but now he likes having it with him because of the seat.  Our chat came to an end and I thanked him for sharing with me.  Richard stood up from the wheelchair. He is tall. I mean freakishly tall. I didn’t see it when he was seated, even when he mentioned he was a basketball hopeful. He looked so meek and sickly and crumpled into the wheelchair. He stood tall and rolled the chair away. I think that chair skewed my perception.

I suspect that was the first and very last time I will see Richard. Death is part of who we all are. Here is a man embarking on a new life journey. Both Deborah and Richard have let go of dear material objects and adapted to a smaller domestic space.  Richard and Deborah have both found comfort in unlikely chairs.  I sincerely wish them both safe and fantastic journeys.

Hey Everybody!

I love fire performance. I love sideshow performance. Fire performance is usually part of the sideshow. When I lived in NYC (prior to my circus times) I would train out to Coney Island to watch Sideshows by the Seashore. I was fascinated with the performers. I wanted to know them but I was too afraid. I wasn’t afraid of them.  I was afraid that I would not be good enough for them. They possessed magic powers to me.

Now, before I tell you about my time in the circus, I would like to say that I am not circus. I would like to be but I am not. My time in the circus was brief and I do not recall a lot about it, especially the lingo. In 1993 I ran away and joined the Big Apple Circus due to some friends I have who got me a job on tent crew. The plan was for me to work on tent crew and then eventually work with my friends who were groomers for the horse act.  I took the Greyhound from Seattle to Queens and there I filled out paperwork and got my Circus I.D. (You will notice a different first name. This is my former name and is no longer legal or valid)

After reuniting with my friends I went straight to “work”.  I had arrived in time to see the second show of the day. It was explained to me that my job was to operate the “back flap” during performances so I must watch the show and pay attention to the live band during the show and identify the music cues for performer and animal entrances and exits.

Basically, I was a doorman for the performers. But it was critical to keep the tent flaps closed tight and opened and closed as quickly as possible for the performers. The elephants would head for any light once they were backstage. The underwater scene required pitch black so me and my two other tent crew members would sprint around the big top at a certain music cue and lower the venting flaps to shut out light. The underwater scene was a great glow in the dark kaleidoscope of dancing and acrobatics to the tune “Under the Sea”.  Most of the performers were from overseas (har-dee-har-har). Malaysia, Czechoslovakia, what was Yugoslavia, Russia, etc.  I learned the music cues quickly and developed a silent repertoire with the performers, who were always gracious and would give me a smile. There were acrobats, jugglers, contortionists, aerialists, dogs, horses, elephants, and two clowns, Gordo, the star of the show, and Mr. Fish.

Mr. Fish was American born and a philosophy professor who decided that he was happiest clowning. I have long forgotten his real name and most of the details of his story. He was very gentle and kind. He  helped me to navigate how to behave with the performers. You see, performers really had nothing to do with staff. They were a kind of royalty and did not associate or socialize with any of us. I was told by Mr. Fish to just not talk. He said they hated loud Americans and if I am silent and polite they will like me. It totally worked.

There were three two hour shows a day if I recall correctly. The rest of the time was maintenance type work and the inevitable  tear down, location site marking, and putting the tent up when we would haul to another burrough in NYC.  Everyone had a job during tear down and raising the big top. I worked with two guys that I did not get along with. They did not appreciate the supervisor hiring a woman onto tent crew, and I was punk rock, and they were hicks. I was up for the challenge. I spent my fair share on top of the tent with my tent crew cursing and screaming at one another and threatening to release each others  carabiners. It really was a fun time when I look back on it. We were freely expressing our hate for each other and it was rather healthy.

The constant feeling of magic began to ebb. The bad food and the hate between me and my crew members  finally got to me. When we went to Dublin Ohio I could not take it any longer. My supervisor had screamed at me for being late for raising the big top. I was in a separate car for the caravan and we had stopped to see some of their friends in a little town on the way.  I was screamed at for the last time. I quit the circus and so did my friend Theo. We spent a week in Columbus Ohio exploring and trying to get a ride share to the west coast but then we hopped a Greyhound to Seattle.

There is a great documentary series on PBS about the BAC  http://www.pbs.org/opb/circus/big-apple-circus/

After that adventure I was hooked on all things circus and sideshow. I wanted to learn to eat fire. Jim Rose’s Sideshow was taking off and strangely I ended up moving next door to one of their performers Tim Cridland. I learned to eat and manipulate fire from him. After we had been friends for a while he knocked on my door one sunny day and asked if I would take pictures of him swallowing a sword.  He was at the skill level where he could keep it down for some time and he wanted a photo. In the yard between our houses, he took a sip of water and plunged the sword down his throat. I snapped a photo just as he had removed the sword to projectile vomit the water. He was having a hard time. I kept snapping as he was having to remove it. It was rather funny. Finally he was able to keep it down long enough for me to get a photo. It was his camera and I never did see the pictures. There must be several photos of him projectile vomiting water into the air. Since then Tim has become highly skilled at what he does. He has spent years and years practicing these things and what he does is very dangerous. He is known as Zamora, the Torture King http://www.mindandmatter.net/ 

After a photo of me eating fire was published in a free publication in Seattle I was  contacted by a belly dancer and her band about performing fire with them. I joined Sahar’s Kundalini Theatre. We were live music, belly dance, and fire eating. I did not belly dance. Sahar would have guest dancers perform with her. I would eat and manipulate fire while she and other dancers would change costumes. We performed at restaurants and opened for bands in clubs. We performed at  a benefit for Hemp-Fest at a loft in SoDo. We also did Seattle Mediterranean Festival in ’98. It was great fun. I quit the troupe because my private life was going down the toilet. That’s a whole other story.

I did not breathe fire as part of my act in the past.  I  felt it was too dangerous. I had only learned to eat fire and do fire manipulations from Tim. I was too afraid to breathe fire after an attempt on my own that scared me.

In 2011 I saw a fire troupe perform in Tumwater. I approached them about practicing and learning new things. I ended up joining and performing with Midgard’s Flame. Thanks to the matriarch and patriarch of that troupe I learned how to become a competent and confident fire breather and I became a better performer.